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"Engineers want honesty and transparency. There's a disconnect between [this] and how tech recruiting at most companies are working towards their technical hiring goals (spamming). We’re at the end of an era."
Honesty, transparency, clear intent. No tricks, no snake oil, no bullshit. A very reasonable, dare-I-say obvious expectation among humans. Almost a no-brainer, right? Yet somehow a vast majority of tech recruiters (or perhaps their managers) just don’t get it. Or they don’t want to. And I’m here to tell my fellow talent hunters: This is our crucible, our great day of reckoning. It’s time for us to reimagine recruiting in the modern world, to do better, to make our profession great and respectable and meaningful again.
As we dive deeper into a crazy, uncertain yet exciting new decade, lest we forget the critical role recruiting has played throughout human history. It has shaped the world as we know it -- think: recruiting for armies, political parties, etc. -- just as significantly as it has shaped legendary companies. But in tech, a once beloved, almost Romantic profession has become a metrics-driven, superficial, brainless, transactional (shall I go on?) process that feels anything but human, or sincere, or compassionate. And recruiters are being called out by the very technologists they seek… the snake has been eating its own tail for far too long and engineers are tired of it. Go ahead, click the link and take a look, I’ll wait.
Terrifying, right? Unfortunately, there's some (okay, a lot) of warrant behind the author’s arguments and predictions. While I don’t wholly agree with all of his views, nor do I feel his gross generalization of the recruiting profession is fair or justified, this is a warning shot across the bow of USS Headhunter, and my fellow recruiters in tech should absolutely beware and take note. We can all be better – and do better – for the greater tech industry.
When I started Rogue Talent 7 years ago, the Anti-Recruiter was born. For 8 years I was told my unorthodox methods were wrong: Caring about a candidate's professional goals, growth trajectory, and (gasp!) their personal life just as much as their qualifications... unproductive, they said. Willfully and carefully advising someone on the next chapter of their career based on said goals... waste of time, they said. Attending local meetups and major industry conferences to volunteer, actually learn from the experts, and meet new peers (read: friends, allies) without handing out a single business card… unthinkable! God forbid that a recruiter appreciates flight and wants to understand how airplanes work before hiring a pilot. Oh, and I have never, EVER used an email template. To me, that’s just silly, lazy, insincere nonsense. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
To turn this all around, all it takes is baby steps. First, let’s stop referring to intelligent, hard-working technologists – *people* who contribute to both company culture and building important products – as "resources." IMHO, that’s as mindlessly insulting and unnecessary as it gets. These are the engineers of our collective tomorrow, and they command our respect. If you’ve worked in tech for only a day, you should know these awesome individuals are as proud and passionate as they are bright. Recognize that, openly in conversation, and you’ll not have yourself a loyal candidate but an ally, perhaps even a friend, in tech for life.
Second, reach out to these individuals with definitive purpose, with sincere intention, and give the messaging some personality, some color, for crying out loud. The author takes this a bit further (and nails it): “Use data to find a much smaller list of candidates, then actually write those candidates because you are genuinely excited about the potential for them joining you for truly real and intentional reasons.” Every new connection is an opportunity to create a partnership based on mutual respect, mutual interest, and shared motivation.
Third, the aforementioned article correctly predicts that recruiting will become more data-driven… y’all call it “go-to market strategy,” I call it instinct-driven, boots-on-ground guerrilla recruiting. This means highly-targeted, carefully personalized, thoughtful outreach. This is how you establish initial trust within niche tech talent pools. Sniper vs. buckshot, simple as that. From here, it’s all about transparency and trust, which are easily established through organic, purposeful conversation, sharing key details and getting career goals in return. True candidate-job alignment.
Again, recruiting has been pivotal throughout all of civilized human history. And as with many facets of life today, technology has made us a bit lazy, a bit distant and without soul. But recruiters have a golden opportunity to be the next comeback kids. LinkedIn predicts that recruiting will be mission critical in the new decade. But I argue that it’s always been core to any business… technology has just watered the practice down that would-be candidates – particularly high-demand tech folks – have simply been overwhelmed and exhausted.
The LinkedIn report also highlights that recruiting is evolving, seemingly taking a page right out of Captain Obvious’ chronicles. “Recruiters will be called on to do more: to engage passive candidates…” Time out. That’s the problem right there. The key is to engage and treat ALL candidates as though they were passive. The technologist that you, your company, or your client needs will rarely ever be the low-hanging fruit.
“Competition for top talent has gotten fiercer, so recruiting has taken on a new urgency.” So what does that mean? No, we don’t need more recruiters. Or metrics. Or InMails. It’s as simple as this: As the competition increases, we need to recruit smarter, not harder. Cliché, we know, but true no less. With each new candidate, just be yourself – be human, with sincere purpose & integrity – and the relationship (as well as your reputation) will build itself. Happy hunting, my friends.
Onward, Rogue One
