Easy on me
TL;DR
There are my thoughts on how to make recruiting more effective for both sides - head hunters and heads. So my tips for recruiters:
- Provide enough information in a polite way in a initial message;
- Describe each step in our communication;
- Get all the information you need upfront;
- Provide information relevant to the person you are talking with.
Context
The situation in IT world is interesting. Even before the Great Resignation there was a bigger demand for software engineers than an actual number of qualified workers on the market. When we talk about “hot” positions, like DevOps, SDET and more closer to me - Rust Developers, we face the truth when you will be contacted about new job possibilities several times every single day.
My situation
I was laid-off and decided to take a break before moving to the next contract. But my LinkedIn inbox was already full of initial messages, both my emails were full, not only from TWIR newsletters, but with letters from recruiters also. Telegram was attacked and I even have requests for friendship on VK. So it was not only rude to keep people waiting for a response, but impossible to ignore them. And I started to answer.
Pain
I will not whine a lot about this situation, because it won’t change it and I definitely should do such things in other sources, not in my professional blog. What I should do here is just formally define my feelings and provide a list of suggestions on how to make things better. And I feel exhausted, sitting in a cafe and answering the same things to different people over and over again, providing my CV in PDF format, remembering - been already contacted by this company or not, looking at clocks - oh my god, I already spent one hour of my personal time and I’m not sure that I had at least one match…
Proposals
Preparation
- Check that your company didn’t contact candidate before
- Look through candidate’s profile, personal web site, blog, before reaching out
- Understand who are you looking for
Initial Information
First message is important. Instead of sending an essay about how new, shiny and full of money your startup is, provide more details interesting for a person you are talking with. Kindness is also important, yet you should integrate something useful in a set of nice words. The other extreme - is to provide a ton of information right from the start without any respect (like some scouts like to do). So what I suggest:
- Be polite
- Provide brief information about who you are looking for in a message or email and a full Job Description as a link (so candidate could read it only if they are interested)
- Do not insist on specific communication channel. If you are writing on LinkedIn and ready to move dialog into Telegram or email, just leave your contacts in a message (and better check that they are presented in JD too) and let the candidate decide to stay on the platform or switch to another.
Hiring Steps
There are plenty of possible steps during the hiring process and it would be great to know them upfront. So if the candidate answers you and is ready to move on - please, give an information about the next steps. Don’t be rude (as scouts from one big company) and do not introduce it as a strict plan, yet you should align your vision with a candidate’s one.
- Wait for the candidate’s readiness to move on and ask all the information needed to proceed
- Comment on all steps that you are going to take and share time estimates (I will share your CV with our Tech Lead and answer you in a week)
- If your process includes some unexpected steps (additional security checks, mandatory technical tasks) - notify candidate as soon as possible.
Artifacts Retrieval
Every communication with a recruiter may involve a question: “Could you send me your CV”. Mine is here and it’s a regular web page. And when I send it as a link, people ask me to send them PDF (while there is an option to save it as PDF on a web site). And I always politely reply and provide them with my CV in a form of a file, yet I think tech recruiters should be able to deal with WorldWideWeb and browsers in 2022 =)
- If information is open - take it, look through candidates profiles, websites, etc.
- If you can’t find something - ask in bulk all the information you need, don’t split it into several phases
- If you have some restrictions (maximum salary, due date for on-boarding) - share it upfront, save your time and time for candidate.
Answering Questions
I also have questions to ask during our communication and less information provided in JD, the more question I will ask and more time it will take to move onto the next step.
- As I already said, provide a complete Job Description and make it relevant for candidates
- It’s good to know that a company is well funded, but one sentence about it will be enough
- One title can mean different things and Rust Developer that write Smart Contracts in Solidity should be called Blockchain developer, provide more information about who you are looking for and what they should do
- Keep it technical, if you struggle to describe it - ask your tech crew for help
- Read questions carefully and ask for clarification if you didn’t get something - it’s hard to have a conversation when I got the recruiter’s answer and it is not what I was asking about
- Write letters, even if we chat - I usually spend only one or two hours per week on LinkedIn, so if you write a small message which I answered, the next one will be answered only next week.
Conclusion
Hiring is hard job, yet it’s a job and recruiters responsibility to do it in an effective and professional way. So I hope my humble opinion and advice would be helpful and will provide candidate’s point of view.