A technical recruiter's key responsibilities include:

• Working with hiring managers to identify their needs when it comes to technical roles.

• Creating job descriptions to fit the needs of hiring managers.

• Sourcing candidates to fill those opportunities from a variety of sources.

• Filtering and screening applicants to find out more details and determine the type of role they'd be a fit for.

• Passing along relevant candidates to hiring managers.

• Being a liaison between hiring managers and applicants throughout the hiring process.

Key skills of a technical recruiter:

• Organizational skills to recruit for multiple job openings.

• Written and verbal communication skills to communicate with potential candidates and hiring managers.

• Interpersonal skills to get to know candidates and make deeper connections.

• Proficiency with applicant tracking systems and other recruiting tools to systemize the recruiting process.

• Deep knowledge of the field you’ll be recruiting for to best share what the organization does and how it does it with potential candidates. Technical recruitment comes with a lot of technical and role-specific jargon. Like learning a new language, you'll need to immerse yourself in it to become fluent in speaking with both candidates and hiring managers.

• Humility to understand when you don’t know an answer so you can get the correct information to candidates.

• Creativity and critical thinking, when especially when it comes to recruiting diverse candidates. Very often technical recruiters are competing for the same candidates in a relatively small talent pool; the ability to think outside the box in terms of finding and establishing relationships with your target audience will go a long way!

Wondering if technical recruiting is the right path for you? Learn more about how to choose a career path as a recruiter.

1. Get to know a day in the life of your candidates

Technical recruiting requires a certain level of awareness about who you are recruiting and their day-to-day lives. So, as you recruit candidates, try to get to know them. Important questions to answer include:

• What tools or software do they use?
• What jargon or slang do they use?
• When do they usually get their best work done?
• Where do they hang out in person or online?
• Which perks and benefits matter most to them?
• How do they build a reputation in the field?
• What challenges are they facing personally or professionally?
• What skills should they possess to contribute to the team if they don’t have the education?

It’s important to understand where your candidates are coming from, so you can anticipate their needs and preferences, and deliver an outstanding experience to them.

2. Focus on building long-term relationships

According to LinkedIn, the median time to hire an engineering role is 49 days. Technical roles can be challenging to fill, and it doesn’t help if you don’t have any long-term relationships with potential candidates. Therefore, you must focus on connecting early and often to build your candidate pipeline.

You may want to rely on a recruiting CRM to keep in constant contact with potential candidates as you get to know more people in your recruiting field. You never know when a relationship might turn into a candidacy.

3. Consider how diversity plays a role in technical recruitment success

A recent Wiley study found that 68% of business leaders feel there is a lack of diversity in their tech workforce. Unfortunately, many of these same business leaders are having trouble addressing these recruiting issues, and 51% struggle to recruit diverse talent for entry-level positions.

The issue with diverse talent is it forces you to reconsider how you recruit. You may have to source candidates by going to different schools, websites, or locations. Don’t fall victim to using the same methods that have historically netted you little to no diverse talent.

If you’re interested in improving your skills in this area, check out our diversity hiring guide for more tips.

4. Create a rubric to help you judge and analyze candidates

Hiring tech talent can be challenging. Not only are candidates in high demand, but understanding whether each one has the necessary hard and soft skills takes time. Certain soft skills can be taught on the job, but having a certain level of technical knowledge is non-negotiable. That doesn't mean that other factors aren't important though, so be mindful not to focus exclusively on technical ability or educational experience.

Building an interview rubric is critical when considering passing candidates on to hiring managers. For example, what makes a candidate excellent, great, good, etc.? Based on your rubric, who gets passed to the hiring manager? Making these decisions before you recruit helps you remove bias.

5. Build your employer brand to make technical recruitment easier

When large technology companies like Google or Meta want new talent, they typically don’t have to work as hard as a smaller technology company. The workplace may leave something to be desired, but they’ve built a large brand and offered something to employees (even if it’s just a great name on a resume.)

Whether your organization is a tech giant or a small fish in a big pond, focusing on your employer brand and value proposition can help you in technical recruitment. If you want to use a brand to recruit, you have to establish two things. First, what you offer candidates who work for your organization, and second, how you communicate that with potential candidates.

Once you understand these two ideas, you can build a plan to consistently share what working for your organization is like with potential employees.

How technical recruiters utilize technology to be successful

As you determine how to find success in technical recruitment, you must consider how technology can make your life easier. Technical recruiters often lean on technology to streamline parts of their job, so they can dive deeper into making connections, better understand what hiring managers are looking for, and become experts in their respective fields.

Invest in tools that enable you to do your best work as a recruiter. For example, Fetcher's candidate sourcing software makes sourcing candidates easier. We multiply your talent pipeline and help you find a diverse array of talent that meet your business needs.

Our tool has helped companies around the world cut hiring costs while improving the candidate response rate. Ultimately, they were able to find quality candidates for their technical roles, without spending hours a day on manual sourcing.

When you’re ready to see how technology can improve your processes, schedule a demo with Fetcher. We’d love to show you how we can save you time and energy while delivering the candidates you need to succeed as a technical recruiter.

About Fetcher

Our mission is to help you engage talent that will transform your business aspirations into reality. Great talent is hard to find - that's why we offer a talent sourcing platform that not only gets your brand in front of the right candidates but also gives you a competitive edge in talent acquisition.

Begin building a relationship with your next great hire today and let Fetcher handle the rest. Learn more.