Engagement most overlooked part of process

Considering the amount of money being spent on HR software tools, it is remarkable that one area of the hiring process is treated like it isn’t a huge problem.

If you look at the four major milestones of the process: Sourcing, Engagement, Qualification and Decision, two of them are well covered by software solutions, one gets reasonable attention and one is completely ignored.

Sourcing is supported by an endless array of resume databases, along with job posting and sourcing tools. Decision is supported by dozens of ATS/HCM tools and there are a healthy number of screening tools for IT candidates, but there are zero products meant to improve a recruiter’s ability to engage with technical candidates.

“Finding” a candidate stopped becoming a mystery when LinkedIn became popular, but even they felt the need to improve their reach by offering LinkedIn Recruiter. Resume databases like Monster and CareerBuilder have fallen out of favor and job posting automation tools help push out postings with one click of the mouse.

Recruiters struggle to engage with IT candidates, which helps explain the 58-day time to fill illustrated in a study by Glassdoor. Go to Google and type in some combination of “why do developers dislike recruiters“, and you will be amazed at the results. The posts you will see are inflamed with emotion, but it is highly indicative as to why recruiters struggle to attract IT candidates in any reasonable volume and in a timely fashion.

No one needs to invent a new sourcing tool, recruiters rely on resume databases less than in any time in the last 20 years OnGig tracks the top ATS firms on the market. Tools meant to find or attract talent are of dubious value if the talent actively evades contact attempts by the aggressive recruiters because they don’t like or respect them due to their lack of knowledge.

Jon Bischke is the founder of Entelo, one of the leading edge sourcing tools on the market, and he is also an active blogger and contributor on social media. The public question sourcing site Quora.com posed the question “Professional Networking: Why is it hard to connect with software engineers when you are a recruiter” and Bischke offered this outlook:

“One of the top reasons that engineers have such a poor impression of recruiters is that many recruiters fail to take the basic steps to better understand the technology that engineers employ day-to-day. A recruiter doesn’t need to actually know how to code (although it would be cool if more of them did!), but they should have a better grasp of technology than they do.”

Set, Match, Point.

Recruiters struggle to engage with IT candidates because they lack the knowledge to get an elusive, distrusting engineer to actually want to reply to a cold call or email. Bischke’s suggestion is a bit far fetched in respect to recruiters being able to write code, but there is no reason a recruiter can’t become more generally fluent in understanding the context of technology. In the same Quora.com post, Data Scientist Russell Jurney offered this bit of advice:

“Learn about the area you are recruiting in: a group of technologies, industry or function. Attend meetups and don’t be a recruiter for a while. Learn enough that you can tell when someone is really a good fit, or not.”

Recruiting can’t be a hit-and-run activity. Building relationships and learning take time, but it is what is going to separate yourself from a vast number of your peers who refuse to take the time to become more knowledgeable. Recruiting can be a very rewarding career by helping candidates find better opportunities and helping companies meet business goals, and the pay can be very attractive.

You work out to stay in shape, so why wouldn’t you put in the time to become more knowledgeable and credible to your audience on the way to making more money?

Mark Knowlton is the CEO and Founder of TechScreen, a SAAS firm that helps recruiters conduct, score and document detailed technical interviews of IT candidates.