10 Best Practices to Build a Steady Pool of Tech Talents

July 12, 2023 • Hiring Developers

In 2023, tech recruiters still struggle to find qualified candidates (56% of recruiters even think it’s their hardest challenge).

Whether you’re in a hiring lull or trying to keep pace with your recruitment target, how can you afford not to build a steady pool of tech talents?

Our answer is simple: in such a competitive environment, you can’t.

Here are 10 best practices to never be short of highly qualified programmers.

Why Should You Always Keep a Large Pool of Tech Talents?

While recruiting targets are tight, developers and engineers are becoming more challenging to find. No wonder that tech recruiter’s dream is to find an endless supply of qualified talents. That’s what a wide pool of talents helps you achieve :

The larger your talent pool, the more chance you might stumble upon exceptional candidates.
You lower your recruitment cost by having continuous access to a comprehensive list of qualified talents.
You can face an unexpected talent shortage and meet any hiring needs for ambitious projects.
You give yourself a competitive advantage by attracting a sustained list of high-quality candidates.

Fancy such a state of abundance for your company? Here’s how to get there.

Building a Steady Pool of Tech Talents: 10 Best Practices

Building a strong pool of tech talents calls for a holistic approach. Many factors in your organization can lead to a leak of talents or open a continuous stream of qualified hires. So you want to consider every aspect of your hiring and HR process apart from your sourcing methods.

Let’s look at 10 ways that you can attract and nurture tech talents :

1. Tap into your existing ATS data

Let’s start with your number one source of fresh talents: your application tracking system. Your ATS might contain numerous high-quality candidates. From past job openings, spontaneous applications, or other hiring events, you might be surprised by the quality of profiles you can find there. But it’s easy to take them for granted and only look for new applicants.

To nurture and keep your database fresh, you can reengage past candidates regularly by sharing industry news and interesting content. This way, you can ensure they’ll keep thinking about you and reach out to you when new job opportunities arise. It will also help you filter between talents still interested in your company and those who have moved on.

Another thing to leverage in your ATS is your silver medalist candidates. These candidates proved their abilities but didn’t pass through the last step of the hiring process. You might better keep them preciously on a separate list and contact them whenever you have a job opening that could fit them.

2. Monitor new sourcing channels.

You know it, tech talents don’t usually come to you like traditional talents. You have to gocome to them. So recruiters have long been searching the internet to find candidates for their job openings. You can go a step further and monitor daily sourcing channels to enrich your talent pool. You can make it a habit to scroll these channels and ask high-potential profiles to join your talent pool. Who knows, maybe someday you’ll have a job description that fits their profile, or they will be available for an offer. You can look at places like :

Social media like LinkedIn or Twitter: review your company’s or competitors’ followers.
Social platforms like GitHub, Stack Overflow, or Reddit.
Developers’ communities, forums, and websites on specific technologies

The more you enlarge your scope, the larger your stream of incoming talent.

3. Strengthen your referral program

It’s easy to underestimate the power of a well-conducted referral program. Yet, almost 88% of employers rate employee referral programs as their best source of applicants. So what are you waiting for to keep growing your referral program? To encourage your employee to recommend candidates for tech job openings, you can :

Make clear the rules, processes, and incentives behind your referral program.
Define an enticing reward and make it visible to everyone.
Keep people updated about their referrals and make approval faster.

An attractive referral program will provide access to a continuous stream of tech talents.

4. Redesign your employee value proposition

When recruiting developers, the public perception of your company can have a tremendous impact. It’s generally easier to attract high-quality tech talents when you already convey an attractive representation of your organization. It’s all about your company’s employee value proposition. And it’s unbelievable how subtle changes in how you frame your company’s values and working conditions can make your talent pool grow naturally.

In general, you want to convey to your candidates 4 valuable elements about their future job :

Compensation: are employees in these companies compensated fairly?
Value and purpose: what is the mission and assumed beliefs motivating people in your organization? Why do they feel compelled to give their best?
Growth: do your people have enough opportunities to climb the ladder in your company and do their best work?
People: what are the rituals that keep people connected? Mentorships, team building, external events?

5. Leverage student talent pools

What is the most unlimited source of junior developers? Universities and school communities. Most students in engineering and coding programs will graduate in a few years and seek a job. Keeping an updated database of their profiles will allow you to find the most promising talents.

To do that, you can partner with universities and leverage their database. You can also participate in student career fairs and specific events to inspire their future career choice. That will make it easier to follow up on them when they leave school and start working. So better communicate with them early than late.

6. Source global and remote talents

Remote work has expanded the borders of tech recruitment. Now more than ever, you can hire full-stack developers, DevOps, and data scientists worldwide. And it is all the easier as engineers and developers are very open to remote work with a foreign company.

Suppose you have the right work organization in place to manage a remote team. In that case, you can leverage a brilliant pool of talents from countries such as India, Israel, Romania, or the Philippines. You can partner with a local recruitment agency or a global talent-sourcing vendor to enrich your global talent pool.

7. Make DEI initiatives central in your recruitment

Besides having noble intentions, DEI initiatives also open you to one of the best tech talent pools. Underrepresented candidates like disabled people, minorities, and veterans can be highly motivated and qualified for your job. As a talent acquisition manager, it’s a shame not to rely on a diverse tech talent pool. You can enlarge your pipeline by :

Reaching talent channels like social media or diversity job boards.
Posting job descriptions mentioning your diversity and inclusivity efforts and explicitly encouraging them to apply.
Practicing blind screening to avoid rejecting promising candidates because of subconscious preferences.

8. Manage your existing and past pool of employees

And if your most reliable tech talent pool was your existing and past employees? After all, they are the ones that have passed your requirements and proved their commitment to their job.

To manage your pool of existing engineers and developers, you should ensure your management structure allow them to grow in your organization and receive regular promotion. You should have an internal application system so that they can evolve in roles and responsibilities that fit them better.

As for former employees, you should make sure to have a smooth and painless exit process in place. Stay in touch with them and keep them updated about future opportunities.

9. Enlarge your skills requirements

The tech talent shortage makes it time to ditch unrealistic job requirements. You should widen your hiring criteria to widen your talent pipeline. You can enlarge your recruitment scope to junior and veteran developers. Juniors just need someone to give them a chance to shine. Veterans look for a company to trust their experience and expertise. To favor these groups of talents, you should give less importance to knowledge and qualifications and more to motivation and self-learning capabilities. Ensure your assessments value candidates for their potential, and you’ll see much more opportunities for highly motivated tech talents.

It also means having the training and onboarding structure to support these types of talent. That’s why you should make it a long-term investment project involving all of your organization.

10. Nurture a pool of highly qualified freelancers

Freelancing has never been so popular, as thousands and thousands of developers and engineers now work independently. What if you could also tap into this fast-growing talent pool? Hiring contingent programmers can help you handle urgent or highly specialized technical projects. You can pay them on a per-project or day-to-day basis, so you can access these qualified programmers whenever you need them. You can look at channels like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com to source them. Be sure to filter them out on specific technical expertise and work requirements.

Shortlist your pool of tech talents

You have put together a large pool of technical talents? Now is the time to make the right selection for your job openings.

For developers and engineers, this means assessing your candidates’ technical skills via fair and accurate tests. You can use CoderPad to set up technical assessments and live coding interviews to make you more confident in your hiring decision. CoderPad demonstrates many key features for technical recruiters :

Technical assessments supporting various coding languages, randomized questions, and preset job roles.
Automated grading and comparative scores to make your decisions faster.
A coding interview platform that enables you to run collaborative coding exercises and assess their skills in real time.

Try it out now and shortlist now your pool of high-quality candidates!