Programming community Stack Overflow, released the 2016 Developer Survey to share insight into 50,000 developers from all over the world: who they are, where they work, what they build and what they want. Developers come from all age groups, genders, demographics, education pipelines, but common ground is found in their unique job views and what is most important to them at a company and in their career.
Technical recruiters can learn a lot about them from their wants and needs. Take a look at some of the biggest clues to make your recruitment process much more effective!
Tweet This: The jackpot of clues for technical recruiters hiring developers:
Who They Are
The most common held positions are Full-Stack Developer (28%), Back-End Web Developer (12%), Student (11%) and Front-End Web Developer (6%). Top industries include Software Products, Web Services or Finance & Banking at companies between 20-99 & 100-499 employees. If you’re hiring for these common positions in a sought-after industry, you’re in luck! Make sure to understand that Developers are most likely to be self-taught (69%) or trained on the job (44%), so appealing to their unique motivators is best practice.
Try: Try multiple tags for job postings. If the job title is too specific to net the amount of applicants needed, expand the title with additional job names. Including “Front-End Web Developer” for a “UI Developer” position can help broaden the search reach.
Try: Reduce bias on traditional education for developer positions. “Self-taught” is the way majority of developers learn, and should be seen as a strength!
Try: With job postings, keep it short. No candidates will read 1 or 2 pages of job posting, it has to be simple and easy to understand. List nice-to-have technical skills and shy away from multiple must-have skills. Keep the funnel wide as to not scare away a developer without one or two of the must-have skills.
What They Want
What’s your guess? More remote working opportunities? A promotion? Salary came in as top priority at 62% followed by Work-Life Balance (50%), Company Culture (42%) and quality colleagues (39%). But don’t discount advancement. Learning new technologies came in far above working from home, getting promoted and having control over product decisions.
Tweet This: You might be surprised at the top-desired work opportunity for #developer candidates. Read this:
Try: In your job advertisements, don’t be afraid to insert hot topics such as company culture and a commitment to work-life balance. What does this look like at your company? Add unique characteristics for your ideal applicant like “candidates should have intellectual curiosity” to pique the interest of specific candidates.
Try: Feature your highlights on your company careers page. Has your company just completed a fun, outside the office project or event? Post it on social media and share it!
Try: Emphasize career advancement and learning with your management team. Is enough being done to stimulate the dev’s mind on the job? Always support new ideas to learn new technology and improve their tech toolbox. Advancement doesn't always mean promotion either. Allow your developers to advance in the way most important to them: learning!
Download these 7 tips for smarter tech recruitment.
What They Don’t Want
Outdated technology doesn’t even come close to the biggest challenges dev’s face in the workforce. As introverted as devs are stereotyped to be, communication surfaced as the biggest challenge. Unrealistic expectations, poor documentation and unspecific requirements caused the biggest frustration. Sound familiar? Build up your company’s communication starting with recruiting.
Try: Use intelligent recruitment tools to improve communication between you and the applicant. Recruiters can’t always keep up with the latest tech jargon and job-specific language, and how could they? With artificial intelligent tools and platforms, recruiters are equipped with the knowledge and insight they need from the system to conduct skills tests, evaluate resumes in a way no human could do on their own. Communicate important information to hiring managers quickly, resulting in quicker decision making.
Read how artificial intelligence is empowering tech recruiters everywhere
Are You Hiring Tech?
Developer hires can come from any avenue, but an overwhelming majority have the same wants and complaints! Devs want to learn on the job, have realistic expectations, find their fit in a strong company culture and always have open and transparent communication channels. Not too much to ask, is it? Using smarter tech recruiting solutions, better hires are made at any job level. Demo Pomato Software for IT recruiting today.
“We are a top 40 IT staffing firm with very particular corporate clients. Since we started using Pomato, we have improved our submit-to-hire ratio from 17% to 52% with a large corporate client.” - Sterling Lee, Director, Diversant LLC