How tech recruiting companies find top-tier candidates

As a business owner or hiring manager, it can be frustrating to spend countless hours searching for suitable candidates for an open tech position and coming up empty only to watch tech recruiting companies continually source top talent for the same roles.

What you don’t see is the stuff going on behind the scenes. Tech recruiting companies are working incredibly hard (and leveraging years of experience) to get these results for our clients.

For starters, tech recruiting companies typically have a sizable professional network and talent pipeline to draw from when looking for candidates. Neither of these assets was created in a vacuum. The professional network likely took years to establish, while the talent pipeline is mostly the result of previously successful job placements and recruitment initiatives.

Let’s take a look at a practical example:

If a technical recruiting company posts an open position on LinkedIn, it could get seen by hundreds of relevant tech professionals. If those tech professionals share the post, it then goes out to their entire network too. In most cases, the hiring team of an individual company will not have the same reach (even if they have hundreds of LinkedIn connections). A post advertising an open position for a full stack developer is useless to connections from the sales and marketing department.

It’s important to note that, as mentioned, this advantage was not created in a vacuum. Speaking from experience, it takes years to gain this type of highly engaged following.

Another thing that tech recruiting companies do to find quality candidates is broaden the scope of their candidate search. LinkedIn, Indeed, and Monster are all great but they are also incredibly competitive when looking for tech professionals. Less crowded venues, such as tech conferences and online forums, are a great way to recruit for highly specialized positions.

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve found GitHub to be great for headhunting top talent. As an added bonus, open source projects give you a unique window into the candidate’s true abilities (rather than something they’ve put together for their resume).

Of course, the major advantage tech recruiting companies have for finding qualified candidates is the same one that plumbers have when fixing broken pipes: perform a task at a high level enough times and eventually it becomes second nature.