Fiorella, our business support at Joppy, told us in a previous article about some of the things she had learned after nine months in the tech recruitment industry. In this second article she continues to tell us what she has continued to learn… with a couple of more technical tips.
In the previous article I made a brief presentation about my knowledge in tech: I talked about the power of company-techie negotiation, the most common incentives I have seen offered to techies, the business mindset focused on the well-being of its employees and we put ourselves in the shoes of the techie when it comes to approaching him. If you haven’t read it yet you can access to it here.
In this second part I am going to talk about other communication issues towards the techie and how to deal with the dreaded ghosting.
Growing industry sectors
Before moving on to topics more related to my expertise, I did observe some technologies with few candidates and a lot of demand for it. The job openings with the most growth and the most potential are Gaming, CyberSecurity, blockchain and of course, AI. The technologies that may ask for become some of the most complicated to find. Some of them are DirectX, OpenGL, Unreal Engine, C++, Malbolge.
Think about this if you need talent with these skills.
Thumbs up and no-no messages in tech recruitment
On Joppy you find everything, from funny answers from developers, to recruiters who write an endless paragraph as a first approach to them. Let’s refresh a bit that a developer doesn’t want to invest a lot of time and effort, is practical in nature and the simpler the communication, the better. He must be VERY interested so that they want to read many paragraphs and then undergo a long selection process.
Adding to the previuos, these big paragraphs where they try to explain everything, also send a link to redirect them to another page to apply through there, are the least effective according to what I have seen on Joppy. Many candidates don’t even bother to answer, let alone go to the other page to reapply to something they already did within the platform.
Ideally, and what I recommend based on what I’ve seen within the platform is a short welcome message, where the recruiter introduces themselves or your company and then makes an invitation to coordinate a phone call, meet or even ask for your LinkedIn/CV if needed.
An example would be:
Hi Andres, I’m Fiorella and I will be handling your selection process😊. Thank you very much for your interest in the Backend position and if you have any questions or concerns do not hesitate to tell me. I leave you my email in case you have any urgency and you can’t find me here. It is xxxxxx@xxx.com.
Tell me, is it ok for you to have a meet tomorrow around 15h🚀?
Communicating in 2023 with the techie
Keeping the message short and clear is key. In the online meeting the recruiter can expand on the position, the company and the details, since the communication by video call is much faster and fluid. Remember that both people behind the screens are human beings with feelings. The recruiter is working, but the developer is also looking for new challenges, so showing a side of empathy makes the connection more human. Joppy’s goal is to find that win-win between devs and companies.
I recently saw a meme on Instagram that despite being “obvious” got me thinking. It said “very soon it will be common for the grandparent generation to use video games”. Can you imagine, as a kid, your grandfather playing Mario Kart with the Wii? Well I can’t, but our generation is advancing and it will be common for our children/grandchildren to grow up with a different technological experience.
It is the same with jobs, many millennials are already managers or founders of large companies and soon we will see Gen Z taking those roles and therefore the decisions. Therefore, I do not see far to make common among companies the 4 day week, the full remote work or other rules that they see fit to implement for this new work environment.
Friendlier and more current communication
The above leads me to think about a message style that not everyone uses: emojis.
Programmers also use emojis and recruiters should not be afraid to use them in Joppy, after all, the platform is effectively a chat, and not an email with all its formalities. Emojis are already part of our daily life and using them helps us to look more friendly and empathize more with techies. Who told you not to use them for work because it is not formal? Surely it’s not someone under 60 years old, time has changed and we have to adapt to it. Let’s remember that all excesses are bad, one or two are fine, but 5 emojis for each word would not be recommended either.
Although in Joppy there is not yet the emoji icon incorporated in the chat, you can add them by right clicking > emoji.
Timings in tech recruitment are important
I introduced the topic in my previous article, but I would like to expand that no matter how short your recruitment process is (e.g. a video call and an in-person visit), you run the risk of losing the techie if you let too much time pass in between.
I have witnessed final phases in which a requirement was to go in person to the office to meet their colleagues, but they were scheduled for two weeks later than the previous meeting. Of course, for a techie, who has many simultaneous offers, that’s a long time to hold their interest. In this specific case, the techie accepted another offer, whose process was not necessarily shorter but much faster.
The famous ghosting in tech
Let’s talk about ghosting, both recruiter and dev. None of us like to be left without an answer, right? The reality is that contrary to popular belief, not only devs do ghosting, most of it, surprisingly, comes from recruiters. By this I don’t mean leaving them hanging in the middle of a conversation, but even when one hasn’t started yet.
When a candidate on Joppy is interested in an offer, applies and the recruiter leaves it “pending”, it is ghosting, as the devs are waiting for a response, either to start the process or as feedback to let them know that they will not be considered. Many recruiters think that if they don’t accept it, but they don’t reject it either, they don’t need to give them an answer, but they should remember that the candidates that reach their dashboard have already accepted them first, so they all deserve feedback.
On the techie’s side, you have to do your best to keep them interested. Also, having more than one way of contact is quite positive, because if for some reason they don’t see a communication channel, maybe they will find out that you have contacted them by another way, since many times the candidate ghosting is because they missed the notification, they overlooked it or it got lost among many other messages. Of course, no spam and always ask for permission.
Fiorella, in depth
I have learned a lot of things about the tech world, being a zero techie in the past (and no idea what was frontend, backend, etc) to be able to pull queries in sql and understand two or three things that are talked about in tech. I consider myself far from being an expert, but with one foot already in the industry, learning only grows. And what better place for it than Barcelona, the famous city for tech hubs.
Link of interest
Want to know more about the future of the sector? Do it in our article on trends 👉🏻 https://blog.joppy.me/salaries-work-tech/
And if you want to read something about references in the tech world, here you have it 👉🏻 https://blog.joppy.me/reference-work-it/
Leave a Reply