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Employing skilled workers is an essential part of every company’s road to success. This is made possible by recruiters screening candidates to evaluate cultural and technical fit. These recruiters may be part of the company’s internal HR team or might be sourced through an external talent acquisition firm.
However, a blind report compiled by TechRepublic found that over 96% of tech employees do not believe that general recruiters are suited to evaluate their skills. This is particularly relevant for industries requiring employees to have a specialized skill set, such as front-end developers, UI designers, and data scientists.
On the contrary, these employees believe that their skills are best judged by their prospective co-workers or people who have relevant technical expertise. This is why a technical recruiter becomes crucial to the hiring process.
What is a technical recruiter?
A technical recruiter is a uniquely qualified recruiter specializing in recruiting employees for one or more technical verticals, such as IT or software engineering. They are usually categorized under the broader umbrella of human resource specialists.
Unlike general recruiters, they are expected to thoroughly understand the requirements of the technical role and evaluate candidates against those criteria. This enables them to understand the candidates’ core competencies at a deeper level while also assessing soft skills like communication and teamwork. Ultimately, this results in better hires for the company since firms receive employees who have been thoroughly vetted by qualified professionals in the field. Technical recruiters are also expected to form long-term relationships with potential candidates to allow easier recruitment processes in the future.
What skills is a technical recruiter expected to have?
A technical recruiter is expected to possess a broad spectrum of skills to enable them in making the best hiring decisions. First and foremost, a technical recruiter should be familiar with the concepts and jargon essential to the job description. This may include an understanding of programming languages and data analysis software.
However, it is not sufficient for them to just be proficient with the technical aspects of the job. A good technical recruiter should also have strong communication and networking skills along with the ability to negotiate wages and other terms of employment. Additionally, they should have the ability to think critically, especially when it comes to verifying the candidates’ strengths and capabilities. Finally, they should be willing to create a world-class experience for the candidate. In this manner, they are expected to integrate the skills of a general recruiter into their evaluation process.
What are the tasks of a technical recruiter?
Job descriptions and communication
The work of a technical recruiter begins right from the stage of describing the vacant position. It might be difficult for people not associated with the industry to develop a job description that encapsulates the requirements of a technical job. This problem is mitigated by technical recruiters who are well versed in the jargon required to draft a comprehensive advertisement for potential candidates. Tech workers are also much more likely to respond to detailed job openings that explain their skills.
Technical recruiters completely bear the responsibility of communicating with the applicants.
They need to email prospective employees and share details of salary and job responsibilities, including what it would take for a candidate to be a good fit for the role.
Developing a high quality hiring funnel
A common complaint among HR teams is getting irrelevant resumes. Candidates on a job hunt apply indiscriminately to jobs, making it harder for a hiring team to sift through hundreds of resumes for a particular position. Another problem faced by general recruiters is the wide gap between what is claimed on a resume compared to actual skills. Trying to assess technical know-how through traditional methods like online assessments and coding platforms to weed out candidates without concrete skills can significantly slow down the hiring process. Some hiring teams try to completely automate this process using AI, but such automation has inherent biases and opens itself up to interview fraud. This is where technical recruiters can swiftly separate the wheat from the chaff and add significant value to a hiring process.
Link: https://www.searchlight.ai/blog/boost-conversion-percentages-in-every-stage
Better feedback for the candidates
Candidates applying for a specific role are often rejected in the assessment process. However, general recruiters are unable to convey the exact reasons for their rejection due to a lack of understanding of the technical details. Recruiters with a background in the field will be able to provide more useful feedback to the rejected applicants to help them understand the areas where they could improve. This helps recruiters develop better relationships with prospective candidates who can be called upon for future opportunities.
Is working with a technical recruiter right for you?
Before you consider adopting the trend of using technical recruiters, it’s important to consider the following factors.
After helping filter candidates who have applied for the vacant role, technical recruiters do not get involved in the next step of the recruitment process, i.e., the technical assessment interview. These are conducted by a member of the hiring team. However, when general recruiters conduct these interviews, they are prone to several drawbacks, such as unclear communication about actual job requirements. This might lead to potential employees withdrawing their application if they determine that the role requires different skills than they initially thought. These candidates also may not take the company seriously if the interviewer is not well versed with the questions they are posing.
Flocareer has sought to resolve this problem by capitalizing on the gig economy. We onboarded freelancers who are experts in specific technical areas to evaluate candidates’ technical skills. By leveraging their knowledge, freelancers can ask more directed questions to correctly assess the candidates’ skills and offer a smoother experience for the applicants while keeping interviews short and to the point. As a result, the hiring team gets precise recommendations and can confidently move ahead with candidates who are filtered based on in-depth assessments that are calibrated to fit the exact requirements of the job.
Skilled technical recruiters can also be hard to find. The primary challenge in becoming a technical recruiter is the steep learning curve in many industries. Understanding the details of everyday tasks performed by a technical worker, especially in fields like engineering and data science, can be difficult. Additionally, the hiring process requires recruiters to have a vast array of auxiliary skills, creating barriers for many who want to venture into this industry.
At FloCareer, we have done the hard work for you. Our experienced 3,000+ technical recruiters are ready to help you take your business to the next level. With 300k+ interviews under their belt, our recruiters have helped several leading organizations close technical positions with quick turnaround times. If you are keen to jumpstart your technical hiring without taking precious time away from your core business, sign up for a free live demo.
