It is no secret that IT people is on high demand of highly talented experienced professionals. It has been like that for several years as far as I remember. But with the introduction of LinkedIn as a place for exposing your professional profile to the world, we, computer geeks now feel as an elite group that can have the privilege of rejecting multiple job offers on daily basis. Sometimes (and I'm not saying it in a pretentious manner) you feel like you're writing back letters from fans. "Dear recruiter, thanks for your offering, but at this moment....".
This amount of job offers is one the explanations of why so many of us don't stay in a single company more than 5 years. There is so much competition out there, that the moment you start getting a little bored with your current project, you can just start paying more attention to the market place and let the recruiters tell you nice things about other places. But even though there is plenty jobs out there, it doesn't mean we feel safe accepting any offer. Not even listening to many of them. In the last years I have received a very big number of invitations from recruiters, that now my contacts in LinkedIn surpasses the amount of contacts I have combined in my other social networks. And of course I didn't swap jobs hundreds of times.
After receiving all these messages from recruiters, in which 90% of the ended in a template response of "Thanks, but no thanks" I decided that maybe I could give some advices from my experience to IT recruiters of the world on how to fish a little better. Or at least get the "fishes" more interested in the "bait".
I went to the list of messages I have on my inbox and came with these list of recommendations for IT recruiters. I know maybe there would be refutals from what I'm going to recommend. I will be glad to listen to different opinions. I have no recruitment experience, so from my perspective certain things are not efficient, but maybe they do get the job done in the ancient art of convincing people to move to other places. These are my first 5 tips for recruiters (this could be a multi-part post).
Get familiar with the technologies
I know HR people don't need to be an expert on the field. But I can assure you would be more effective if you have a grasp of certain technologies, so you do contact people with the right experience for the position. For example, I am a developer with a lot of experience in Java programming language. If you're looking for a Tech Lead for a .NET team, unless you do me a super offer that makes me betray my for years language of preference, I will skip immediately the offer. I'm a nice guy and always respond saying that the position doesn't fit my profile. But is everyone as nice as me?
Personalize your message
Recently, I received a job offers, that I was almost entirely convinced that I was not going to accept, but it was personalized in a way that I never saw before, that made me at least have an initial call from the recruiter. The message read something like this: "It looks like you are rocking in Ducky Inc. with your new position, but do you want to move your career further". The message showed that the recruiter took at least some time to read my profile and understand my experience. That simple detail is not common. Or maybe recruiters do read in detail our profiles, but it's not reflected in the initial message. Normally it's a repeated phrase like "your profile caught our attention" or "you look like a good fit for our position". Is it too much work to try to find a little detail from the candidate's profile and use it in the message? It could be that indeed is faster and simpler to send a templated message.
Give details about the employer
"A very important international company is looking for [INSERT_POSITION_HERE]". Many professionals are willing to consider an offer based on the potential employer. Someone might want to change from financial related work, to develop fitness applications to mention an example. Not everything is about money or promotions. The thing is that many messages from recruiters look like a secret message from a spy agency (this message will self-destroy after 5 seconds). I can guess that perhaps some recruitment companies don't like to mention their client because they feel that the candidate could contact it directly. I don't know. But not giving details about the future employer is a big deal break for me.
Send links of the work environment
This is a very important aspect to consider. It may change a lot in this new normality where companies are subscribing more and more to remote work, but still a lot of them want their employees to see face to face with certain regularity. Showing videos and pictures of the work environment (this may sound weird) makes the offer a little more human/warmth. If you only have a brief description of the company with the benefits offered, you need to imagine how the job place looks or go and research on your own. Better to ease the job by showing candidates how cool could look their new second home.
Does it hurt to put salary ranges?
A job offer could sound very nice and interesting, but unfortunately, a lot of us have responsibilities and families to care for. That means that changing jobs with significant less salary is not very wise. That would make salary expectations almost 90-100% of the cases the first filter we put at from in order to decide if we proceed to start a process, or at least have the first call with the recruiter. So why not saving time for both and put salary ranges in the offer?
Now with all these years of experience I have learned to feel less embarrassed by asking high if no salary range is provided. It's a gamble! But if you are not really in any rush to change a job, then you're not really risking much. On the contrary, if a salary range is provided, I can ponder other aspects of the position. Maybe there is not big increase in salary compensation, but there is a strategic move in the career by the experience that would be gain.
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