5 ways for teams to attract talent

🤔 It’s tough to attract talent… but lately I have not felt that this is the case! It requires long term effort from the company and lot of work from recruiters to make this happen, but there is also a lot of responsibility on the team since that’s where the working environment is. 💡

Let’s drill down on important aspects that you as a team should focus on when recruiting. Or at least, these are topics that I take with me from our successful recruitments from teams in recent times.

This is how I believe we got additional awesome members in my team(s):

🥇 1. Take the lead in the recruitment

You are the ones that want another member in your team = you drive what person you need in your team in order to be successful! Take ownership of your product and your team by focusing on the most important thing: who will be part of your team. How come so many teams put less effort in writing a good profile description than they do when discussing a design decision?

👱🙎 2. What makes the team special?

There are so many lame ads out there which state the usual tech and it’s seldom that anything is written about the team. Use that! Write about parts of how you work that make you proud! I always make sure to mention how we work and what we would like to see in a new member. For example how we work in ensembles, experiment and take an active role in deciding the direction of our service and working with stakeholders.

🏗️ 3. Interesting tech stack

Most of the time, ads are still found by different keywords, so specific tech can help attract talent. Even if Java is still one of the most popular languages it might not attract the seniority which you had hoped (but it also might). This is the pitfall when it comes to having a homogeneous tech stack in the company: The setup might be smoother when many teams use the same tech stack, but senior developers seek new challenges. There is no challenge when the situation looks the same in any other team in the company. Dare to use the tech that solves the challenge at hand in the team!

❤️ 4. You’re people!

Remember that an interview is just as much about the candidate to get a feel for you as vice versa. A great climate within the team shows and will leave the candidates wanting to join. The team is about people, not resources!

Psst.. don’t be afraid to join with the entire team (you shouldn’t be more than 6 anyway)! The interview is a conversation, not an interrogation.

⚡ 5. Act & decide quickly!

Talented developers usually have a lot of opportunities to look at. You don’t want to put up with the hassle of a complicated process and if you are looking for something, you likely have alternatives. So be quick with feedback, both if you want to go ahead with a candidate or not!

There is obviously a lot more to it, but that’s for another time!