Software engineers are in high demand and short supply. If you're looking to hire a new software engineer, it can be challenging to find the right candidate. You need someone who will fit the culture of your organization, who has experience with your technology stack, and who's capable of building great things for your customers—all while working with tight deadlines and budgets. LinkedIn makes recruiting software engineers easier than ever before. In this post we'll walk through how you can leverage LinkedIn Recruiter to source candidates faster, find candidates that meet your hiring criteria faster, and communicate directly with talented developers so that they know what your company is all about before they even apply for a job.
Why hire a software engineer?
As a hiring manager, you need to know why you're hiring a software engineer. You'll want to hire them because their skills will be valuable for the project you need completed. Software engineers are in demand and high-value assets for your company.
Based on Linkedin's statistics, there are more than 4.1 Million software engineers listed on their website!
Skills and qualifications to look for in a software engineer
To attract the best software engineers to your company, you will want to advertise in places where they can see it. The most popular place for hiring Software Engineers is LinkedIn. As a hiring manager, you may be tempted to look at the candidate's experience and qualifications first. However, with such a demanding role as Software Engineer and a high level of competition for top talent, we recommend that you focus on what skills and qualifications a candidate needs in order to succeed at your company. Here are some things that we look for:
- Experience in similar roles (this demonstrates comfortability)
- Relevant education (they were able to apply their knowledge after college)
- Relevant work experience (they have already learned how important teamwork is)
- Relevant skills (anyone can learn anything given enough time; it's more important that they already know how to do what you need them to do)
Recruiting with LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a great place to find software engineers. The platform allows you to search for the right people for your business. You can use the following steps:
- Create a LinkedIn Company Page
- Post about jobs on this page (this will help attract software engineers' attention)
- Search for software engineers by job title, skills and location in order to find relevant candidates
Iterative search
The first step in recruiting engineers on Linkedin is to use their search function. You can use the search function to find candidates by location, industry, role and a number of other criteria. For example, if you want to hire an engineer who lives in London then you would enter your location as London and select "engineer" as your job role. If you want to find software engineers with experience working in finance then select finance as your industry and engineer as your job role.
Once you have found potential candidates using Linkedin's search function they will appear in a list.
You can now use these results to refine further by adding more criteria such as their education background or whether they have worked at specific companies before (if so click on "company").
It is important to do these searches iteratively and maintain a repetitive search within the specifications that are a must for the company you are hiring for.
Finally, location and willingness to relocate are among these search criterias that are important in your hunt for the perfect software engineer that fits the role!
Commercial use limit
LinkedIn's commercial use limit is a very important piece of information for recruiters, but it can be difficult to find. The LinkedIn Help Center doesn't have much guidance on this topic, and there are no direct links within the candidate profile or search results that show you whether a candidate is within the commercial use limit.
Fortunately, there are two ways to check:
- Viewing their profile from an employer account. If you're logged in as an employer, go to their profile and look at the bottom of their summary section where it says "Viewed." This will tell you if they've viewed your company's jobs recently. They'll also be able to see if you've viewed them!
- Looking at tags on LinkedIn Groups pages after searching by location (if applicable). If you know a candidate lives in one place (or multiple places), try looking for them in groups associated with those locations by clicking “Groups” under “Search” on LinkedIn's homepage
Source software developers from LinkedIn with InMail
There are two ways to use LinkedIn InMail:
- Pay-as-you-go. You can send an InMail to anyone on LinkedIn, but it will cost you money. If you have a limited budget, this is probably your best bet as it allows you to target people with specific job titles or skillsets who fit into your company's profile (such as "software engineer," "developer," or "web developer").
- Free trial. If the pay-as-you go option isn't enough for you and/or your business needs more flexibility with its recruiting efforts, consider signing up for one of LinkedIn's paid tools like Sales Navigator or Recruiter Lite which offer unlimited contacts in exchange for a monthly subscription fee.
Finding new candidates with content
Content marketing is a great way to find new candidates. By creating and promoting educational content on LinkedIn, you can attract job seekers who are interested in learning more about your company and its products.
In addition to driving traffic to your website from LinkedIn, this strategy also allows you access to the data of these audience members: their job titles, companies they work for, skills that they have listed on Linkedin — all of which are helpful for targeting potential employees who would be interested in working at your startup or business.
Groups and CVs
LinkedIn groups are a great way to find people who share your interests. They're also a good place for networking. They can help you establish connections with others in the industry, ask questions about how things work and get answers from people who have been through similar issues, or even find other opportunities at companies that might be interested in hiring you.
In addition to LinkedIn groups, CVs are another great resource for finding software engineers. When someone creates a CV on LinkedIn, it's like publishing an advertisement that says: "I'm looking for work!" You should always look at CVs when they're associated with companies that interest you or if there is something else about them that catches your attention (for example: "Just moved back from Japan; available now" or ".NET Developer").
Recruiting software engineers is a complex process that requires careful attention to detail. Using LinkedIn, you can easily find and connect with the right candidates for your company. Whether you’re looking for new employees or trying to fill open positions within your company, we hope these tips will help you get started on your recruiting journey today!
And, if you have been keeping up with our weekly articles, you should be pretty much familiar with the concept of ATS, and why they are so important in your hunt for such positions.
