9 Tips on How to hire Tech Talent when you are not a Techie

When you are not a Techie
9 Tips
How to hire Tech
Talent

• Ever find yourself with a ton of ideas that you don't know what to do with? You can
picture what you want to do in your head, but you don't have the technical skills to
actually execute on them.
• Looking for the tech talent, without being a tech expert yourself can be difficult, but
there are a few ways which can help you find the best person for the job without learning
how to code yourself.
• So how should non-tech people go about hiring tech
talent?
• Here are all the main steps anyone without a technical
background can follow to find a great developer to work
with.
Hiring Developer for Non-Techies

Identify Tech Business
Objectives
Understand the job and business
requirements well.
TIP 1.

• As a recruiter or an HR or an entrepreneur, first of all, understand the job and business
requirements well.
• Consult a knowledgeable and experienced tech expert who can listen to your goals and
recommend the right technical language, platform, etc for your business.
• Once you have decided the technology and platform now learn and
understand the job role you are hiring for.
• For example, saying that you need IT Specialist isn’t really meaningful because
it doesn’t represent what you really need. What you might need instead is a
backend software developer or an expert in building product software.
Identify Tech Business Objectives

Ask for help
Consult techies here.
TIP 2.

• Once you have established the tech business objectives, now it’s the time to clearly list the skills
required
• It is important to be extremely clear about the skills you seek and the responsibilities the new hires will
have. Consult techies.
What should Entrepreneurs do?
If you are an entrepreneur hiring techies for your startup,
• Consult with a trusted friend in the industry
• Consider having a technical co-founder or
hire a CTO (Chief Technology Officer).
• Consider working with collaborators by joining a local co-working space or
business incubator, where you can network and leverage tech resources
to help you get a better understanding of the industry.
Ask for Help

What should HRs and Recruiters do?
If you are a recruiter or an HR,
• The best thing is to make sure that the people who are expert in that field are involved.
• Bring more technical resources into recruiting. Put your developer team in a room together and talk
about how to hire people like them.
• Ask the team members if they are aware of any skilled expertise for a particular programming language.
They can help you with the correct terminologies for the job descriptions and what skills to test.
Ask for Help contd..

Attract Right Tech Talent
It’s time to take the word out.
TIP 3.

• Once you are clear with the right technical details such as Technology, Platform, Languages and other
skills that are required for the job. Now, it’s time to take the word out.
• While designing your Job Ads and Job Description to attract the techies, do remember that techies not
only looking for a fat pay scale but also other effective attraction magnets like –
 Opportunity to work on challenges
 Work on latest technologies
 Better Work life balance
 Company Culture
• Write good job description.
• A good job description not only attracts candidates but the right candidates. Be sure to include these in
your job description.
Attract the right Tech Talent

• Be sure to include these in your job description.
1. Proper Job Title – Use the proper job title that will convey best what the employee will be doing.
2. List only what is required and expected – Write what you are looking for? Avoid unimportant
information such as detail about who reports to whom or unimportant administrative policies.
3. Talk about the particular position – Provide a link for the applicants to learn more about the job role.
This gives the candidates insight into what they should expect if they were to work there.
4. Tell your story – Facebook has a video on its career page to convey their culture and what’s it like to
work at Facebook? This is a compelling way to speak your company’s goals, vision, and culture. This
will help attract candidates with shared interests.
5. Perks and Benefits – Mention benefits and perks your companies offer. Consider exactly what
developers want from a company, and provide it.
Attract the right Tech Talent contd..

Reach Out
Leverage the platforms.
TIP 4.

Now for searching the top tech talent leverage the platforms that tech talent uses every day.
1. Referrals
Ask a Friend
• Start by asking referrals to the people you know your family, friends or
relatives or ask someone you have done business with.
Ask for ‘Refer a Friend’
• Hubspot offers $10,000 to anyone who refers an ‘awesome’ developer that they go on to hire.
• All those organizations and startups that are looking for an extraordinary developer create a ‘Refer a
friend’ page on your website. Ask non-employees to refer a developer who would you go on to hire and
reward them in return. (For startups they can either pay to one who recommends a friend or just offer
them a one day treat in a five-star hotel.)
Reach Out

2. Attend Meetups and Hackathons
Forget Job fairs and try looking great talent at other events that aren’t traditionally recruiting-related.
Meetups/Group Events
• Search forums such as Meetup for group events that are likely to be attended by people qualified for
your open position.
For example, if you need a Developer in New York City, you could attend a Software developer-focused
meetup in the area and look for potential candidates.
Hackathons
• A hackathon is an event where computer programmers and software developers collaborate to create
new software.
• Companies are increasingly using hackathons as a recruitment tool to evaluate coding skills in real time
by giving developers “think on your feet” scenarios.
Reach Out contd..

3. Use niche Job Boards
• There has been a paradigm shift in the way companies recruit thanks to the value, efficacy, and ease-of-
use of today’s career sites.
• Online job sites have revolutionized the recruitment landscape for both employers and job seekers and
largely increased the efficiency with which hiring decisions can take place.
• Use good job sites to search your perfect candidate.
4. Social Media Platforms
• LinkedIn - Look for the candidates on LinkedIn as nowadays it is the platforms where candidates are
actively searching for the jobs.
• Technical Blogs/ QA Forums - Many programmers have their own personal blogs or might be mentioned
on the blogs of other programmers. They also help people with their questions on Q/A forums. This can
be a great source for potential candidates.
Reach Out contd..

• Open Source Code Contributions - Sites like Stack Overflow, GitHub offer an online repository for code
where programmers can contribute to open source projects. You can look at samples of a candidate’s
code before contacting them.
• Personalized Emails - Most of the times, the best talent isn’t actively looking for a job. These types of
candidates are called passive candidates. Personalized emails are a great strategy for attracting passive
candidates. Personalized outreach beats mass mailing.
Reach Out contd..

Test the Candidates
Test the candidates skill and evaluate their
expertise.
TIP 5.

• Resumes don’t speak the reality.
• The only way to see if a candidate is going to work well is to test their skills and evaluate their
expertise.
• Choose valid & reliable online testing software with ready skill tests to assess and evaluate your
candidates. It is a fast and easy alternative and will save a lot of your time, efforts, and costs.
• Online skills testing help companies by identifying the candidates most likely to
perform well on the job.
• When it comes to online skill testing, no doubt Interview Mocha is the most
trusted and used software by companies of all sizes.
• With Interview Mocha’s skills assessment, you can easily and effectively assess
the candidate’s practical and coding skills.
Test the Candidates

Some benefits of using Interview Mocha –
• 1000+ ready to use latest and updated skills test with for all latest technologies.
• Custom tests – if we don’t have a skill test which you need, just ask us we will create for you.
• Save billable hours – save billable hours of your tech team wasted in irrelevant activities.
• Interview Mocha’s assessments have helped companies to eliminate 80 percent of unqualified
candidates.
• Coding and other simulators to test hands on experience.
• Most companies have found that their face to face interview conversion ratio has increased by a huge
70% as the hiring team now only interviews relevant candidates.
• Candidate evaluation process with Interview Mocha has become objective and they are now able to
select right candidates.
Interview Mocha strives towards helping hiring managers to quickly conduct the pre-hire screening and
assessment to test candidates.
Test the Candidates contd..

Determine the Pay and
Training period
Decide over the pay and training.
TIP 6.

• Get an idea of the pay.
• Look at what similar companies are paying to the candidates at different levels for the job roles,
research for similar tech jobs in your area through resources such as Payscale.com or Salary.com.
• If yours is a startup, consider using equity to attract talent.
• Also, decide over the training period of the candidate and inform them before taking them on-board.
Determine the Pay & Training period

Look at the Big Picture
Broaden your research.
TIP 7.

• Now before interviewing the selected candidates look for their portfolios, online presence, and repos.
• Start by browsing their social media profiles, their portfolios, websites, and their contribution on sites
like GitHub, Stack Overflow, Quora, etc.
• Look for the following things –
1. How they showcase their work?
2. Whether they contribute to the community?
3. Whether they write blogs or answers about relevant topics?
• Broaden your research and look for their participation in the groups
they belong.
• And, if you find anything that doesn’t feel right to you, just move on
and keep looking for someone else.
Look at the Big Picture

Interviewing Candidates
TIP 8.

• When interviewing you need to bring a right mix of right people in the hiring team. A right hiring team
is crucial to reap benefits of your hiring efforts.
• If you are an entrepreneur you will need someone with the tech knowledge to rate the results. So
consult your network for advice and call them in the interview panel.
• If you are an HR or Recruiter and you are hiring for the technical team, make sure you include
technology officer or a Senior Architect. He will make sure the next hire in the development team is
strong and will help you making the process a lot easier.
• See to it that your panel members (who are well versed with technology) apart from asking technology
based questions they focus on three things –
1. What the candidate has accomplished?
2. Understanding of Technology
3. Understanding of Business
Interviewing Candidates

• Now since you’re unable to assess their code, you should focus on what’s important to you and start
the casual conversation for finding out the other necessary things.
• During a casual conservation, try to emphasize on below things, just to make sure the candidate is really
a smart one and just not seems to be one.
First, ask them what they’ve been doing and probe them about it.
Second, are they curious?
Third, do they learn?
Fourth, what they have mastered?
Lastly, see whether the candidate is good cultural fit, team player, check whether he sticks around the
duration allotted for the projects.
• Offer Internships – After the interview if you feel that the X candidate is a potential one, and you want
to assess his skills more then a good way to evaluate is to offer them internship. This will give you the real
picture of candidates’ skills (this can be specifically offered to entry level candidates).
Interviewing Candidates contd..

Post Onboarding
TIP 9.

• Hiring for a job you’ve never done before is really hard. So is managing that person after they’re hired.
• Call in your network or friend who had helped you in the hiring process and ask them to evaluate the
candidate. But make sure you observe how he evaluates the candidates so that next time you can.
• A good way is to provide new hires with a mentor or peer buddy, this can have a positive impact on
both productivity and retention.
Post Onboarding

•Interview Mocha is a leading provider of online assessment software
for pre- employment skill testing.
•Interview Mocha offers a pre-employment testing solution to recruit
quality candidates and reduce administrative hassles in recruitment.
•Reduce time, efforts & hassle in your Pre-Employment Skills
Assessment. Interview Mocha pre-employment testing software offers
everything you need to recruit better and faster
About Interview Mocha

 Contact us - support@interviewmocha.com
 Twitter - @InterviewMocha
 LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/interview-mocha
 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/InterviewMocha
 Blog – https://blog.interviewmocha.com/
Reach us at

9 Tips on How to hire Tech Talent when you are not a Techie

More Related Content

9 Tips on How to hire Tech Talent when you are not a Techie