4 mistakes to avoid when recruiting rare profiles: the example of developers, to be applied to all talents

A very invasive method of making contact

The initial contact is a candidate's first impression. If you don't get it right, it will be very difficult to make up for it, if you have the chance to improve. In some cases, the word “harassment” can be used by candidates, especially for the rarest profiles with particularly sought-after skills or experience.

Imagine receiving dozens of messages a day from different recruiters, each one following up on you after a day or two, showing how impatient they are to hear from you. Most of these messages are impersonal, offering nothing concrete about the job or the company. Yet these people are urging you to reply. How would you react? Like most of them, you'd delete the messages straight away and never want to hear from the people who sent them. What a pity for your image and credibility!

The recruiter's mistake: thinking they're the only recruiter who wants this talent to apply for their vacancy, and forgetting that this talent is most probably not actively looking for work.

In fact, in Europe, over 80% of candidates are passive (according to our study with YouGov on candidates' expectations of their relationship with recruiters).

What you absolutely must improve:

• Personalizing your messages, adapting texts to the profile you're trying to attract. This means personalizing your messages in terms of experience, skills, personality and interests. If the person is active on social networks, it will be easier to identify the best approach: humor, interesting facts about a new tool, an employee's testimonial and his or her tricks with this or that computer language, etc.
• Your follow-up strategy. Forget about quick or basic reminders. Give the talent a break - he's probably over-solicited. Don't rush into anything, take the time to establish a relationship with him. If, after 2 messages that are sufficiently far apart in time, you still haven't received a reply... Think about preparing for the future. This candidate probably won't get back to you for the position you want to fill quickly, but perhaps you could offer to register him/her in your talent pool for future opportunities.

A little bonus to think about: think referral! This kind of profile can be approached more easily through mutual contact person. Your employees can be a source of relevant contacts who evolve within their networks. The first contact won't be with you, and perhaps that's for the best in some cases. Once you start talking to them, they'll really want to talk to you: a real asset for the rest of the process.

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A vague or very demanding job description

“For me it's a red flag when I see that there are too many different skills being asked for, it means that companies and recruiters don't have clear expectations about what they need,” explains Ricardo Tovar (Software Engineer) in the webinar ‘What Developers Hate Most About the Hiring Process & What Recruiters Should Do Instead’ in which CleverConnect took part.

The job description always plays a central role in a recruitment process, and if talent looks at it, they may:

• be unmotivated when they see a succinct job description, lacking in details about the tasks and, above all, the day-to-day aspects of the job
• be frightened by the large number of mandatory skills, often synonymous with the fact that the company is looking for a 5-legged sheep (remember, there's no such thing!).

If the job offer doesn't strike the right chord, you'll lose a potential candidate, and you won't give them a good impression of the relevance of your strategy. You'll be losing this profile not only for this position, but most likely for future ones as well.

The recruiter's mistake: publishing a job offer without ensuring its consistency with the job market, the profiles available and what might interest them.

What you absolutely must improve:

• Review the way you work with hiring managers to make sure you propose a realistic job description, which is not a “Santa Claus list”. This means you need to learn to challenge hiring managers to avoid wasting time looking for a profile that can do the work of 3 people at the same time (again, there's no such thing.)
• Go beyond the job description and build a real story within your job offer. Talent needs to be able to imagine what a typical day in your company will be like: what technologies will he or she be using? What are the current projects? Which profiles will they work with? This is an extremely important point, according to Ricardo Tovar, and one that is sadly lacking in the great majority of job offers. Now is the time to stand out from the crowd.

A little bonus to think about: format your job offer in the right way: design is very important, and will complement the quality of the text you've prepared! For this, you can take advantage of all the benefits offered by a good career site: enhanced job offers (photos, videos, layout...), areas to complete the offer with employer-branded content, etc.

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The wrong interview order

For some developers, the traditional interview order may not be the most appropriate. The majority of technical profiles pass not only skills tests but also technical interviews, with the future manager or someone on his or her team. This is in addition to the interview(s) with the recruiter.

Often, these profiles would like to meet the technical manager first, as he or she can explain the ins and outs of the job in greater detail, and answer any specific questions they may have, particularly about technologies. If they are satisfied with the answers, they then move on to the HR interview. Clearly, this profile needs to be convinced to continue with the recruitment process, and that's not easy. If they expect details of day-to-day life, perhaps even the most technically trained recruiter won't be able to give them all the information they need.

The recruiter's mistake: trying to follow standard rules that don't fit specific profiles. You have to know how to change the rules and try new approaches, in line with the profile you're looking for.

What you absolutely must improve:

• You can try changing the order of interviews to see if this helps candidates to better plan their career with you. In fact, Coralie Nohel (who recruits IT profiles at Zenika) goes one step further by allowing candidates to choose the order of interviews (French video); she puts the power in the hands of the candidates, who feel listened to and understood.
• Start asking your candidates for feedback and read/listen to them in detail to identify how the recruitment process can be improved, which stages should remain, evolve or perhaps even be removed.

The little bonus to think about: offer a pre-recorded video interview! This tool has two advantages: it lets you show that you're putting innovation at the heart of your recruitment process, and it can replace some short initial contact interviews, and free up time for technical interviews and tests. It's also an opportunity to share employer-branded content before and during the interview, to help candidates immerse themselves in the company's culture.

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A lack of visibility on the application process

Which steps in the process? How much time between each stage? What type of interview? What are the expectations? How many people do I meet? These are among the questions most frequently asked by candidates. Often, they don't know the answers until they start the recruitment process.

The unknown is a real barrier for all candidates. Over 30% of candidates would stop a recruitment process for lack of transparency on the status of their application (CleverConnect / YouGov study on candidates' expectations regarding their relationship with recruiters). They need to know what to expect without any doubts, to be able to prepare for interviews with the right context, and to know the game rules from the start, especially when it comes to technical tests.

The example of the use of AI is flagrant: as a developer, AI is a real tool for helping and speeding up work. Is the candidate allowed to use it during computer code tests? If the rules aren't clear from the outset... the company may scream cheating, or regret that the candidate didn't use it. In both cases, it's a real shame because a lack of communication from your part will have created confusion.

Whatever happens, you need to define a clear and logical process, and give candidates all the information they need about the different stages and why they were set up, before, during and after recruitment (even if the result is a negative response).

The recruiter's mistake: not making transparency central to the recruitment process and letting doubts and questions settle in, taking the risk of losing (definitively) the candidate's trust.

What you absolutely must improve:

• Define a recruitment process with clear stages and describe them in the job description. They should be regularly reminded by email or SMS, explaining where the candidate stands, what remains to be done, and so on. It's also better to say when there's a delay than to leave the candidate with no information.
• Set up rules with hirings managers and insist that they are respected. The idea is not only to get them committed to response times, but also to not adding steps to the process, for example.

The little bonus to think about: automation! Make your life easier by using tools that enable you to prepare communications, personalize them and send them automatically. That's what CRM tools are for. Regular communications won't take up any extra time, but will add far more value to your candidates' experience.

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