5 x Steps for Hiring Engineers in the Covid-19 era

Another week into this unfamiliar world we find ourselves catapulted into and another edition of Brainfood Live. As promised, we’re keeping things as real and relevant as possible during partial lockdown. Hiring continues globally and across a variety of industries. When we find ourselves out the other side of this situation, a new ‘normal’ is likely to evolve. What does that look like when it comes to sourcing Hiring Engineers?

This week we were focussed on Sourcing. It’s a topic that always garners interest from Foodies so we served up a big slice of sourcing pie with the inimitable Jonathan Kidder, Technical Recruiter for Amazon and Wizard Sourcer (check out his fantastic blog here). We unpacked sourcing shortcuts, tools and extensions to make your life easier. We’ve distilled this down into 5 Steps for Hiring Engineers in a Covid-19 era. 

1. Let Google Do The Work For You

One of the most useful tools suggested without hesitation by Jonathan was Google Alerts. Setting up alerts on Google is straightforward and you’ll get the relevant notification straight to your inbox. You can track news from competitor companies or for candidate source sites. Plus, you can opt to set up searches based on keywords like layoffs or redundancies, then narrow it down by location or for news within a given time period. 

Create multiple alerts and think about coupling it with Google Jobs so you can monitor where any movers are or where roles are opening up. Jonathan’s advice was to go broad with your alerts. He also shared that Google has made some recent updates to their search, but you can find the latest Operator Search Guide here.

2. Look in Niche Communities

As any marketer, salesperson or true sourcer will tell you, the first chapter in the attraction playbook is to hang out where your target audience hangs out. In this case where do engineers go online, what are their communities and where do they talk to each other? Forums like LeetCode, Stack Overflow, HackerRank  Blind, Reddit and their spin off site Hacker News were all mentioned. You can x-ray these news sites and many of them are booming in the tech space, particularly in the US. 

Our default as non-techies or non-engineers is to go for the core social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and so on but go beyond this and head for specific forums to gain insider tips or details of who’s hiring and where are the layoffs. 

Even better for a sourcer, you can use custom news searches like this one for reddit to really drill down. 

3. Positive Outreach

The majority of outreach messages are opening with words like ‘unprecedented’ and addressing the situation we’re currently in. People know the deal with Covid-19; they don’t need another daily reminder. What they do need is a sense of normality and stability. Underline what your company (or client) can offer in terms job security, future stability etc. Your candidate may not be ready to move but if you are empathetic and confident in your tone, this is an attractive characteristic to project. You might not get the candidate now, but they will be in your pipeline for the future. 

On the flipside, the individual might be at company where the future is uncertain – if you can offer that security elsewhere it could be the opportunity they’re looking for.

4. Email Sequencing, Follow up & Tracking

As we know, email is an effective and cost-efficient way to reach candidates. That said, don’t just batch and blast your emails. When you’re reaching out have in place a fail-safe sequence for your emails and your follow up. Guidelines from both Adam Gordon and Jonathan are:

•  First outreach email, offer value and a warm opening
• 48 hours after this, send the same email/ copy but change the subject line
• 48 hours after this go for a text or non-email based follow up

If there is no reply after 3 x contacts then they’re unlikely to engage at all, so delete them from your database.

In terms of follow ups, now is a good time to reach people by phone since most of us are at home. You can also embrace SMS texting, WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger if you have been reluctant to do so. Essentially set up some kind of IM to allow personalised dialogue with your candidates.

Jonathan recommended Lemlist to make your email interesting and to create a follow up sequence.

5. What happens if the Candidate says 'No'?

Let’s face it, candidates are going to say ‘no’, particularly at a time when there is reticence to move from a seemingly secure job. Take that rejection with grace but offer to add the individual to your email newsletter on career development in their specific field. It’s a mindset switch from converting the prospect to nurturing them. But (and it’s a big but!) do not just send job alerts. Add value in your newsletter – show your readers that you are indeed a subject matter expert. Very few companies do this, instead they revert to spamming out job alerts. Be prepared to make that change and you’ll see the rewards.

If you need a stat to back this up, Adam shared that just 4% of Fortune 500 companies do this, the remaining 96% do nothing more than pushing jobs, that’s if they do recruitment email marketing at all (detail according to Smashfly).

Jonathan recommended a host of other cool tools and plugins (see our bonus list below) but when it comes to finding new tech the recommendation was to head for the Brainfood Facebook group or any of your other preferred recruitment hangouts to crowd source ideas.

Bonus tools and recommendations

• Toby Extension - an extension manager for chrome to help manage multiple plugins. Extensity was also given the thumbs up here.
• WhenX – a google plugin that shows when you last viewed a page, this saves you going over the same page multiple times.
• Hired – a popular and established forum for sourcing candidates.
• ZapInfo – a scraping tool that allows you to pull people’s profiles and contact details.
• Pipl – a paid tool but excellent for finding contact info.

As always, if you missed the full live show – you can watch again here.  Remember to sign up for the next live show where we will be joined by 3 amazing guests talking Mental Health in a Lockdown.  Plus make sure you sign up for the Recruiting Brainfood Newsletter.

Show notes produced in association with Green Umbrella Marketing. 

Hung Lee is the curator of Recruiting Brainfood, the weekly newsletter for the recruiting industry. Trusted by 20,000+ recruiters & HR professionals worldwide. Make sure to sign up to award winning newsletter here and register for the next Brainfood Live on Friday 3rd Apr 1PM GMT where we are talking Mental Health in Lockdown with Garry Turner, Helen Amery and Zuzana Tarcalova.