As challenging and stressful as the hiring process may be from the applicants’ side, it’s just as difficult from the recruiting side. The technical recruiting process has seen its fair share of bias and the past few years have seen a shift away from that. Still, there are common myths about it that remain.
Let’s bust 6 myths about the technical recruiting process!
- Candidates prefer outbound recruiting than inbound.
The first common myth people acknowledge is thinking candidates would prefer to be approached instead of enticed to apply for positions themselves. A mistake typically made in this area is to do resume reviews. However, those are very biased and, if removed, would significantly improve the quality of candidates from the get-go. Additionally, implementing skill assessments near the beginning of the hiring process could save time for both sides.
- LinkedIn is the number one platform for recruiting.
When it first became popular, this was very much the case. LinkedIn was once the best place to go to recruit top-tier talent. Unfortunately, since everyone has jumped on that bandwagon, the platform became overused and over-filtered. Most recruiters use the same filters as everyone else. This significantly decreases the number of candidates, but it also decreases the quality. Moving away from LinkedIn in favor of lesser-known platforms is a better strategy to find candidates who aren’t being approached by every desperate recruiter.
- Candidates must have a degree.
Lately, recruiters have acknowledged that simply obtaining a degree doesn’t mean candidates are qualified. This once was the case, where degrees symbolized thorough knowledge and some first-hand experiences, but things have changed. Most developers earn their skills by teaching themselves then practicing on their own or finding clients they can add to their portfolios. Even major companies have adopted looser requirements because of this.
- Highly-populated cities have the best talent.
While the largest cities might house big corporations, tech talent tends to live elsewhere. Companies have been able to utilize remote work environments to bring in candidates from all over the world and who often live in third-world countries or areas with lower standards of living.
- Career fairs attract the best fresh talent.
New graduates who used to attend career fairs prior to the COVID-19 pandemic appreciated the career fairs because they could connect with recruiters. However, similar to Myth #3, the best talent were shown not to have degrees. Additionally, those new graduates often had the same basic resumes with academic achievements, extracurriculars, and so on but no practical experience.
- Having to take coding assessments will deter candidates from applying.
Online coding assessments are extremely useful, and cost- and time-effective for recruiters. On the other hand, they predicted that candidates wouldn’t want to apply if they had to take them. There is a correction to make with that—candidates don’t want to take poorly-crafted assessments. From asking non-relevant questions to being forced to take a long test, the structure of the assessments themselves was often what candidates disliked. Having relevant questions on an assessment that doesn’t take longer than, for example, an hour is a much better alternative for both sides.
