Over the next few years, companies will spend millions of dollars to attract the top emerging tech talent. The problem is simple, the demand for niche talent (ML engineers, data scientists, IoT consultants, salesforce consultants, blockchain, etc.) far outweighs the supply, making it a candidate-driven market.

To put this into perspective, the average time-to-hire for a niche role is around 56 days which is twice when compared to generic roles like HR and professional services. While one in every three developers is open for new job roles (Stack Overflow Survey), they are being wooed by 2-3 employers at the same time. In fact, some of these candidates receive so many openings in their inbox that they have to unsubscribe the posts from potential employers.

The Way Forward
Recruitment teams have no option but to look for innovative strategies to curate fresh talent pools. Experienced recruiters, engagement tools, and data-driven recruiting will all come to the fore. In this article, we’ll tell you about the 4 innovative strategies that you can use to hire top emerging tech talent in 2020.

1) Invest in Technical Recruiters

Recruiters need to be adept with all the tech forums where candidates hang out. Some of the important tech forums where you can get quality talent include Stack Overflow, Hackr.io, GitHub, TechSpot, TechCrunch, Ubuntu, and more. It’s important to prepare a pipeline of qualified candidates from these forums. Not only this, recruiters should also be given preliminary workshops on the technology they are hiring for. For instance, someone hiring Salesforce Developers should know the difference between Lightning and Fuel. Someone recruiting data scientists should know the difference between R, SAS, and Python.

Other important factor to take care of is upskilling of recruiters which includes regular workshops, trainings, and seminars. Recruiters should be given trainings on passive recruitment strategies as well as innovative sourcing techniques. They should be encouraged to take certifications and provided with SME assistance for the same. Some of the certifications that recruiters should be encouraged to take include:

• AIRS Certifications
• LinkedIn Recruiter Certifications
• Social Talent Certification
• SHRM Certification
• HRCI Certification
• Passive Recruitment
• Sourcing Strategies

2) Data-driven Retargeting
Many times candidates come on your website or careers page but don’t interact, they simply go through the job openings and leave. Companies should use retargeting to segment visitors based on the specific pages they visit on your website. Pixels should be setup on your website which would help you create retargeting audiences. Some of the audiences that you can build include:

• Candidates who visit your careers page
• Candidates who were applying online for a role but left midway
• Candidates who visited your Contact Us page

This information can then be used to create personalized retargeting campaigns on Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Once firms garner interesting leads, they can engage these candidates with employer branding content that differentiates your firm from the competitors. These are some of the campaigns that you can run:

• LinkedIn Retargeting (Sponsored Content, Lead Gen Forms)
• Email Retargeting or Contact Targeting (LinkedIn, Google, etc.)
• Display Ads on Google
• Facebook Retargeting Campaign (Engagement, Lead Generation)
• Retargeting on CDN’s like Outbrain and Taboola

3) Use Non-traditional Mediums

Companies should also use non-traditional mediums to hire the best emerging tech talent. Some of the mediums they can use are:

• Interactive coding contests or puzzles on LinkedIn
• Using the relevant career and job hashtags on Twitter
• Podcast sites for job seekers
• Job fairs and career seminars
• Flyer distribution (local meet-ups and diversity associations)
• Personalized video posts on YouTube etc.

4) Get Leads from AI Chatbots
Candidate engagement and personalization go a long way in attracting the right emerging tech talent. Companies can use chatbots like Mya to automate candidate interactions. Mya not only imparts personalized touch to your communication but it also records candidate data which helps you create a passive pipeline. Apart from increasing recruiter productivity and conversion rates, Mya also leads to higher candidate engagement. Since Mya can also pre-screen qualified candidates, it also reduces the time-to-hire metric. Some of the other candidate engagement tools that you can use include SenseHQ, Talent Bin, etc.

To get the best results, firms should integrate their recruitment, data, and digital marketing efforts. Each department can share insights with the other which can help achieve better results. Also, every stakeholder involved should be up-to-date with the latest trends in recruitment ensuring perfect collaboration.