Ruehie Jaiya Karri

Developers today require a lot more from their jobs than just decent compensation and bonuses. In 2025, flexibility and work-from-home options take on a lot more priority than ever. In times of The Great Resignation, companies need to rework their tech recruiting policies and practices to attract top talent.

Conventional recruitment strategies don’t hold much water in the current tech hiring landscape. Recruiters and hiring managers who recognize this and start looking at newer recruiting methods will come out on top this year — create a workforce that is engaged, loyal, and future-ready.

With our collection of tech recruiting resources, change the way you build your tech teams for the better.

The smart recruiter does not wait for a talented employee to resign to jump into action. They would have engaged and started a dialogue with the developer community long before any job role opens up.

If developers recognize your brand they are quick to respond to you and your company’s updates. This way you have a warmed-up, talented developer pool at your fingertips.

What are the best ways for engaging and hiring tech talent?

In our recent survey of recruiters, we asked them to tell us their top methods of pre-hiring engagement. Here’s what they said:

• Hackathons (32.1%)
• Coding contests (27.4%)
• Workshops (22.3%)
• Webinars (16.2%)

The power of hackathons for tapping into the power of the developer community is something HackerEarth has been harnessing for eight years now.

• What are the things you need to know going into a hackathon?

Read our Hackathon Survival Guide

• What were the lessons we learned from running over 200 hackathons?

5 lessons we want to share with you

Sourcing for a freshly opened job role is a tough ask. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find great candidates, the deadlines to close a job role are unrealistic, and your talent pool is saturated. And this is where we got you covered!

• How to write job postings that actually work where applications pour in by the thousands?

Download your copy today!

• To write even better job postings and understand what you are looking for, design candidate personas. There is also a free template attached.

Guide to creating candidate personas

• How do you make sure that your job postings are not gender-biased?

Write gender-fluid job descriptions

• Hiring tech talent from social media is a skill in itself. Tailor your recruitment strategies to each platform with this cheat sheet.

Get the social recruiting cheat sheet

Why do traditional recruitment strategies fail, especially when assessing candidates?

• In most campus hiring scenarios, developers are expected to solve coding problems with pen and paper. This is not how the real world works, and is akin to asking somebody to bake a cake without an oven — only leads to subpar performance. Showcasing their coding skills is the one thing developers need to be able to do and that can’t happen on a word processor tool.
• If we put aside issues with manual testing methods, there’s the bigger problem of proctoring. With recruiters being worked to the bone during hiring season, human error is inevitable. Robust proctoring measures are the only way to ensure your candidates are not using unfair means to ace the test.

Given that coding assessments play a huge role in screening potential candidates, you ought to employ recruitment strategies that are the most intelligent, objective, and skill-based.

How can you take your recruitment strategies to the next level?

At HackerEarth, our motto has always been to match developers with the right opportunities. We designed our Assessment platform to make it easier for recruiters to create role-based tests.

Let me show you 4 simple ways to create tests on our platform.

Create coding assessments on HackerEarth

It also comes with a built-in proctoring feature, making it easy for both developers and interviewers.

Explore our built-in proctoring features

The last step in any tech recruiting process is the ‘Interview’. It is probably the most hated step, with developers over the years complaining about clunky and long-drawn-out interviews.

Why are coding interviews broken?

While this is not an exhaustive list, here are the most common reasons:

• The interview looks nothing like the job. Developers are asked questions that do not showcase the technical skills required for the job. Solving questions using binary trees cannot be the most efficient way to test a developer’s coding knowledge.
• Coding interviews are extremely hard, which has made developers wonder who they are designed for. Also, they happen to be conducted in unrealistic environments where developers have no access to code editors or IDEs.
• Recruiters ghost candidates during the long interview process. They are left in the dark with no feedback, no idea what comes next, and no inkling of how they performed.

Can we fix them? Yes, it’s not too late!

First things first. What to look for when hiring a software developer? Will simply evaluating technical skills suffice? The answer is no.

If you want to hire the crème de la crème of the developer talent out there, you have to look for a well-rounded candidate.

#1 After speaking with several hiring managers, we’ve come up with a list of questions that showcase a developer’s technical skills.

Technical interview questions list

#2 Soft skills are like the cherry on top. They set the best of the candidates apart from the rest.

Behavioral interview questions list

#3 Our product whizkids have added new features to our intelligent remote interviewing tool, FaceCode to make the remote interview experience even better.

New updates for FaceCode

#4 Candidate experience in a tech interview is underrated. It is not given the attention it deserves, which leads to driving away talented candidates. Design a delightful candidate experience with FaceCode.

Get your copy of the ebook today!

What do the developer hiring trends look like in 2025?

It is always a good idea to stay abreast with the latest developer hiring trends that will inform the upcoming year.

• Our 2021 Developer Survey report is packed with responses from 25,431 developers across 171 countries. Let’s find out what makes a developer tick, shall we?

Get your copy of the report now!

• The brand new edition of our Developer Recruitment survey captured responses from 2500 HR and Engineering personnel. Let’s see how we can build great tech teams, going forward.

Download your copy of the report

Recruiting top tech talent the right way with our bonus recruiting resources

“How to recruit top tech talent in 2025?” is the main priority of recruiters across the globe. Coupled with everything we spoke about till now, here are some additional resources from HackerEarth’s archives that will set you up for success!

• What does the developer hiring process include? Read more in this playbook on Better Tech Hiring.
• Recruitment strategies in 2025 need to be highly data-driven. This is where a recruitment dashboard comes in handy. There’s a free template attached too.
• Here is a 6-step guide to creating the most detailed and optimized recruiting budget sheet in 2025. Also, attached is a sample sheet for your reference.
• Diversity and inclusion matter in 2025. With this handbook, ensure you stay on top of your D&I strategies.
• What would be the best platform for hiring developers? What tools would you require for each stage of the tech recruiting process? Here is a comprehensive list of everything you’ll need.

Blindly sinking resources into hiring drives with recruiters scouring the Internet for hours looking for suitable job profiles will not cut it anymore. An alarming insight from our brand new report, 2021 State Of Developer Recruitment, shows that 37% of recruiters agree sourcing is a big challenge, post-pandemic.

Most of us barely scratch the surface when it comes to the Google search engine. Enter a keyword or a key phrase and hit search. But here’s the thing – Google search holds such power to offer highly customized results should you want it. And that’s exactly where Boolean search strings step in!

For a recruiter, Boolean search strings are a godsend. They can make your life painless, and your search exponentially more effective.

What is Boolean search?

Boolean search helps you define your search specifically to what you are looking for. Words or phrases such as AND, OR, NOT can be used to limit, broaden and determine the search results — utilize a search engine to its fullest potential.

Why is Boolean searching important for recruiting

Boolean searching isn’t just a fancy tech term; it’s the heart of modern recruitment. In an age where data is vast and candidates numerous, the power to narrow down searches with precision is crucial. Here’s why:

Precision targeting: Ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of profiles on LinkedIn or resumes in your database? Boolean search cuts through the noise, targeting specifics like skills, experience, and location.

Time efficiency: Recruiters juggle multiple roles – interviewing, networking, and candidate management. Boolean search speeds up the candidate-finding process, freeing up time for other essential tasks.

Diverse candidate pool: By using the NOT operator, recruiters can avoid repetitive profiles and expand their search, ensuring a diverse mix of potential candidates.

Competitive edge: In the race to find top talent, being quicker and more precise gives recruiters a significant advantage. Boolean search ensures you find the right candidates before the competition does.

Cost-effective: Every hour spent searching is an hour paid for. By streamlining the search process, Boolean logic can lead to significant cost savings.

Adaptable to different platforms: Whether you’re scouting on job portals, LinkedIn, or even Google, Boolean search strings remain applicable and effective.

Boolean search operators to the rescue

Take the most simple search query. Type out a keyword and hit enter. Now add a few additional operators and symbols to the mix and bingo! You have written your very first Boolean search string.

It is simple enough to do. You follow a recipe closely when you bake, and here you need to write the syntax correctly, for your search query to work.

OperatorWhat it doesBoolean Search ExamplesANDIncludes all keywords specified in the search

developer AND JavaOR or |Includes one or both keywords in the resultsEngineer OR developerEngineer | developerNOT or –Excludes unwanted terms from your search

-example“ ”Includes results containing the exact phrase specified“Machine Learning”“Who wants to be hired”()Groups multiple search keywords to set prioritiesDeveloper (android OR python)*Includes all variations of the keyword

recruit* = recruiter, recruiting, recruitment

#1 AND Operator

If you add AND operator between your keywords, the search results will show only results that include all of your keywords.

#2 OR Operator

This operator will show results that include either of the two keywords or both of them simultaneously.

#3 NOT Operator

The NOT operator excludes unwanted terms from your search. Instead of NOT, you can also use the minus symbol (-) followed by your unwanted term without leaving a space (e.g. ‘NOT sample’ or ‘-sample.’)

#4 Parenthesis ()

Brackets are used to wrap multiple keywords in OR search. This defines the priorities of each segment of the search string. This will come in handy, as most candidate searches are not straightforward and combine various keywords.

#5 Quotation Marks (“ ”)

Quotation marks are used to search for the exact phrase specified. For example, leaving a blank space between ‘product’ and ‘manager’ will provide irrelevant results that contain both of the words ‘product’ and ‘manager,’ but not necessarily together.

#6 Asterisk (*)

The wild card (*) is used to get more variations of the results for the keyword you’re searching for. For example, dev* will provide you with results for both developer and development.

A guide to advanced Boolean search strings

Hiring for rather niche positions or specific skill sets calls for using boolean strings that are slightly more advanced than the norm.

For instance, you need email addresses of candidates who are working in machine learning or data science, then the search string would be:

Syntax

site: linkedin.com/in (“@gmail.com” OR “@yahoo.com”) (“machine learning” OR “ML” OR “data scientist”)

Still, struggling to wrap your head around it? Take a pen and paper to note the following details:

• Job title of the position you’re hiring for, as well as any other variations that it could have
• Skills that the candidate needs to be proficient in, or any other industry-specific terms
• Platforms you want to run your search on
• Other details that you need like email address, resume, country, etc
• Swap out the text in the below generic search string for what you’ve written down on your list!

Generic Syntax

site: (platform URL) (“The job title you’re recruiting for” OR “enter another variant”) OR “skill 1” OR “other details”

Narrow down your search by using the country name, postal code, diversity preference, company, or natural language in your Boolean search strings, for better results.

Refine your Boolean search strings further

#1 Limit your search to a specific website with the site: search syntax. It is also called x-raying or an x-ray search. It is particularly useful for obtaining profiles with specific skill sets

Syntax

site:linkedin.com/in (“@gmail.com” OR “@yahoo.com”) (“machine learning” OR “ML”) (“she leads” | “she led”)

You can directly glean the contact information of potential candidates with this search query free of cost instead of using LinkedIn’s InMail service, which is expensive. In this example, “she leads” refers to the natural language we use in a conversation. This query will yield all email addresses containing Gmail or yahoo of women developers who work with machine learning, which are tied to their LinkedIn profile.

#2 Restrict your search to a specific file type with the filetype: search syntax. It could be a resume or a portfolio in a PDF, doc, txt, etc

Syntax

filetype:pdf resume (engineer OR “software developer”) Boston 2017..2020 -example -sample

This query captures the results of all resumes in a PDF format, from the location specified. The minus operator has been used to eliminate sample resumes from your search. You can also specify a date range; in this case, you don’t want resumes older than 2017 or later than 2020.

#3 Use intitle: search syntax to refine your search to websites with specific keywords in their title. Most candidates upload a resume to all job boards. That could be your keyword to scraping suitable resumes for your requirements

Syntax

intitle:resume (“senior developer” | “lead developer”) India 2018..2020 -sample -example

#4 Use inurl: search syntax to refine your search to websites with specific keywords in their URL

Syntax

inurl:(resume OR CV) python India 2018..2020 -sample -example

Using various combinations of Boolean search strings, it becomes a cakewalk for recruiters to source candidates for a particular job. And not just any candidate, but a candidate who exhibits all the necessary skills for that job. Isn’t that every recruiter’s dream?!

Know more about Boolean search strings for diversity sourcing in this video.

5 Boolean Search tips for recruiters

To take your search one step further, you need to think out of the box. Talented candidates are everywhere, if only you know where and how to look.

#1 Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way to get in touch with candidates who possess unique skill sets. Using the site: search syntax you can identify candidates and their interests depending on which podcast you find them. Tailor your pitch accordingly, and voila, you have an interested candidate in your talent pool.

Here’s an example of a query that searches for diverse podcasters.

Syntax

site: podcasts.google.com “@gmail.com” (lgbtq OR advocacy OR ally)

#2 Github

It is a popular developer community and a live bed for talented developers looking for work.

• Use Octohunt, a tool that allows you to find developers on Github, based on their location and coding skill sets.
• The resumes uploaded to this platform are in a different format from the usual PDFs, texts, and docs.

Syntax

site:github.com resume (kubernetes OR docker) “new york”

This search query will pull up all results of people in New York who have their resumes tied to their Github profile.

• Use this search query to pull up different results from the github.io domain when compared to the github.com domain.

Syntax

site:github.io resume (kubernetes OR docker) “new york”

#3 More online communities

Communities and groups will be thriving with developers of all levels. Gathering information about them helps you personalize your cold email with an appropriate proposal for each candidate.

• Meetup is an online community that is an amalgamation of various groups related to every walk of life. PhantomBuster is a tool that can scrape member information from groups you identify with your search query.

Syntax

site: meetup.com (developer | engineer) “women”

• Medium is another vast community where identifying candidates with niche skills pays off.

Syntax

site: medium.com (developer | “cybersecurity engineer”) “women”

• HackerNews has a conversation running where developers looking for work leave their contact information in the comments.

Syntax

site: news.ycombinator.com “who wants to be hired”

#4 Expand your search

Don’t restrict your search efforts to Linkedin. Social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit also respond well to Boolean search strings. Utilize hashtags, and keywords being used in popular communities on there and add them to your search strings.

Syntax

site:twitter.com (“follow me on Twitter”) (engineer OR developer) India

#5 Use tools

There are several image recognition tools like TinEye that help in conducting searches through images. Image sourcing is gaining popularity and can pull up candidate profiles from Github, LinkedIn, and so on.

Recommended read: A List Of Boolean Search Strings

FAQs on Boolean Search String

What are the basic Boolean search operators used in recruiting?

The fundamental operators are AND (to combine terms), OR (to search multiple terms), and NOT (to exclude terms). Additionally, symbols like asterisks (*) for wildcards and parentheses () to group terms are frequently used.

Can I use Boolean searching on all job boards?

Most modern job boards and recruiting platforms support Boolean searching. However, always check the platform’s guidelines or help section to understand the specific syntax they might use.

How can I improve my Boolean search skills?

Regular practice is key. Start with basic strings and as you get comfortable, incorporate more complex operators. Attending webinars, courses, or workshops can also help.

Are there tools to assist with Boolean searches?

Yes, many tools and plugins, especially for browsers, can help craft and test Boolean search strings. These can be invaluable for recruiters looking to enhance their searching capabilities.

Is there a risk of missing out on candidates using Boolean search?

If not used correctly, Boolean search can exclude potential candidates. It’s crucial to strike a balance, ensuring the search is neither too narrow nor too broad. Regularly revisiting and tweaking your search strings can mitigate this risk.

Bonus tip

Instead of spending too much time creating customized search queries, rely on tools like NativeCurrent that curate Boolean string suggestions based on your requirements. Use these pre-built search strings on the Google search engine. Saves you a lot of time and effort!

This article has been updated on April 7th, 2023.

The pandemic-led era opened an entirely different world to us: tech companies transitioned to working on-site to working remotely.

With this came the shift in hiring processes too. While it’s been exciting for candidates to get hired virtually, it’s an ongoing battle for tech companies to create an engaging, remote-first candidate experience.

Companies like Docusign and Twilio have created an interactive virtual candidate experience for their candidates and so can you.

Wondering how? Well, this article will breakdown the 5 steps you need to take to create an interactive virtual candidate experience.

Keep reading.

What is candidate experience?

Candidate experience refers to how candidates feel about your company once they’ve been through the wringer, in terms of your hiring process. And these candidate ‘feelings’, whether good, bad or ugly, influence candidates in their decision to apply to your company or accept your job offer.

A good candidate experience will encourage candidates to think about working for your company after they see how you treat them. A better candidate experience might make them want to spread goodwill about your company, helping build up your brand.

Source

On the other hand, a bad candidate experiencewill make candidates lose respect for you, both as an employer and as abrand.

Why is a positive candidate experience important?

Probably, there shouldn’t be the ‘why’ for developing a positive candidate experience. Like your company wants to serve your customers better for them to turn into repeat buyers, you need to develop a positive candidate experience for the following reasons:

Attract and recruit better talent

A lengthy and complicated recruitment process results in higher attrition, with candidates dropping off midway due to poor experience. A strong candidate experience strategy identifies such gaps and helps you tweak the process to ensure more talented candidates stick it out till the end. Now you have a bigger and better talent pool to choose from.

Recommended Read: Ultimate Playbook for Better Tech Hiring

Improves your company’s bottom line

A stronger candidate experience is a direct reflection of how streamlined your hiring is. Investing in creating a positive candidate experience adds a lot more to the bottom line than all the other resources that you invest in your hiring process.

Enhances your employer brand

Your employer branding, especially in 2021, is directly related to candidate experience. Bad reviews on social media and Glassdoor will adversely affect hiring new talent, with newer candidates becoming discouraged from applying for a position at your company. If you want to hire the best candidates in the market, you have to take special care of them at every step in the hiring process.

The impact of bad candidate experience

63% of job seekers will likely reject a job offer because of a bad candidate experience, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.Be it through social media, word of mouth, or employer review sites, any negative connotations associated with your organization will spread like wildfire and it can be hard to discourage or control.

You check multiple reviews of a restaurant before ordering food from that place. How many reviews would a candidate go through before deciding not to work with your company?

One review of a negative experience is enough to create a far-reaching ripple effect; top talent will be deterred from applying for your company, candidates will drop off midway through the application process, or getting candidates to say yes to your offer letter becomes harder than it should be. This directly leads to a decline in profitability.

Recommended read: 5 Reasons For Bad Candidate Experience In Tech Interviews

5 steps to improve candidate interview experience

Good candidate experience is a package. It starts right from the time a candidate applies to your organization up until the candidate accepts your offer letter. How to improve candidate experience in recruitment?

Here are 5 steps you can take to get your candidate experience from good to great in recruitment.

Step #1—Understand the candidate journey better

A candidate’s journey starts right from the point they start looking for a job. But how are they going to land to your advertised role, apply for it, and most of all—how are you going to keep them engaged through the entire cycle?

You see? Candidate journey is a multi-step process which includes:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Interest
• Application
• Selection
• Hire
• Onboarding

If we break down these steps into a basic cycle, here’s what it looks like:

Alex, a Front-end Developer is looking for a new role. He gets to know about HackerEarth hiring for the Front-end Developer role from one of his colleagues; scrolls through the company’s website, their social media, and their Glassdoor reviews.

He is interested in working with the company. So, he fills out the job application.

This is the pre-selection phase. Now, the role of the organization comes into play to make the candidate’s experience positive and nurturing.

The company sends the email to Alex about his selection and what the next selection steps would look like. He has to complete an assessment—the first qualification step in his selection criteria.

Once Alex submits his assessment, the recruiter emails him about the next steps that will take place in both the scenarios—whether he gets selected or not.

Case 1: Alex gets selected

Alex will receive an email invite to join the Facecode’s call where the HRs will ask him their questions, and give live feedback on the code he submitted in his assessment.

Case 2: Alex does not get selected

If Alex fails to pass the assessment, he will receive the email from recruiter about his application not moving forward.

In both the cases, Alex knows he’ll not be left hanging in the middle of the process—and that’s a relief!

Step #2—Master the basic remote interview etiquette

#1 Use online skill assessment tools as the first step of your remote interview process to screen candidates from a high volume of applicants. This cuts down the actual number who progress to the video interview stage, allowing you to spend more time on creating a better candidate experience.

#2 Be accessible to your candidate. With everything operating remotely they will be bound to have plenty of questions, and they need to feel connected to you. Keep them engaged with personalized communication like sending them emails with pointers on what equipment they will need for the interview, and how to create a distraction-free environment.

#3 Send candidates useful resources to help prepare for their interview. Give them references of questions they might be asked, and other similar tips.

Recommended read: Essential Questions To Ask When Recruiting Developers

Step #3—Showcase company culture

A successful recruitment process builds excitement about working for your company. It highlights company culture, values, mission and gives a glimpse into a candidate’s future work environment.

While it’s often easier to show them your company’s culture in person, it’s limited in the remote setup. Here’s what you can do instead:

• Show them the fun team building activities your company does to keep the entire team bonded.
• Show them instances of how the managers interact and take care of their team members.
• Set up informal video calls with the rest of the team for the candidate to get a sense of who they’ll be working with.

Step #4—Don’t leave candidates hanging

In a remote setting, regular communication is key. Set expectations on:

• How and when you will communicate?
• What the interview process will be?
• How long it will take?

Describe each stage of the remote interview along with what tools you will be using. Proactively communicating changes to your hiring process and any hiring delays will help avoid confusion and improve the candidate experience.

Source

Lack of feedback post interview is a major peeve of candidates as stated by 40% of the respondents of HackerEarth’s Developer Survey 2021. Send out timely feedback after each phase of the process.

And if the candidate was not selected for the role, that needs to be communicated too. Ghosting candidates as a form of rejection is an absolute NO. Tell them what they did well and give actionable tips on how to do better the next time. Candidates will appreciate that you took the time out to inform them personally.

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Recommended read: How You Can Leverage Candidate Experience To Attract Top Talent

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Step #5—Use remote interviewing tools

When you integrate intelligent remote interviewing tools into your hiring process, it’s easy for hiring managers in all departments and locations to replicate the same experience for each candidate, ensuring consistency.For example, use collaborative coding tools for your developer candidates like FaceCode to see the candidate's code in-action, give them live updates, send automated summaries and recordings.

Reinvent your remote candidate experience

Candidates and recruiters alike are dealing with unprecedented circumstances and anxieties that were unimaginable just over a year ago. A rethink in your remote hiring process to provide candidates a favorable experience is necessary at this point. Doing so, you showcase them the value of empathy.

There's no time like the present to fight the good fight! Invest in candidate-first practices to create a positive candidate experience that is rivaled by none and most importantly, stay empathetic.