Hiring Tools

On-campus recruiting has been decreasing in popularity over the years. Running up high travel costs and being time-intensive is less than ideal in today’s fast-paced tech industry. The pandemic proved to be the nail in the coffin for this old-school way of university recruitment.

Universities and other educational institutions across the world canceled in-person career fairs and on-campus recruitment drives. Companies needed to think on their feet to organize their summer internships as well as figure out ways to fill their candidate pipeline. This led to a forced transition to virtual campus recruiting—which turned out to be a good thing so far!

2022 holds the promise of a new start for the modern recruiter. Virtual campus recruiting doesn’t demand a huge budget, eliminates geographical constraints which widen your talent pool, and provides an improved candidate experience to today’s digital-savvy generation—it is a win-win all around.

Let’s talk about virtual campus recruiting strategy, making the shift to a remote hiring model, and speaking the language of Gen Z. The latter of which make up a majority of your target audience in this article.

Creating a virtual campus recruiting strategy: The steps

Traditional campus recruiting only happens once a year. Now that you do not have to wait until universities reopen to initiate your hiring discussions, virtual campus recruiting can be an ongoing strategy: you can nurture your potential candidates throughout the school year.

As the first company to reach out, you’ll have the advantage of students’ full attention. Here’s what you can do to build an effective virtual campus recruiting strategy:

1. Build a robust hiring plan

Before going all-out with your virtual recruiting ideas and strategies, you need to assess the skill gap within your company—then go on to hiring for those particular roles. List down your hiring needs by taking inputs from team leaders of various departments.

Ask them questions like:

• What departments need new talent?
• What skills are the current roles lacking?
• What level of expertise do you need from your candidates?
• How do you plan to build/strengthen your employer brand among student groups?

Based on the answers, your recruiting budget, and ROI targets, chalk out your virtual campus recruiting strategy to meet all your goals.

Related read: The Biggest Challenges Faced By Recruiters In University Hiring

2. Add more universities to your hiring pool

Now that you have a solid plan in place, the next step is to have a clearly defined set of requirements—to help decide on the universities to target.

The identified list of schools could be based on the job openings, budgets, and diversity policies. Gen Z expects workplaces to be inclusive and as they make up a majority of the targeted workforce of tomorrow, it’s best if your company gets started on its D&I journey soon—not that you need a reason to be naturally inclusive and empathetic.

The more schools, and the more types of schools you can include in your campus recruitment efforts, the more vast and diverse your pipeline will be. Virtual campus recruiting makes it easy to expand your horizons. Take location out of the picture as you don’t have to physically go to these schools, and then build out talent profiles for specific roles that don’t conform to the usual handful of schools. There’s top talent in all of these places.

Related read: 5 Advantages Of University Recruitment

3. Leverage social media to source candidates

Today’s college grads get everything done on their phones. They rely heavily on digital means to get them through the day. Your recruiting strategy for students being virtual is a blessing in disguise! This is how you stand out from the crowd—by leveraging social media for your recruiting efforts.

Splash your job postings on relevant social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram in a creative way that grabs eyeballs. Talk about your brand, what a day at work looks like, what current employees think about your company, showcase your culture, share snappy/fun stories—humanize your company by being authentic.

If you need to build connections with universities that you’re freshly collaborating with but do not have the budget, here’s what you can do. Use Google to search for Dean’s Lists, engineering honors programs, and so on. Search for student awards, competition wins, and membership lists for student organizations. You can get all the relevant student information if you know your way around Boolean search—if you don’t, this article will help you immensely!

Related read: Boost your social recruiting efforts with this CHEAT SHEET.

4. Show interest in students throughout their time at university

Since your entire campus recruitment is going to be remote, there’s no time like the present to connect with students and keep in touch throughout the year. Supporting a continuous exchange of ideas, opportunities, and information all through their time at the university helps to keep your brand at the forefront when it’s time to begin the actual hiring process.

Here are some innovative college recruiting strategies to nurture students:

Share compelling content about the day-to-day goings on at the workplace to keep your company top of mind. Invite students to read blog posts by, and watch videos of, your employees. Allow them to check you out on social media (which you should’ve been updating regularly). To strengthen your brand, share information about the company via webinars or seminars – the nature of work, new patents, cutting-edge research, and career paths. Include QR codes on event materials or flyers to guide students directly to these resources

Spruce up your careers site and encourage students to sign up for your talent community. Shine the spotlight on your company’s work culture, goals, benefits, and rewards. The visual content could include images, employee videos, or graphics to create a story.

Use customized recruitment campaigns that can answer questions like, What steps are being taken for the mental well-being of employees? What do your employees have to say about the culture—both pre-COVID and now? Segment and target talent by major, university, geography, diversity, and more for better results.

Run workshops and mentorships to help soon-to-be graduates, not just for your targeted students, but for all of them. This helps you keep your finger on the pulse and learn what students are interested in while increasing visibility and trust in your brand.

Offer internship opportunities so students can experience for themselves what it would be like working for your company. Bake in project support and incubation programs as part of their learning process.

Related read: Are Remote Internships A New Fad Or Are They Here To Stay?

5. Diversify your engagement strategy

Conducting one webinar to drive engagement and dusting your hands off would’ve worked in a traditional setting but not anymore. It’s important to plan and host several virtual events throughout the year if you want to keep the students engaged. These are a few virtual recruiting event ideas that are a good place to start:

Hackathons are a great way to connect with students and build relationships with them. They drive engagement and attract top talent. You, as recruiters, can even assess potential candidates’ culture fit as they work with your team during a hackathon.

With tools like HackerEarth, you can not only find qualified developers with hiring challenges but can also engage our 6.5 million strong developer community by hosting hackathons.

Virtual career fairs let you connect with students, collate information, host interviews, and assessments—much like on-campus career fairs. You can design your virtual fairs so they have employer booths that attendees can visit, auditoriums for webinars, and chat rooms where they can network with recruiters, hiring managers, and other company reps to find out about open jobs and the benefits of working for your company

Virtual information sessions like AMAs (Ask Me Anything) with your company’s leadership team, QnAs through chat, employee panels to promote various aspects of your company, and the tried and tested webinars, all serve to pique and hold the interest of your potential candidates, i.e. students. Students look forward to personal interaction with employers and have their doubts cleared, so build in time and capability to field questions.

Related read: Benefits Of Creating A Campus Hiring Strategy In India

6. Identify the most efficient tools to assess future candidates

Skills assessment is the first step to screening potential candidates in online campus recruitment. To handle large volumes of student applications, you need to arm yourself with a good coding assessment tool—that helps you identify the students’ potential by conducting assessments for diverse roles as well as objectively evaluating students based on their skills.

This is where we, at HackerEarth step in! Our coding assessment platform generates a leaderboard after every assessment, allowing recruiters and hiring managers to screen the very best developers with ease. You can upload a job description and create a coding assessment from a library of 13,000+ questions across 80+ skills, within minutes.

Coding interviews mark the culmination of your online campus recruitment. An efficient coding interview tool would have an in-built code editor, video chat, offers pair programming, and automates interview summaries. Pair programming interviews can help employers expedite technical skills assessment by assessing candidates based on real-time programming skills.

Our intelligent online coding interview platform, FaceCode comes with a state-of-the-art collaborative code editor, a built-in question library, HD video chat, a diagram board and so much more. It is completely developer-friendly. Click here to experience it first hand.

Related read: 21 Tech Recruiting Tools To Scale Your Hiring

7. Measure your goals to see if your efforts are paying off

You need to dive deep into analytics from your virtual campus recruiting strategy to figure out what is working and what isn’t. Other than the basic number of attendees metric, there are other factors to take into account before declaring your recruitment drive a success. Here are some things to measure:

• Event attendance numbers
• Students who RSVP’d but didn’t attend
• Do these students engage after the event by responding to follow-up messages and submitting applications?
• Open, click-through, and interested response rates to your emails
• The number of resumes collected and live chat interactions initiated
• The number of qualified candidates per event and college
• The number of hires you made on each campus
• What interview to offer ratio do you get
• How many offers to acceptances do you get
• Retention rates of new hires

How can creating an online campus recruitment strategy help your organization?

• Virtual campus recruiting allows organizations to access a wide range of talent from various geographical locations and backgrounds, fostering a more diverse workforce.
• Online recruitment reduces travel and accommodation costs associated with traditional campus hiring, making it a more cost-effective strategy.
• With the increasing prevalence of remote working, especially in tech and digital sectors, virtual recruitment aligns well with the current work trends and expectations of new graduates.
• Digital tools and platforms used in online recruitment enable more efficient screening and selection processes, allowing for quicker and more effective candidate assessment.

Moreover, engaging with students through virtual platforms can enhance an organization’s brand as a forward-thinking and technologically adept employer.

Now that you have a strategy in place, it’s time to get the internal team on board. Here’s how:

• Leverage technology: Invest in reliable virtual recruitment platforms and tools for seamless interaction, interviews, assessments, and presentations.
• Develop engaging tech-first content: Create compelling and informative content about your organization, including virtual tours, employee testimonials, and interactive Q&A sessions.
• Train recruiters and representatives: Ensure your team is comfortable with the technology and trained in online communication etiquette and engagement strategies.
• Build relationships with top universities: Partner with universities and career centers to integrate into their virtual career fairs and recruitment programs.
• Customize your approach: Tailor your recruitment strategy to each campus, considering the specific talent pool and academic specializations available.

While you align your internal tech hiring team with this new process, do not forget to take stock of the challenges and plan ahead for them. Some of the problems tech recruiters face commonly face when hiring online include:

• Connectivity problems or software glitches which can disrupt virtual interviews and presentations, impacting the recruitment experience.
• Creating a personal connection and engaging candidates effectively in a
• Assessing cultural fit through virtual means compared to face-to-face interactions.
• Competition for mind space. This where employer branding can improve your chances of attracting the best candidates.
• Adapting traditional recruitment materials for digital platforms.

Shake up your virtual campus recruiting strategy!

Recruitment strategies for universities do not have to be only career fairs and company presentations. You can play around and add a little spice to your virtual campus recruiting strategy as seen in this article—Gen Z appreciates out-of-the-box efforts to catch their attention.

Be it organizing hackathons to garner engagement, throwing out dress codes to make interviews seem less intimidating, or curating custom campus recruitment strategies, keep experimenting until you find something that works for you. We hope the virtual campus recruiting tips in this article will help you step up your campus recruitment game.

Campus recruiting takes time but it’s worth the wait, don’t you think?

Dogfooding. Hmm, maybe something my pet Labrador would love to chat about.
Thus thought I, when this topic first landed on my desk. Oh, how wrong I was!

The term ‘dogfooding’ has been in a coding lexicon since the late 1980s. It perhaps has its origin in the Alpo dog food commercials headed by actor Lorne Green. The phrase ‘eating your own dog food’ shows that one was proud enough of the products they built to use it on their own.

In the IT world, the use of the word ‘dogfooding’ can be traced back to Microsoft’s Paul Maritz who, in 1988, challenged the company’s employees to use the products they built. The idea behind it was very simple – if Microsoft’s own were not confident enough to use the software they spent hours making, why would someone else pay for it?

So, what really is dogfooding?

More importantly, how is dogfooding different than the normal QA tests that every product has to go through? Let’s clarify!

While both alpha and beta testing phases are important in software development, dogfooding is slightly different than both. While both processes – dogfooding and testing – involve using the software to see how it holds up in different use cases, the focus during alpha and beta testing is on finding code bugs and errors. Dogfooding, too, can help dig up errors in the product; however, the main focus here is to interact with the software as a user and find how the developers can improve upon the base infrastructure.

Let’s take an example here.

Say you were testing out an email client. During the QA phase you would look at how the client performs when handling bulk emails; if the spam filter is working well; if image-heavy newsletters are rendering well. These are known use cases that every quality check would include.

During the dogfooding phase, you spend days, weeks, months using the product. You are not actively looking for bugs, but trying to sense if the product you built is easier to use versus other email clients you have used in the past. Is the UI/UX easy to navigate? Are the features useful? Most importantly, how much do you itch to go back to your previous email sender? If you itch for a change, most probably your prospective users will, too.

How do you integrate dogfooding in your testing strategy?

Dogfooding can be used as a complementary and cost-effective testing strategy that works in tandem with your established alpha and beta testing process. Dogfooding can in fact, be used synonymously with internal beta testing.

Letting the internal team test out a new product before the end users is beneficial for two reasons:

• External users who come across major difficulties or bugs in your product will most likely stop using it. This effect is easily counteracted by dogfooding.
• Second, you will not only spare the customer support team a lot of heartache, but also help them prepare better for user queries.

What makes dogfooding a great beta testing strategy?

Google, that much-loved tech giant loves dogfooding. Here’s what they say about using dogfooding and beta testing on the Google Testing Blog: “We have a large ecosystem of development / office tools and use them for nearly everything we do. Because we use them on a daily basis, we can dogfood releases company-wide before launching to the public.”

When a name like Google stands behind a process, you know it has some merit. Here are some of the benefits of dogfooding during standard testing:

1. Allows you to scale quality testing environments with real-time feedback: Dogfooding helps developers flag the flaws in their original design. We know that it is very hard to exhaust a product in terms of testing – it takes months; and the whole process repeats itself when you add new features. When developers ‘eat their own dog food’, it helps widen the QA pool and look for nuances no one would have thought of.

2. No risk of losing customers: A lot of the time, businesses are under tremendous pressure to release a product. While timelines need to be adhered to, they cannot come at the cost of quality. By turning your company employees into users, you ensure that quality is maintained and no customer is irked or lost in the process.

3. Cuts down on development and support costs: What’s easier – shipping a half-baked product and then hiring a huge support staff to field customer calls and queries, or spending time and effort testing the product and then asking customers to use it? By using dogfooding as a beta testing standard, you can cut down on all these extra overheads.

4. Creates a collaborative environment and breaks down departmental silos: When every employee in the org uses their products, they have a better understanding of how things work. It will help the product team close the distance between them and the end users, and prepare your CSM team to handle incoming requests.

While these are some good reasons to use dogfooding, there may be instances in which it may not be a good fit for your company. A couple of them come to mind:

Scenario 1: When you have created a specialized software

If you create a software for a very niche target audience, then it may not be a good idea to have your team use it and send feedback. Let’s say you have a product aimed at doctors, then you cannot have someone who has no knowledge of medicine using the product and testing it.

Scenario 2: When your product is still in an immature stage

Dogfooding should be done only when the product enters a certain stage of development. If you have just created an MVP, asking your entire team to test it may not be a good idea. While you may receive a ton of feedback, it might end up creating obstacles in product development instead of speeding things up.

How to roll out a dogfooding program?

The first step is to create a product that users are going to love. In the world of SaaS, they say that you should create products that “solve your own problem”. Once you have this figured out, the rest is a 4-step process that I will list out below:

1. Secure the right buy-ins: Dogfooding is an org-wide exercise and it is important that everyone knows why it is necessary, and what are the expectations from them. Folks in non-technical functions like marketing or sales may not always know how to spot or report an error. A small crash course will help tons! Moreover, it will prevent your teammates feeling like they have been forced to do QA on behalf of the product/engineering team, and give up the right to use products and platforms they actually would on a daily basis.

2. Segment the testers: Different user segments would have different requirements from the same product. It is a good idea to segment your colleagues into buckets so you know what kind of requests are coming from the CXO-level users, and what are the main pain points of a mid-level manager. You can then choose to address these issues based on your internal priority list.

3. Set up a feedback mechanism: Going back to point #1, not every person in your company is a QA or an engineer, or even familiar with the process of reporting bugs, or raising a feature request. Create a feedback mechanism which is simple to use and help your co-workers familiarize themselves with it before you ask them to test the product.

4. Incentivize the process: Last but not the least, have fun with it! Gamification is a proven way to get people involved in serious tasks like hunting bugs 🙂 So, add incentives and giveaways for colleagues who report major issues, and whose feedback helps in improving the product.

5. Account for bias: At the end of the day, your colleagues and co-workers may have a bias towards the product because it’s their handiwork. Don’t forget to factor that in when you look at the feedback. In this case, your harshest critic is your best friend!

Eat the dog food, but don’t make it dinner!

I hope this piece has helped you understand the dos and don’ts of dogfooding during product development. Remember this though – dogfooding is not an alternative to alpha and beta testing, neither should it be the sole bulwark supporting your product development cycle.

Use it wisely and it can make a world of difference to your engineering teams. Now back to feeding the Labrador, I go!

If we recruiters dream, it would be about how easy tech recruitment could be—create a job vacancy post, watch the applications pour in, and then, pick the best out of them. Just like that.

And it’s back to reality, which is far removed from this mystical land of simple recruitment! The IT industry is known for its complicated and long-drawn-out hiring processes, with recruiters finding it hard to make the right hire. It’s only going to get worse as the industry is grappling with severe talent shortages.

What if we told we had some tricks up our sleeves? To help you hire faster. We dug deep into our own recruitment processes to figure out how to get the best out of them. A lot of companies need to take a second look at their existing recruiting strategies if they aim to hire top talent efficiently.

On that note, here are 7 recruitment process tips to add to your repertoire—to improve candidate experience, streamline your hiring efforts, and attract the very best candidates in the industry.

Tips to streamline technical recruitment

The sweet spot of tech recruiting is when you’ve found the perfect candidate for your job opening in the least amount of time—and under budget.

When done right, a streamlined recruitment process can:

• Slash cost-per-hire and time-to-hire to a large extent
• Improve the quality of your workforce
• Increase the overall productivity of your teams
• Enhance employee engagement and retention
• Increase diversity within your organization

7 recruitment process tips to help you make your hiring, leaner and meaner:

1. Get straight to the point with job descriptions

Job descriptions are what your applicants see before all else. It can accomplish so much if done right. Do you want a candidate’s first impression of your company to be a generic, lackluster job description? 60% of job seekers gave up on their applications due to unclear job descriptions, according to GoRemotely.

It’s time to bin these outdated job descriptions—create some that are concise, have realistic expectations, do away with buzzword lingo like “young”, “responsible”, etc that don’t mean much, and more importantly, are bias-free. An ideal job description keeps to a 250-word limit, is properly formatted, and doesn’t look like an unappealing wall of text.

We put together this free checklist to specifically help you curate job postings that are well-designed and will bring in good caliber candidates. Recruiters, make it count!

Also, read: 5-Step Guide To Gender-Fluid Tech Job Descriptions

2. Market your job postings on social media for a wider reach

In today’s age, traditional recruiting methods will no longer cut it. Sticking to the regular job portals might not yield the results you’re expecting. Much of the global talent, like the Gen Z, do not read newspapers anymore let alone search for job vacancies in them—they look to Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram to bring them up to speed. 49% of professionals use Linkedin network to scout for job opportunities, as seen in our annual Developer Survey.

The modern recruiter needs to think out of the box and use social media to market their job postings if they want to grab eyes for their job postings. Social media recruiting attracts a far more diverse pool of candidates, is relatively cost-effective, and works better to bridge the gap between recruiters and their candidates.

We have a free cheatsheet + bonus takeaway for you to help kickstart your social recruiting efforts the right way as well as tailor your strategy for popular social media channels. Get your copy here.

Also, read: The Ultimate Guide To Social Recruiting

BONUS: We teamed up with Joel Lalgee, Lead Recruiter at Hirewell to talk about all the questions you might have on social media recruiting. Watch to find out how Joel breaks down the essentials of content creation for social media, the trends to look out for, and the hacks and tricks behind creating a personal brand.

3. Decrease the number of hoops

A lengthy and complicated recruitment process results in higher attrition, with candidates dropping off midway due to poor experience. Studies show 63% of job seekers will likely reject a job offer because of a bad candidate experience and you don’t want that!

Go back to your interview process, and understand the complete journey of a candidate. This way you get to identify gaps/obstacles that may contribute to a bad candidate experience and accordingly, make changes to your process.

Also, read: 5 Steps To Create A Positive Remote Interview Candidate Experience

4. Use an applicant tracking system

ATS solutions alleviate HR folks’ workload and make their jobs more efficient. They save a lot of time too as they no longer have to manually screen thousands of applications. A study by GetApp shows that 86% of recruiters say using an ATS has increased the speed at which they hire candidates.

With tech recruitment on the rise, an ATS is a must-have asset in the HR department. It streamlines the recruitment process, screens candidates by skills and work experience, and acts as a central repository of data that the entire hiring team can access.

Also, read: Remote Work & Recruitment: An ATS Story

5. Screen better with assessment tools

Pre-employment screening assessments improve the quality of hire to a large extent. The technical screening round is designed to filter candidates who exhibit the skills they listed on their resumes. This is where recruiters get to confirm if the candidates are truly skilled. And, coding assessments happen to be an effective way to test the behavioral and technical skills of developers.

Screening tools like HackerEarth make the lives of recruiters easy! Objectively evaluate developers with a rich library of 13K+ questions across 80+ skills and shortlist candidates based purely on their performance with minimal technical know-how. Combine this with other technical skill testing methods like on-the-spot questions and you have a comprehensive approach to vetting a candidate’s technical ability.

We have seen the interview-to-hire ratio drastically improve in the companies that have decided to use a dedicated hiring tool like HackerEarth Assessments. For instance, Zalora, a fashion e-commerce brand based in South East Asia, has been able to shorten its recruitment cycle by 50% by our platform.

Also, read: Technical Screening Guide: All You Need To Know

6. Select the right candidate with coding interview tools

A candidate-first coding interview would be as close as possible to the real job that the candidate is interviewing for. Not writing code on paper or using whiteboards to solve problems. You find the perfect candidate by simulating the exact ‘day in the job’ environment at the technical interview round and assessing the candidate(s) who excel.

Coding interview tools make this possible. They provide a fair, objective, and structured screening as well as evaluation of the candidates. HackerEarth’s intelligent remote interviewing tool, FaceCode allows you to invite and conduct coding interviews on a collaborative, real-time code editor that also automates your interview summaries.

Also, read: FaceCode Update – 4 New Features That Make Remote Interviews Easier!

7. Stay in touch with your candidates

Lack of feedback post interview is a major peeve of candidates as stated by 40% of the respondents of our annual Developer Survey. Nobody likes to be left hanging.

Let the candidates know how and when you will communicate with them, what the interview process will be, and how long it will take. Describe each stage of the remote interview along with what tools you will be using to help them prepare. Communicate changes and delays in your hiring process in real-time to help avoid confusion— it dramatically improves the candidate experience too.

If the candidate was not selected for the role, that needs to be conveyed to them as well. Ghosting candidates as a form of rejection is an absolute NO. Tell them what went 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.

Also read: Ultimate Playbook for Better Hiring

The short of it

We know, all too well, how expensive a bad hire can be. Tweaking your hiring process to make it more streamlined is the first step—to make the right hiring decision. The bonus? An efficient hiring process will strengthen your employer brand, enhance the candidate experience, and bring in talented folks who want to work for your company!

Make use of the recruitment process tips mentioned in this article to elevate your hiring experience 🙂

Further Reading

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Hire IQ by HackerEarth is a new initiative in which we speak with recruiters, talent acquisition managers, and hiring managers from across the globe, and ask them pertinent questions on the issues that ail the tech recruiting world.

Next up in this edition is Colet Coelho, Head of Talent Acquisition, at Recruit CRM. Being Women’s History Month, we wanted to understand the diversity mandates at Recruit CRM and more importantly, as a woman in tech, what would Colet like to change for welcoming more of such awesome women into the tech recruiting space.

Settle in, and let’s get to it!

P.S. If you missed the first edition of HireIQ where we sit down with Charles Rue from IHS Markit, you can read it here 🙂

HackerEarth: A lot of recruiting jargon has made headlines in the last two years. Candidate experience, remote hiring, employee burnout, and of course the ‘Great Resignation’. If you had to pick one jargon/phrase to attach to the future of ATS platforms, what would it be and why?

Colet: If I had to pick a jargon out of the mentioned, I would pick two—candidate experience and remote hiring. The candidate experience we design reveals a great deal about who we are as an employer. Prospective workers will judge our company based on their experience with the recruiting process, and a negative applicant experience will discourage future job seekers from applying.

Although, providing an excellent candidate experience can be a problematic aspect of the remote hiring process. Enhancing the overall candidate experience in remote recruitment is a vital function of an Applicant Tracking System. ATS platforms automate hiring while streamlining this entire process.

Recommended read – Remote Work And Recruitment: An ATS Story

HackerEarth: How have your internal hiring policies changed in the last two years? Since DEI has been a priority in the tech world, have you initiated any new processes for improving inclusion at your workplace?

Colet: Our hiring policies have been pretty consistent. Since we have always been a remote functioning organization, the last two years haven’t affected our recruitment methods too much.

Our organization has a fair distribution of employees from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and locations spread across the globe. We host regular meetings with all our employees where everyone is heard and allowed to present their views forward.

To create an inclusive culture, starting at the very beginning is critical. We preach, advocate, and encourage inclusivity as an essential component of our organizational principles. We’ve started sharing it on our social media, websites, and in interviews so that any potential employee is aware of our inclusion goals.

We have also begun to streamline the recruiting process by enabling candidates from various community outreach initiatives, job fairs, and hiring consultants to participate. This guarantees that we have a varied range of abilities.

Inclusion at the workplace is pointless if people are not valued for who they are.

The pronouns that a person prefers are entirely up to them. We will begin to include a section on the pronouns employees prefer on their identity cards. In addition, we will guarantee that all of our job descriptions include gender-neutral language.

HackerEarth: As a woman in the tech recruiting space, what are some of the changes you would like to see in how companies attract talented women? How about expanding the conversation to include the non-binary community, and if yes, then how can recruiters begin to do that?

Colet: Flexibility is one of the top perks a firm can offer an employee, not just to women but also men. As a woman in the recruitment sphere, I’d like to see companies offer women more flexibility regarding where, when, and how they work.

To attract non-binary candidates, recruiters can start by allowing a range of pronouns in different areas. Leaving gender boxes unfilled or providing the opportunity to add additional gender or pronoun categories in both paper and online HR forms/platforms will encourage non-binary employees to apply as well as feel like they belong in the workplace.

HackerEarth: Data has become an important tool for recruiters today. In your opinion, what do you think are the three most important markers/data points that recruiters should be looking at when hiring? Additionally, do you think there is a data point that recruiters are overlooking?

Colet: The three most important data points that recruiters should always consider are quality of hire, cost-per-hire, and time-to-hire.

While assessing hiring quality might be subjective, it is probably one of the most critical criteria to monitor. Poor performance can indicate that you have an individual performing the wrong job, regardless of how quickly you fill a role or how much you lower the hire cost.

The cost per hire is simply the money spent on recruiting in a given year divided by the total number of hires made. The recruiting costs vary for every organization, so it’s a good idea to benchmark the typical expenditures for various jobs in your firm. The time-to-hire metric measures how fast an applicant progresses through the various phases of the recruiting process.

The total amount spent on recruitment in a given year divided by the number of recruits is the cost per hire. Again, the recruiting expenses differ from one organization to the next. Therefore, it’s good to benchmark the average expenditures for various roles inside your company.

A critical marker that recruiters occasionally tend to neglect is the source of hiring.

Knowing where your best candidates and applicants are coming from is quite helpful, especially when it comes to recruitment marketing. With this indicator, you can discover those sources and channels that bring in the most qualified candidates for your available positions.

Recommended read: The Great Resignation In The Tech Industry – How To Prevent it

HackerEarth: One of the questions we love asking tech recruiters is – when it comes to skills versus experience, what would you choose and why? What are some of your trusted markers for a skill that you would use to gauge a developer’s competency when hiring?

Colet: While I’m constantly emphasizing soft and hard skills as a recruiter, I can’t ignore the importance of work experience to evaluate a candidate. Therefore, when I search for an ideal candidate, I am looking for a combination of the right personality, soft skills, technical or hard skills, and practical industry experience.

Although, a lack of corporate experience is not an indicator of poor potential, especially when hiring youth. The ability to work in a team structure, make decisions and solve problems, communicate verbally with people inside and outside an organization, and plan, organize and prioritize work are skills I focus on evaluating when hiring.

My usual evaluation method is looking at past projects and giving real-time assignments to measure a developer’s expertise when recruiting.

HackerEarth: Let’s talk a bit about workplace culture 🙂 In the era of hybrid, how do you suggest companies can keep up employee morale and boost engagement?

Colet: I truly believe that open communication and prioritizing employee well-being are the way to maintain morale at work. Honest communication facilitates trust, and employees who have faith in their supervisors to act in their best interests are less stressed during times of transition and uncertainty. Considering employee mental health is also a critical factor in ensuring high morale, especially concerning feelings of isolation and the rising risk of burnout.

Ultimately, leaders cannot just guess or intuit what would make staff feel the most upbeat and engaged. They are the only ones who can tell you what works for them.

So I suggest that companies solicit constant input from employees through employee engagement surveys to gather personal knowledge and then develop a curated strategy that tailors efforts to people’s preferences and requirements.

HackerEarth: Recruit CRM also helps companies with sourcing. What are some non-traditional modes of sourcing you have seen your clients use in the recent past that you think have great potential? Alternatively, do you think there are untapped platforms that tech recruiters can use to their advantage?

Colet: I’ve seen clients use quite a few non-traditional methods of sourcing that have turned out to be quite the successes. For example, sourcing through social media and Boolean searches. Social networking has evolved into one of the most effective tools for hiring today. LinkedIn, Github for developers, and Behance for creatives are the most well-known professional platforms.

However, popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are valuable tools. I feel like Quora and YouTube are two such platforms that haven’t been tapped by recruiters yet but can prove to be of great help in finding potential employees.

Recommended read:Boolean Search Strings – 5 Essential Tips For Recruiters

HackerEarth: And lastly—a piece of advice for recruiters around the globe to navigate the pandemic-induced ups and downs of the recruiting business.

Colet: The last two years have been tough on recruiters. The pandemic and its consequences decimated some talent acquisition teams, piled additional pressures on others, and proved to be a historic change agent, as virtually recruiting and onboarding a remote workforce became the norm for many.

Since virtual hiring is here to stay, I would advise recruiters to focus on making virtual recruitment as streamlined and fine-tuned as possible using an ATS. In addition, a common challenge resulting from the pandemic is the difficulty in filling job openings.

The difficulty in getting applications is an excellent opportunity for some clever employer branding.

Take advantage of this chance to establish your employer brand and set your organization out of competition. Address the main worries of your present workers and future applicants by assuring them that your firm is solid and helpful.

About Colet Coelho:

Based out of Mumbai, India, Colet heads the Talent Acquisition team at Recruit CRM, aiming to bring the best talent onboard and scale the current team of 50 to over 150 in the next 2 years. Here is her LinkedIn.