If you’re recruiting IT talent for a small or medium-sized business, you need to maximize the recruiting process by focusing on the speed of execution, the quality of the hire, and the cost-effectiveness of the process. Why? Because the cost of a bad hire is steep—not only financially, with agencies often charging up to 30% of the starting salary, but also in terms of team morale, project delays, and workflow disruptions.
In this article, we cover every step of the hiring process, from finding candidates to hiring them.
1. Sourcing IT Talent
Sourcing is the first stage of the hiring process and potentially the most important. A small business does not receive close to the number of applicants that a large enterprise receives (around 4–10 for every job opening on average), so it’s essential to“aggressively” go after the best talent. Here are some of the main sourcing concepts you should cover:
- Employee Referrals: Your employees are one of the most effective resources for finding fantastic candidates. Employee referrals are ranked as the number-one source of above-average candidates by 88 percent of employers. In addition, 45 percent of referred employees remain after 2 years, compared with only 20 percent of employees who come from job boards.
- Right Job Board/Community: Get the most out of job boards. For most technical and IT hires, mass recruiting through many different boards (shotgun style) doesn’t work. Conduct research to figure out which boards maximizes the quality of candidates. You might find that LinkedIn or Indeed provides the best results, or maybe specialized boards like Stackoverflow or Github Jobs (though the era of forums is slowly dying). If you can determine where IT people spend their time, you can save yourself from reading a bunch of unqualified applications. As for success metrics, you can track the source of hire for each of the candidates.
- Hunting for Passive Candidates: Seventy percent of the worldwide workforce are passive talent who are not actively looking for a job, yet 87 percent of both active and passive candidates are open to new job opportunities. Don’t forget to hunt for candidates through LinkedIn Recruiter or any other network they might hang out in. Recruiters should also craft personalized messages about your business and your employment opportunity. Exciting descriptions about new projects and how your company is evolving can attract talented technical staff.
- Improving Branding: The tech industry is super competitive, which is why your company’s branding is so important. According to Glassdoor, 75 percent of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand. Promoting your company culture, your development opportunity, your technologies, and your philosophy in your company’s about section can make a big difference. This is also an excellent opportunity to promote the benefits of working at your company (an SME typically has the advantage of offering more flexibility and remote options).
❌ Worst Practices—Sourcing: Relying on a single method of finding candidates is a mistake. So is creating vague job descriptions. The former will limit your reach, and the letter will make you spend time sifting through many unqualified CVs. Job descriptions should be clear and attractive and should accurately represent the responsibilities and requirements of the job opening. This ensures you attract the right person and set expectations early on.
2. Screening with a human touch
Once applications come in, efficient screening is key to balancing speed and quality. Modern tools and techniques can save time while filtering for top talent. They include cognitive and personality assessments to gauge problem-solving or culture fit. There are many assessment tools to fit all budgets, capable of uncovering a candidate’s technical skills and even soft-skill traits. For example, a short coding challenge or a situational judgment test can quickly filter out mismatches.
Early adoption of these tools can give you a competitive edge in speed, but ensure the AI is configured for fairness (avoid unintended bias in algorithmic filtering).
❌ Pitfalls to Avoid – Screening: Beware of relying too heavily on automation without a human touch. An ATS can inadvertently reject good candidates due to formatting or keyword issues. Always review the “maybe” pile. Also, avoid screening solely for pedigree (e.g., only considering big-name companies or schools); great IT talent can come via non-traditional paths. Finally, make sure any pre-hire tests are job-relevant and not overly lengthy – a long or irrelevant assessment can frustrate candidates and hurt your candidate experience, potentially causing strong applicants to drop out.
3. Technical Assessment That Works
In the interview stage, you truly assess technical and cultural fit. Using structured yet candidate-friendly approaches will improve hiring quality and candidate experience.
Whiteboard tests are becoming outdated. Standard coding tests might check basic knowledge, but they often don’t show how candidates handle real-world situations. Instead, use practical assessments to see how well candidates tackle actual projects in conditions similar to their future job.
Begin by swapping generic tests for real-world scenarios. Give candidates a small project or trial task based on a real bug or feature update your team is working on. This shows you how candidates approach actual challenges they’ll face in their job. Observing how they handle these tasks can give you useful insights into their problem-solving skills, coding style, and even their teamwork instincts.
Shift the focus to “show me” questions instead of abstract theoretical ones. Ask candidates to show their skills through tasks that mirror their daily responsibilities. For instance, have them explain their thought process on a finished project or one they’re working on now zeroing in on specific choices and compromises they made along the way.
Great interviews as two-way conversations. Top tech talent often has multiple options, so make sure their experience is positive. Simple steps improve this: be transparent about the process, keep them informed between rounds, and let them showcase their strengths. An engaging interview process also boosts your employer brand. Remember, happy candidates are 38% more likely to accept a job offer and a poor experience can lead nearly 60% of candidates to drop an offer or consideration.
❌ Pitfalls to Avoid – Interviewing: Conducting completely unstructured and informal interviews. I’ve seen this practice performed to predict a culture fit and assess whether the candidate will get along with the manager…even though a culture fit is often just an excuse to exclude people who are different. Company leaders should make a serious effort to define what a culture fit means in terms of tangible actions and processes and how individuals work. Interviewers should understand the legality of the questions they ask and how to assess candidates, and I’ve seen too many technical staff members join these interviews with no training whatsoever. On top of that, many companies infuriate their candidates with too many interviews and long delays between them. If company leaders include professional interviewers in each stage of the interview process, it will save everyone time.
4. Speedy Hiring yet Careful Decision
Once an employer is given full feedback, you, as a recruiter, should make a decision as fast as possible. Top tech candidates will not be available for very long. The best talent will be gone in less than two weeks. So, if all looks right, an employer should pull the trigger as soon as possible.
Yet it’s important to mention that hiring a candidate who isn’t fit can be far worse than waiting a couple more weeks to find a more suitable match. There is a reason why 74 percent of employers said they’ve hired the wrong person for a position and why the average cost of a bad hire is $15,000.25. If the recrutier is unsure about a serious concern, they should try to find a way to verify it with a quick reference check, a mini test, or a quick second chat with the candidate.
❌ Pitfalls to Avoid –Hiring: Making decisions by consensus, which will only slow down decision-making to the point of paralysis. Instead, leverage people’s opinions, but make sure to establish who has decision-making power (usually the person the candidate reports to). Don’t ignore red flags if there is a reasonable way to validate them. Worse-case scenario, you as a recruiter might need to go back to the drawing board and find a new candidate. Another common mistake is not negotiating in good faith and waiting weeks for approvals.
5. Recruiting Tech Talent Can be Faster when you go Remote
Hiring remote IT talent isn’t just a different choice; it’s often the quickest, most effective way to find skilled professionals ready to start work right away. With the right strategy, remote recruitment can speed up the process giving your company access to a worldwide pool of candidates eager to contribute.
Going remote means casting a wider net beyond local restrictions, giving you access to candidates with diverse skills and backgrounds. When you hire remotely, you can reach out to professionals in various places, time zones, and backgrounds. This often leads to quicker hires and better matches.
Remote workers bring unique qualities that set them apart from traditional hires. Often used to self-directed work and digital collaboration tools, they’re adaptability is usually very high, which allows them to quickly adapt and align with the company’s goals.
These people are highly self-motivated, efficient at managing their time, and proactive in problem-solving. They’re also well-versed in using productivity and communication tools essential for distributed teams, which reduces onboarding time and promotes seamless integration.
Showcasing the perks of remote work—like flexibility and the chance for a well-rounded lifestyle—makes your position attractive to high-quality candidates who excel in remote environments.
The upsides of remote working don’t just benefit the candidates; they boost your company’s profits too, allowing projects to kick off more quickly, reducing onboarding challenges, and creating a more driven workforce.
At DistantJob, we make it easy to hire remote workers. We excel at linking companies with capable remote workers making sure the hiring goes from finding candidates to getting them started. We take care of the tricky parts, like checking their tech skills and if they’ll fit in with your team. This way, you don’t just get a candidate—you get someone who’ll stick around and be part of your team.
Conclusion
Recruiting IT talent requires a targeted, well-planned approach. By using a variety of creative methods to attract candidates, you can get quality candidates with minimal dollars spent. Screening and skills tests/assessments, combined with automated recruiting, ensure that a recruiter will find the right candidates in the shortest amount of time.
Having a partner like DistantJob makes your hiring even easier linking you up with skilled IT pros from all over the world. Want to step up your hiring game? Get in touch with DistantJob now and start to build a team set up for success.
