The many alternatives to LinkedIn for recruiting tech talent

Many recruiters rely on LinkedIn for their recruitment targets.

But LinkedIn is not the only platform to source talent on.

Many platforms are overlooked as sourcing platforms. They might not be necessarily designed for recruitment, but you can find talent if you know how to search them.

And the best part is that most of these alternative platforms provide information on professional activity of the candidates that is richer than the information on LinkedIn.

These alternative sources can be X-rayed, but there are also talent search engines which help you find LinkedIn profiles, but also profiles from these alternative sources.

These are the best alternatives to recruiting talent on LinkedIn:

1. GitHub
2. Stack Overflow
3. Reddit
4. AngelList
5. Xing
6. Kaggle
7. Medium

GitHub

GitHub is the platform with the most active engineering users, beating LinkedIn and any other platform. A goldmine of rich and up to date candidate information.

Key facts

• Engineer profiles including activity
• 65 million users
• Publishing of code repositories including tech tags
  

How to recruit talent on GitHub

Stack Overflow

With 14 million developers and rich technology skills information based on Q&A's, Stack Overflow is a must for sourcing tech talent.

Key facts

• Engineer profiles including activity
• 14 million users
• Up to date tech skills data based on tech Q&A activity
  

How to recruit talent on Stack Overflow‍‍‍

Reddit

The Redditors community is one of the biggest online communities today with 330 million users. Redditors engage in comical, but also professional discussions. When understood, it provides a good opportunity for sourcing talent.

Key facts

• All profiles
• 330 million users
• In depth informal discussions on subject matter topics
  

How to recruit talent on Reddit‍

AngelList

Angellist provides the startup and scaleup talent that doesn't only have the right skillset, but also the right mindset for a work environment with rapid change.

Key facts

• Startup talent profiles
• 2.5 million profiles
• Focussed on people who work or want to work in the startup world
  

How to source talent on AngelList‍

XING

The assumption is that LinkedIn is used globally as the primary professional network. Not true for Germany. Xing is the leading professional network site here and it is gaining more users in other countries as well.

Key facts

• All talent profiles
• 17 million profiles
• Focussed on German, Austrian and Swiss talent, but also other talent available
  

How to source talent on XING‍

Kaggle

With 5 million data scientists and machine learning experts, Kaggle is the go to source for finding data talent.

Key facts

• Data science & Machine Learning profiles
• 5 million users
• Data science talent competes in projects and can win money
  

How to source talent on Kaggle‍

Medium

Medium is one of the leading publishing platforms where professionals showcase their thought leadership in their domain. This is the place to look for talent that wants to get their voice heard.

Key facts

• All profiles
• 1.4 million new articles posted each month
• Talent that show thought leadership and articles that provide keywords
  

How to source talent on Medium