For many recruiters, including tech recruiters, LinkedIn is their only or at least dominant source of hire. But there are tech recruiters who apply creative approaches to sourcing with which they are able to tap into talent sources that are relatively untapped. Leaving them with the advantage of a lot less competition and finding candidates they would never have found on LinkedIn.

This blog lists the best sources of talent for tech recruiters other than the conventional platforms.

Platforms with rich candidate information

These platforms provide profiles rich of candidate information and data about activity on the platform in terms of blogs, code repositories or engagement with content.

Overview 📜

• GitHub
• Stack Overflow
• Reddit
• HackerRank
• AngelList
• Xing
• Kaggle
• Medium
• Tumblr
• ResearchGate
• GitLab
• Coderwall
• Dev.to
• StackShare
  

Details per platform 👇👇👇

GitHub

GitHub is the platform with the most active engineering users, beating LinkedIn and any other platform. With GitHub engineers can deposit code repositories and collaborate on their (open source) code. The activity of the engineers creates valuable information and keywords based on the languages and frameworks they work with.

Key facts

• Engineers
• 65 million users
• Publishing of code repositories including tech tags

🔎 How to search talent on GitHub

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is a question and answer (Q&A) forum for engineers. With 14 million developers on the platform that ask and answer questions around their most relevant technology themes Stack Overflow is a rich source of information on the latest technology skills of tech talent.

Key facts

• Engineers
• 18 million users
• Up to date tech skills data based on tech Q&A activity

🔎 How to search talent on Stack Overflow‍‍‍

Reddit

Reddit is one of the biggest online communities existing 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

• Variety of profiles
• 330 million users
• In depth informal discussions on a variety of topics

🔎 How to search talent on Reddit‍

AngelList

AngelList is a platform where startup and scaleup talent present themselves, connect, share knowledge and get informed about the startup world. AngelList has various platforms. Some of them are open like the original AngelList platform and others like AngelList Source require login and paid subscription.

Key facts

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

🔎 How to source talent on AngelList‍

XING

Xing is the leading professional network site in Germany and it is gaining more users in other countries as well. The assumption is that LinkedIn is used globally as the primary professional network but that's not true for Germany. Also in Austria and Switzerland Xing is the go to professional network.

Key facts

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

🔎 How to search talent on XING‍

Kaggle

Kaggle is a platform where data talent competes in data science and machine learning challenges. Next to participations in challenges Kagglers also connect and collaborate through code snippets and data projects.

Key facts

• Data scientists & machine learning experts
• 5 million users
• Data science talent competes in projects and collaborate on projects

🔎 How to search talent on Kaggle‍

Medium

Medium is one of the leading publishing platforms where professionals showcase their thought leadership within their domain. This is the place to look for talent with a voice.

Key facts

• Variety of profiles
• 1.4 million new articles posted each month (amount of users undisclosed)
• Talent that show thought leadership and share articles that provide keywords

🔎 How to search talent on Medium

HackerRank

HackerRank is a platform with competitive programming challenges. Developers compete by engineering the required product for the challenge. HackerRank's programming challenges can be solved in a variety of programming languages.

Key facts

• Software engineers
• About 16 million users
• Engineers participate in programming challenges

🔎 How to search talent on HackerRank (X-ray): site:www.hackerrank.com/profile java

Tumblr

Tumblr is an American microblogging and social networking website. Users can post rich media content like text, images, video and audio. It’s a visually oriented platform but also allows for mini blogs and therefore can create searchable keywords.

Key facts

• Talent with a voice
• 17 million users
• Talent that show thought leadership and share mini blogs that provide keywords

🔎 How to search talent on Tumbler (X-ray): site:tumblr.com "am a * developer" java

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a platform where users discover and share scientific articles and publications. People in the world of science and technology connect through their work and present themselves.

Key facts

• Researchers including data scientists
• 20 million users
• People with a scientific background share their research

🔎 How to search talent on ResearchGate (X-ray): site:researchgate.net java

GitLab

GitLab is a DevOps platform to develop, secure and operate software in a single application. Engineers on the open source platform collaborate on projects and code snippets.

Key facts

• Engineers
• 30 million estimated registered users 
• Engineers share code projects and collaborate

🔎 How to search talent on GitLab (X-ray):  site:gitlab.com "Member since" java

Coderwall

Coderwall is a collaborative learning platform for software developers to improve their programming knowledge. Engineers can share tips with each other based on technology topics.

Key facts

• Software engineers
• Amount of users not disclosed
• Engineers share tips on technology topics

🔎 How to search talent on Coderwall (X-ray): site:coderwall.com java

Dev.to

Dev.to is an online community for sharing and discovering any valuable content on engineering. It is a kind of a blogging platform, chat room and forum in one.

Key facts

• Software engineers
• About 35.000 users
• Engineers socialize with posts and comments on code

🔎 How to search talent on Dev.to (X-ray):  site:dev.to "Skills/Languages" "Joined on" java

StackShare

StackShare is a community-driven platform where users can share the technology stack and tools they are working with at their companies. Users connect based on technologies used and exchange knowledge.

Key facts

• Software engineers
• Over 1 million users
• Engineers share their company tech stacks

🔎 How to search talent on StackShare (X-ray): site:stackshare.io "following" "one-liners" java