Finding hard to find scaleup talent

The number one challenge for tech companies that are scaling is attracting the right talent.

In order to grow the business, you need to grow the team. But for many of the desired candidates the demand is higher than the supply of talent.

Therefore you need to adopt creative methods and recruitment strategies to source candidates and have them choose for you instead of the dozens of other companies that they could work for.

These are three hard to fill roles and strategies for recruiting them.

Full Stack Engineer

Characteristics

Engineers are self learning (44% of developers are self-taught) and they are excited about complex problems.

Most of them code not only for work but also as a hobby: 57% of developers learned to code as kids.

Developers prioritize good work-life balance over salary and benefits.

They value the people they work with: developers mostly leave jobs because of poor management.

Possible sourcing strategy for engineers

• Do a talent mapping for hard to find roles (how to do a talent mapping)
• Have your job description reviewed by an engineer
• Search and engage candidates with a combination of LinkedIn, GitHub, Stack Overflow. Prioritize the latter two (how to do cross platform sourcing)
• Research candidates by cross referencing their profiles and (hyper)personalize outreach based on relevant information you can find on the interwebs (how to cross reference candidates)

SaaS Sales Lead

Characteristics

Sales leads in tech are target driven and optimistic individuals.

They are tech savvy but mostly business minded.

SaaS sales leads get excited about progress and growth perspective like new markets or new offerings.

They like to work in a data driven way and setting up processes for repeatable revenue, the more time is left to talk to clients the better.

Possible sourcing strategy for SaaS sales lead

• Create a job offer including an incentive scheme like a percentage of total recurring revenue and stock options
• Search talent at other tech companies by using for an example the PSE method or use a sourcing solution that takes into account SaaS specific talent characteristics like tech and high growth experience (how to use the Google Programmable Search Engine)
• Use a contact finder to find public phone numbers and get in touch through direct phone call

Growth Marketeer

Characteristics

Growth marketeers are usually millennials or gen Z who adopt new technology fast.

They have a growth mindset, are fast learners, are autonomous and are used to a high paced work environment.

Growth marketeers are very active in communities and on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium, Slack and adopt the newest social media channels and platforms in their life and work.

Possible sourcing strategy for growth marketeers

• Launch a creative job post and job marketing campaign showcasing your employer brand and your marketing content
• Search for talent on Medium (how to source on Medium)
• Emphasize career possibilities, learning opportunities and make explicit that you motivate a high level of freedom in work and that you embrace experimentation and tooling
• Connect and engage with talent on their preferred social channels: like, comment, share on the platforms where they are most active