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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). One update since this was first written: Stack Overflow has thinned out badly as a live sourcing pool. Monthly new questions have slid back to roughly the volume of its 2009 launch year, a decline that started around 2014 and accelerated once ChatGPT arrived in late 2022 (Stack Overflow Data Explorer figures). The profiles and answer histories are still there and still searchable, but recent activity is a much weaker signal than it used to be, so put your weight on GitHub.
- 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)
- If doing that by hand across three platforms is the bottleneck, an AI recruiter such as HeroHunt.ai will run the search, the cross referencing and the first draft of the outreach as one pass
HeroHunt.ai
The engineer play above is four separate jobs stitched together: search LinkedIn, search GitHub, cross reference the two profiles into one person, then write outreach that proves you read their code. Doing all four by hand is usually what caps how many engineers a small team can actually reach in a week. HeroHunt.ai is our own AI recruiter and it runs that loop for you: it searches across platforms rather than one database, merges the profiles it finds into a single candidate record, and drafts outreach off what is actually in that record. It matters more now than when this article was written, because the Stack Overflow decline noted above means the signal has moved to GitHub and personal sites, and a single-source search misses it. The honest caveat: it is a sourcing tool, not an applicant tracking system, so once a candidate replies you still need somewhere to run the pipeline. And the shortlist is only as sharp as the brief you give it, so a vague "senior full stack" request returns a vague list. Spend the time on the role definition first.
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 like Lusha to find public phone numbers and get in touch through direct phone call
Lusha
The cold call play above only works if you can actually get the number, and that is the one step this section leaves open. Lusha is the tool that closes it: you open the profile you found, hit the Chrome extension, and it reveals a verified email and a direct dial. It fits the SaaS sales lead hunt specifically, because Lusha's coverage is densest on commercial people at tech companies, which is exactly who you are calling here. Two honest caveats before you sign up. First, do not reach for it on the engineer search higher up this page: contact databases are thinnest on developers, who are the least likely of these three roles to have a work number sitting in a business dataset. Second, pricing is per user per month, so cost scales with how many recruiters you put on it rather than with how many numbers you pull: Starter is $49.90 (currently $32.45 on the annual promo), Professional $69.90, and the top tier $399.90. Reveals are metered by credit inside each tier, so check the allowance against the size of your shortlist before you commit a seat.
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
