It's almost the end of the year, the board is asking for new product features, and your team is bogged down on bugs (pun intended): you desperately need to hire new engineers onboarded ASAP to meet your goals, but on 9-out-of-10 candidate interviews you ask yourself "why did I even meet with this person?". Worst of all, the candidate you just interviewed is probably thinking the same. If this feels all too familiar, you're not alone. We talk to hundreds of CTOs every year, and they all report that hiring the right team is among their top 3 priorities, and it is a difficult task.
In this article, we'll go over some tips to improve your recruiting funnel's metrics, placing a particular emphasis on where to source for good engineering profiles.
How to run a smooth & efficient recruitment process
As a company looking to hire top-quality engineers, you need to consider certain key elements when running a recruiting process. You would be surprised at how many candidates are lost due to inefficiencies in this area :
- Localize and optimize your interview process: It is essential to go into the process with an open mind regarding the number of interviews and the type of questions you will ask. When recruiting, you have to keep in mind where your candidates are from. The previous is true to both hiring a remote local team or in other parts of the world, and you need to account for different interviewing styles, resumes, and technical challenges. Knowing how the local market works will give you an idea of what candidates expect to undergo in a recruitment process.
- Move fast: Make sure that your interviewing process takes the least time possible while still ensuring that you are efficiently assessing the candidates. Avoid taking a lot of time between interviews, as these candidates usually participate in many processes simultaneously. Finally, once you have selected the right candidate, present your job offer strategically and quickly. Take into consideration the candidate's salary expectations, benefits, and other relevant information they might have talked about during the interviews.
- Sell your company culture: While you are looking for the right candidate to join your team as the hiring manager or recruiter, the different professionals interviewing for the position are looking for the right company to become part of. Make sure you are doing a great job at selling the perks of becoming part of your company. Always remember that interviews are a two-way street.
Tips to make sure you hire the best candidates
Here are some extra tips that might help you design your interview process. Remember that the interview process is the first impression a future employee gets of the company, so it is essential to design the proper process for the positions you are looking to fill.
- Minimize the negotiation process; many candidates are uncomfortable negotiating salaries and prefer to move on to the next company offering that will offer them what they are looking for.
- Move through the interview process quickly. If the process isn’t optimized enough, you will see many great candidates drop off after the first interviews. There is so much demand for these candidates that they won’t continue in a process that makes them spend a lot of time on it.
- Make sure that if the candidate gets to the offer stage, your company can pay the expected salary. Making an offer with a significantly lower wage will hurt your employer brand.
- Make sure to offer attractive benefits as a company. Candidates expect at least one week of PTO, stock options, and coworking stipends.
How To Effectively Source Engineers
Below you can find the most common ways to source talent around the globe:
Hiring Platforms
The value of these platforms is fairly simple; you get to expand your reach significantly and gain certain credibility in a matter of minutes.
Pros: Speed! Sign up, complete your profile, and start appearing on these platforms. Those looking for new job opportunities will find you.
Cons: Price and time to sort through the resumes. These platforms can be costly for your business without necessarily being the best alternative. They might also create a lot of work for your hiring managers or HR team, as they will have to go through a bunch of resumes before deciding if any of those candidates are worth interviewing. Finally, it depends on the seniority of the talent you are hiring, as these platforms are more effective when looking for junior engineers.
Referral Programs
Tap into your colleagues' professional networks! They might know someone that might be a good fit for your job opening, and this is usually an easy way to find new hires.
Pros: Cost and trust. These referrals do not cost you a penny to source and usually come with a recommendation from your employees.
Cons: Lack of diversity and limited candidate volume. Your employees can refer to you so many friends and colleagues, and they will probably be fairly similar to them, and this might be an issue in the long run for your company.
Outbound Prospecting
This is your traditional recruiting practice where you look for someone who matches the required skill set and reach out to them.
Pros: High-quality candidates! You can look for someone who has the exact required skills for the job.
Cons: It's time-consuming. To successfully build a pipeline of candidates, you will need to do outreach to many candidates and compete for their attention between the bunch of other recruiters and companies looking to get their attention. As with hiring platforms, this strategy is most likely to work on junior talent, as they are actively seeking new job opportunities.
Inbound marketing
This simply means building a strong employer brand in your industry. That way, candidates are excited to work for you.
Pros: Reach! An attractive employer brand can go a long way in your recruitment efforts and bring you a steady stream of applicants if done correctly.
Cons: It is a long-term strategy. It will take some time to build this strong employer brand effectively and gain the desired traction. Unless you are one of the big technology firms, this strategy will cost a lot of time and money. If you are the CTO of a startup, likely, you don’t have time to waste.
Agencies
Finding an agency might be the best solution if your company does not have the necessary bandwidth to effectively carry out the different strategies required to build a remote team. However, there are two types of agencies that can do the work for you.
Generalist Agencies: These agencies recruit for many types of professionals and industries.
Pros: It saves you a lot of time! You save time on sourcing candidates and expose your company to professionals who might not have heard of it. If you have a hiring plan covering many departments, these agencies might be the right fit for you.
Cons: As they are generalists, they do not have the expertise to source difficult and super senior candidates. This is extremely notorious when sourcing tech roles.
Niche Agencies: These agencies have the peculiarity that they work with a really niche market. For fields like technology, this is extremely powerful as they will source candidates better suited for the role, company, and its stage.
Pros: It saves you a lot of time! The hiring manager will only receive the most qualified candidates. Say goodbye to all the sourcing and filtering efforts to find those hidden gems.
Cons: Cost! Hiring a good agency might be expensive for your company. Different companies will have other models; however, most of them charge a fee per successful hire. It is important to balance the cost and benefit of this option and see if it makes sense for your business.
Nexton specializes in guiding startups (from seed stage to unicorns) by hiring their remote tech team members in LATAM. We source the best talent in the market, hand-pick the best candidates for your company and role, present them to you and accompany them through the whole interviewing process. That way, both companies, and candidates save precious time, and only the right team member gets to the offer stage.
The Current Engineering Landscape in Latam
Qualified Remote developers with hands-on skills are in high demand worldwide, and Latin America is no different. However, some studies find that it is a market yet fully discovered by U.S companies.
A recent survey by IBM for Business Value (IBV) has identified a significant talent gap. That exists between untapped Latam talent and what actions U.S.A-based companies can take to fill it up to get the most benefit out of it.
We can find a similar gap in supply & demand in I.T. Services. According to Monster's Future Of Work 2021 Report, 49% of the positions to be opened in the coming months will be for remote work. However, there is a significant mismatch, as 25% of the employment-seeking professionals find it hard to acquire jobs due to a lack of required skills.
The existing gap between the demand for technical talent worldwide and the availability of these professionals makes even more attractive the prospect of exploring new talent markets, as pioneering companies will have the upper hand to attract and retain the highest quality talent.
Size Of The Market
To sustain the growth rate of tech companies, many HR teams and individuals have seen themselves shift towards international talent pools to fulfill their technical talent needs.
In this sense, the LATAM tech talent market seems to be thriving. Evans Data reports that it will become the third-largest and fastest-growing region to source these professionals. This opens fantastic opportunities for both international companies and local talent looking to match their areas of expertise.
Current Situation of The Market Regarding Salary
Hiring remote engineers does not mean hiring cheap labor, and it is essential to understand that the high demand for top-quality talent usually comes with high compensation ranges.
Nexton’s Compensation Trends and Recruiting Insights report for the third quarter of 2021 sheds light on the average yearly salary for top remote developers in LATAM. These professionals have a salary range between USD 72,000 and USD 108,000 plus benefits like PTO and stock options.
Nexton makes the process of hiring remote Latam engineers easy. We offer you a guide to hire in Latam that will save you time and money. Our team will walk you through all the stages of the recruitment process and offer you the right candidate for your team. Make sure to reach out to learn more about our different services.
