Sometimes in recruiting things are just working
It feels so good. The right developers are applying. You’re filling roles quickly. Life is good. Everyone is making their commission.
Until it stops. Working, that is. Candidates apply, but they’re not the right fit. Tech interviews are being turned down. The right people are anywhere but at your doorstep and the tables have turned. So often people turn to tools or new technologies instead of the things that are real differentiators: creativity and curiosity.
This is the situation Sjamilla Van der Tooren found herself in early on in her career. While most of her colleagues accepted that “things were just slow,” Sjamilla took an active approach. The rest, as they say, is history now that Sjamilla is the tech recruiter at poki.com.
Coming from an agency background, they gave her the time to invest in growth – not just candidate discovery.
“I was the first person to actively start looking for people,” said Sjamilla. “In the agency environment, they wanted someone who would just teach themselves so I got a lot of freedom to experiment to try and to fail and try again.”
This persistence and agility paid off when she decided to transition into an in-house role and it’s what fuelled her research for her upcoming SourceCon presentation, “How To Use Developer Tools to Send Creative Outreaches.”
A unique approach to developer outreach
While Sjamilla didn’t want to share too much of her SourceCon presentation, she did share with us an interesting strategy for working with your developer team. One that will assure that your outreach is not only relevant but interesting to the people you’re contacting. Unsurprisingly, it involves getting the developer perspective on profiles instead of trusting your untrained eye to know what developers would notice.
“I think it’s really important to have the conversation. For the team to say something about the person i’m going to reach out to up front. I meet with one person every week for 30 min to review profiles because they might see something that I overlooked — I’m not a developer. I learn what they they like and why, then translate that into my approach. I don’t waste my time on people that will not be a good fit. It has resulted in a 93% response rate.”
If that wasn’t enough, you’ll hear Sjamilla share more:-
