Isabella is a recruiter at a multinational company with 1000+ employees. Her responsibility is to recruit the top talent—which she performs well by consistently looking for candidates that fit the company culture, collecting their information, reaching out to them, screening them, and finally interviewing them.

But…

She carries out the entire process manually—leading her to invest much time in the manual tasks—resulting in disengaged candidates (because who likes to wait this long?).

If you are a recruiter just like Isabella, you’ll soon find yourself burnt out and left without achieving your recruitment goals. This is where artificial intelligence has got you covered. In 2023, AI will play a major role in shaping candidate recruitment and making the lives of recruiters easy.

In this article, we’ll help you understand how artificial intelligence is used in technical recruitment.

What is artificial intelligence?

According to Techopedia, artificial intelligence is the field of study in which computerized systems can learn, solve problems and autonomously achieve goals under varying conditions. Simply put, artificial intelligence is about training the computer or the bot to do tasks that humans do—by feeding more data.

So what does artificial intelligence in technical recruitment refer to? It means a relevant technology has been used in the hiring process. There are three basic tech models artificial intelligence uses: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive.

• Descriptive: It tells us about what’s happening
• Predictive: It gives us an image of the future
• Prescriptive: It tells us what we should do based on the insights and findings

With this technology in the recruitment software, HR teams can focus on more strategic tasks without burning themselves out with manual efforts like candidate sourcing and outreach campaigns. Because organizations want to accelerate their talent acquisition efforts at scale, they hire recruitment agencies to find the top tech talent. But, when AI recruitment software is employed at your organization, you won’t have to rely on these recruitment agencies entirely—saving up 15-25% of employees’ first-year salary.

How can AI be used in technical recruitment?

Here are 7 ways how artificial intelligence helps improve the technical recruitment processes and set the ongoing recruiting for success.

Candidate sourcing

Recruiters spend ample time identifying top talent across hundreds of sources and platforms to find the best possible matches based on the job description—from job portals to social media profiles, they source candidates from multiple channels which is a time-consuming process.

When a recruiter sources tech candidates via LinkedIn, here’s what their process looks like:

• Searches for the candidate on the LinkedIn search bar with relevant keywords
• Gets a list of candidates from the received results
• Scans the LinkedIn profiles of candidates who match the job requirements
• Reaches out to them via Inmail or LinkedIn DMs

Recruiters have to invest time searching and scanning each profile. The process is toilsome. On average, recruiters lose 14 hours per week completing such tasks manually. Clearly, using recruitment software tools that help with candidate sourcing is a much better option. These tools look for candidates matching the job requirements and conduct outreach campaigns.

💡Pro tip: Use tools like Fetcher and Recruitee

Candidate screening

In a traditional screening process, recruiters prepare and send assessments to candidates. Once the candidate submitted the assessment for review, the recruiter checked each assignment manually.

Imagine the time a recruiter has to invest if they were to screen 100 such assessments manually. If the recruiter screened 100 candidates, they had to review all the dedicated assignments.

With AI, role-based assessments chop recruiters’ time to half. Role-specific assessments are the way AI screens the candidates. Candidates take these tests to showcase their knowledge and skills.

HackerEarth’s Assessments help you evaluate the developers’ skills with advanced coding assessments—all you have to do is upload job descriptions, create coding test interviews and find the top developers with the auto-generated leaderboard. Also, you can create the coding test interview from the list of interview questions to simplify your process.

For example, Nirvana Solutions used HackerEarth’s Assessments for technical candidate screening and reduced their cost per hire by 25%.

Why this works: Before using the automated screening method, the company relied on manual screening of applications which was a time-consuming process and led the company to exhaust its resources. Now, Nirvana’s team takes 5 minutes to create automated assessments and around 30 minutes to create the assessment from scratch. After the candidates submit the test, recruiters analyze candidate reports for each candidate’s performance—helping them screen and identify the top talent within 10 minutes.

Posting jobs

If you google “job boards to attract diverse candidates”, you’ll find endless results. Earlier, the most common were Naukri.com and Indeed. But, with time, job boards have expanded allowing organizations to distribute their job listings and attract the right tech talent.

Unfortunately, mass distribution of your job listing isn’t possible when you are a one-person army. That’s where AI tools like GoHire help recruiters and organizations automate job posting across different job boards.

Also read: A Checklist For Writing Job Postings That Actually Work

Hiring remote workers

Gone are the days when companies hired candidates from the same location. Walk-in interviews have been replaced by video interviews—which has helped companies to hire candidates while sitting in the comfort of their homes.

Sidenote: If your company follows a hybrid or remote work model, AI amplifies your recruitment efforts.

For example, after screening the candidate with automated assessments, you move to the next stage of conducting a face-to-face interview—which is conducted using a video platform like Zoom and Google Meet.

These tools miss out on features that recruitment software possesses, making AI in recruitment more prominent.

Let’s say, after screening the candidates via HackerEarth’s Assessments, you can use FaceCode to invite the candidates to schedule interviews, conduct live coding interviews with a panel of 5 interviewers, and evaluate them based on automated interview summaries with AI-based behavioral insights.

Diversity hiring

Unconscious bias is one of the staggering norms in the tech industry. Because tech is a male-dominated industry, companies see them as the right candidate compared to women. A 2022 report by Celential.ai emphasizes the gender diversity of software engineers where women represent only 21% of the workforce in software engineering.

And this bias starts right at the beginning of the technical recruitment process. Recruiters analyze the candidates based on multiple factors like location, gender, and educational qualifications on reference by the company’s employees.

But when AI comes into play in the recruitment industry, you shift towards unbiased hiring. This Twitter thread by Diversity Council Australia shares how women feel confident about applying to tech roles when companies use AI recruitment software.

Image Source

There are two ways in which AI recruitment software removes biases:

• When you use AI to send assessments to the candidates, you test them based on their skills. Once they submit the assessment, you get a report of each candidate and how they performed—this analysis helps you screen them and move to the next stage. During this process, your recruiter won’t focus on the candidate’s resume, location, or gender. They’ll *only* focus on the candidate’s skills and how they performed the assessment reducing biases.
• When interviewing candidates, robots can conduct face-to-face interviews. They analyze the candidate’s response based on the conversation, facial expressions, and a mix of natural language processing and body language analysis—which helps remove prejudice

Data collection

Imagine adding recruitment software that sorts data and saves the 5 hours that you’d have spent doing the work manually. You could focus on improvising your current recruitment strategy, in these 5 hours.In a traditional setup, a recruiter would start by writing the job listing and sifting through inbound job applications to find the right fit.In the modern setup, recruiters find candidates on LinkedIn to build the database. Before building this database, they have to brainstorm and answer questions like:

• How can I find the ideal candidate on LinkedIn?
• How to identify and shortlist the candidate for a specific yet complex set of skills?

Once you identify the answers to these questions, you start your search, collect data and build the candidate’s database to carry out the recruitment process further. But here’s the thing: sorting through multiple data points and collecting candidates’ data is a tedious process. Employing recruitment software that collects candidates' data and analyzes it, candidate sourcing becomes much easier.AI Recruitment software like Hiretual acts as a candidate data engine for your tech recruiting requirements—it centralizes all your talent management and helps you source across 750M+ profiles and actively rediscovers lost profiles.

Candidate onboarding

From sharing the resource documents based on their role to telling them about the salary processing, health insurance, and so on—you need to exchange a lot of information with the new hire once you onboard them.No doubt you can rely on a single person assigned for helping in the onboarding process, but the time taken to onboard the new hire will take more time than expected impacting the credibility of the organization.With AI employed to onboard new employees, you can simplify the overall technical recruitment process.For instance, Unilever implemented artificial intelligence to onboard new employees. The company used Unabot, a natural language processing (NLP) bot to understand what employees need to know and fetch the information for them when asked. The AI acts as a forefront for questions employees have—from HR questions to department-specific questions like IT systems and allowances. Beyond this, it also answers questions like:

• Where is the parking available?
• What’s the timing for shuttle buses?
• When are the annual salary reviews due to take place?

Basically, Unabot is the Alexa for Unilever—helping the company get rid of the back-and-forth of email and Slack messages to find and send resources when required.

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Also read: Remote Hiring and Onboarding Tips for Technical Roles

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Get ready to transform your technical recruitment process with artificial intelligence...

No doubt why recruiters like Isabella constantly ask themselves, “how to recruit tech talent?”. When you carry out each recruitment task manually, you are compressing the space for productivity and efficiency. A simple way to get out of this situation is by employing an AI-based recruitment software in your organization that:

• Increases pay transparency for employees
• Enhances candidate experience with pre and post-hiring communication
• Provides accurate assessments of diverse candidates and identifies the most qualified candidate

Like an onion’s skin, recruiters uncover multiple layers in their recruitment process: sourcing, screening, and evaluation to find the best talent with the modern tech recruiting strategies that gel into your organization.

Earlier, these layers had a traditional face.

Your company is looking for a front-end developer. You create a job description → publish it on job boards → scan the resume of applicants → shortlist the right fit candidate → call them for a walkthrough interview.

But with changing times, traditional talent acquisition has transformed in and out. Now, you can’t *just* hire tech candidates who are willing to work. You need candidates who align with your company values and have relevant skills and attitude to get the work done—which make the attributes of the best tech talent.

The process is complicated and draining. But we have 10 best recruiting practices outlined to help you navigate and find the right fit for your organization.

10 tech recruiting strategies for technical positions

Let’s break down each talent acquisition strategy and how to implement them to make your organization’s recruitment process seamless.

Strategy#1—Look for people who already fit the culture

You need people who understand your company’s vision and align with your values. These people make the best employees who fit into your company culture.

To hire based on culture fit, do this:

• Be clear on the kind of employees you are looking for based on their skill sets, values, good word habits, and personality.
• Ask the candidates to add a cover letter to their job applications. Observe cover letters that emphasize on company aspirations the candidate is attracted to
• Once the candidates are filtered based on their cover letter, give them a brief test to see if they fit into the company culture.
• Ask them specific questions based on their resume to understand their attitude and personality.
• In your interview process, talk about the company culture in detail and highlight what makes your company better than your competitors. Be transparent about the salary, benefits, work schedule flexibility, and type of job.

Strategy #2—Understand how candidates approach their work

Picture this: a software developer kickstarts a new project. No specific requirements have been communicated. There is a high chance that the project will go haywire. That’s where great communication and questioning skills come into play—to scour information from their client to get the project on track.

No matter the tech role you are hiring for, assess their work approach by asking them problem-solving questions.

Few ideas to start with:

• When was the last time you failed a project?
• Share your recent best project and how did you approach it
• Tell about an uncomfortable event or experience in your life that reshaped your work approach

Strategy #3—Review and optimize your job description

Your job descriptions should be able to do two things: be searchable and be easy to understand

When reviewing your job description, make sure:

• The job titles are easily searchable.
• Highlight the must-have skills and experience
• Use white spacing and bullet points for a quick scan

Take a look at how this job description focuses on two things—the roles and responsibilities and the best fit eligibility for the role.

Why this works: We have started by introducing our company and the work done—to give the tech candidate an idea of who we are and the kind of work we have done. Plus, the job description is formatted with bullet points, white spaces, and sections in bold.

Strategy #4—Use recruitment software to save time

Imagine sorting through multiple job applications and selecting qualified candidates for the role of Java developer.

The process can leave you drained. The result? You take a longer time to select qualified candidates—leading the candidates to lose interest. An alternative to enhance this tech recruitment strategy is using the best recruitment tools and improving your hiring performance without losing out on the best talents.

Technology in recruiting like HackerEarth’s Assessments helps you create coding test interviews, evaluate the developers accurately and shortlist them based on an auto-generated leaderboard after every coding test.

Also Read: Redefine Remote Work Management With These 6 Automation Tools

Strategy #5—Use reference screening calls

The reference screening call approach involves setting up a call through your cloud phone system or other available communication channels to a candidate’s former workplace to get more information on the candidate’s performance and skills. By doing so, you get two things:

1. Ensure the candidate has the relevant qualifications needed for the job role
2. Understand if their attitude and values are the right for the organization or not

To utilize this recruiting tip, ask the candidate to share the contact details of their colleagues you can reach out to. When you reach out to the candidate’s colleagues to know more about them, ask:

• What was the best project that the candidate worked on?
• What are the behavioral traits of the candidate you like?
• What’s one weakness of the candidate?
• What’s the strength of the candidate?

Strategy #6—Work with an industry specialist recruiter

Having an industry specialist or niche recruiter acts as an amplifier to your current tech recruitment strategies. When you work with them, you can expect comprehensive market advice from them—salary expectations, current market trends, and available skill sets.

Also, they have an active network—which gives you immediate access to the niche talent pool.

A simple way to find niche recruiters is through LinkedIn. Search with keywords like “technology recruiter”, “technical recruiter”, and “tech recruiter”. Filter down the searches based on your requirements and check the recruiter’s LinkedIn profiles.

Strategy #7—Hire a recruitment agency

When your company’s hiring requirements include hiring at scale, a single person cannot handle mass assessments. That’s where you need to hire a recruitment agency over a niche recruiter.

To find the right recruitment agency:

• Look for agencies with (at least) some amount of experience in the technology industry.
• Check the agency’s website, Glassdoor reviews, testimonials, case studies, experience, and socials like LinkedIn
• Explain to them your hiring requirements
• Interview the agency and ask relevant questions to understand if they are the right fit. Some questions include:

• how long does it take to find the best talent
• what does your hiring process look like?

• Check the portfolio and testimonials of each recruiter and see how the recruiters of the agency work.
• Confirm the recruitment agency’s budget before finalizing them.

Strategy #8—Leverage social recruiting

Socially active people are always on the lookout for new opportunities, and that’s where you can fill the gap by leveraging social media as an effective tech recruiting strategy. Social recruiting is all about sourcing and hiring candidates via social channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

There are two ways you can recruit via social channels:

1. By activating your LinkedIn profile and constantly sharing job roles your company is hiring for
2. By scanning the LinkedIn profiles of users who match the keywords your company is currently hiring for.

Sidenote: Combine both—activate your profile and do LinkedIn outreach for great conversions.

Let’s understand this with an example of Laura, a tech recruiter hiring Java developers for her company.

To hire the candidate, she created a job posting on LinkedIn and published a hiring post on her LinkedIn profile.

Next, she looked up candidates by adding the keyword “Java developers” to the LinkedIn search bar and selecting the LinkedIn profiles from relevant results. She then reached out to these people who aren’t actively looking for opportunities. She shares the details about the job profile with them and forwards the details of the interested candidates for the next stage i.e, candidate screening.

But here’s the catch: you need to have an effective social recruiting strategy for maximum results.

Here’s how you can do it:

• Define the candidate persona—one who has the expertise and fits your company culture
• Choose the social media platform where your ideal candidate persona is active
• Create an outreach strategy and a list of candidates you’ll reach out to
• Activate your social media profile by posting content about your company culture and the work you do
• Start the planned recruitment activity based on the strategy
• Measure how well your strategy is performing and review the KPIs; if not working well, tweak the strategy

Strategy #9—Invest in employer branding

Your employer brand defines your values and POV as a person and how it aligns with your company—attracting people who want to work with you.

With the changing recruitment practices, having an impactful employer brand is an effective tech recruiting strategy which helps the candidates decide if they would like to work with your company or not. According to CareerArc’s 2021 Future of Recruiting Study, 82% of candidates consider employer brand and reputation before applying for the job. Clearly: investing in employer branding is part of tech recruiting strategy crucial to building trust and getting the right candidate for your organization.

Shield’s Founder and CEO, Andreas Jonsson has built an engaged audience of 40K+ where he talks about personal branding and LinkedIn content creation. Because he actively creates content on LinkedIn, people who read his content know his aspirations and values.

And knowing Shield, and working with the company comes as a by-product. The impact of his employer branding is amplified by his employees too—who talk about their company, personal branding, and LinkedIn—the same content pillars the company is known for.

Because the employees enthusiastically talk about it, their connections got to know about the company, what it does, and the value it serves—which instantly attracts them to work with the company.

Also Read: Building An Employer Brand: Everything You Need To Know

Strategy #10—Organize hackathons

Hackathons are a gateway to hiring employees by testing their skills and selecting the best candidate who gives proof of their expertise. To hire employees through hackathons: create a problem statement for the candidate persona. Candidates who bring you the best solution to the problem statement are the right fit for the role.

To create the problem-solving statement for your hackathon, do this:

• Define the theme of the innovation
• Specify the pain points
• Narrow down the problem
• Define the eligibility rules for candidates to participate

Take a look at how Cogito runs its hackathon on HackerEarth. They have mentioned the job profile in their headline and highlighted the AI solution they want to build (the problem statement).

Also Read: 5 Lessons From Running 200 Remote Hackathons

Use these technical recruiting strategies to take recruitment to the next level

To amplify your recruitment and selection process, club 3-4 of these tech recruiting strategies together. For example, identify the candidates that fit into your work culture. Once identified, screen them and understand how they approach work issues. To screen them further, contact their former workplace to know about their skills and attitude better.

So, what are you waiting for? Solidify your recruitment system with these technical recruitment strategies.

FAQ About Tech Recruiting Strategies

1. What are the most effective tech recruiting strategies?

• The most effective tech recruiting strategies include leveraging AI-driven tools, offering flexible work arrangements, enhancing employer branding, focusing on diversity and inclusion, and utilizing data-driven recruitment analytics.

2. How can I improve my technical recruiting strategies to attract top talent?

• To improve your technical recruiting strategies, focus on building a strong employer brand, using targeted social media campaigns, participating in tech conferences and hackathons, and offering competitive compensation packages.

3. Why is employer branding important in tech recruiting strategies?

• Employer branding is crucial in tech recruiting strategies because it helps attract top talent by showcasing your company culture, values, and career growth opportunities. A strong employer brand differentiates you from competitors and appeals to skilled tech professionals.

4. What role does diversity and inclusion play in technical recruiting strategies?

• Diversity and inclusion are essential components of technical recruiting strategies. By promoting a diverse and inclusive workplace, you attract a wider range of candidates, foster innovation, and improve employee satisfaction and retention.

5. How can data-driven approaches enhance tech recruiting strategies?

• Data-driven approaches can enhance tech recruiting strategies by providing insights into candidate behaviors, optimizing recruitment processes, and enabling better decision-making. Using analytics tools, you can track the effectiveness of your strategies and continuously improve your hiring outcomes.

Skill assessment software has become the new buzzword in the software development industry. Recruiters are looking for highly skilled candidates to handle their software development duties. The market for systems integration, software, and IoT hardware has reached $520 billion as of 2021 compared to $235 billion in 2017 and is expected to continue the trend for many years. As a result, the demand for talented software developers is witnessing unprecedented growth.

While the number of software developers globally is estimated to reach 28.7 million by 2024, this number falls woefully short of the required levels. As the demand for software developers shows no signs of abating, recruiters are eager to hire qualified software developers.

Are you also looking to hire the best software developer to grow your business? How can you ensure that the candidate you select best fits the role?

You need to find a well-rounded candidate that is sufficiently qualified in both hard and soft skills. Asking the right technical interview questions when recruiting developers is important but so is clear communication, good work ethic, and alignment with your organization’s goals.

First, let’s tackle the technical expertise of a candidate, which can be determined with a coding assessment platform. It is one of the most popular skill assessment tools as it offers recruiters direct insight into the candidate’s skill set.

What are developer technical skills testing software?

Technical Skills Assessment Software solutions are used by companies to ascertain the candidates’ technical skills. Recruiters use these platforms to test the technical skills of the candidates, like coding, while shortlisting prospective employees for technical roles. Software developer assessment platforms are widely used for pre-employment testing as they offer the flexibility to set difficulty levels, select the coding language, and then rank the candidates based purely on performance. As a result, companies can eliminate candidates who do not possess the necessary skill sets from the recruitment process.

A coding assessment platform is nowadays an integral part of the recruitment process as it allows for live coding interviews as well. Moreover, these software solutions also support remote interviewing for different technical profiles. A technical talent assessment platform comes with an in-built video feature to facilitate remote interviews. Alternatively, the software can also integrate with a suitable video call platform.

Why companies are using technical assessment software to hire the right talent

Most software development companies use skill assessment software to complete the coding assessment for candidates who have applied for the vacancy. These platforms allow the companies to screen out unsuitable candidates at the outset, allowing the time and flexibility to select the best developers for the available profiles.

Higher accuracy

Technical assessments are quickly replacing traditional interviews in software developer assessment. Technical assessment software ensures higher accuracy while selecting candidates for specific profiles. The results of such a skill assessment are free from bias and are more reliable. Moreover, these tests help with the long-term prospects of the candidate in the given profile.

Real-time assessment

Skill assessment software allows recruiters to test the coding abilities of a candidate in real-world scenarios. This helps ensure that the shortlisted candidates possess all the required skills that the job demands. A technical assessment of a candidate’s skills offers deep insights into their ability to cope with the demands of the job.

Quicker and accurate

Completing a software developer assessment through technical assessment software is much quicker and more accurate than any other option that recruiters can use. These assessments are conducted at pre-interview levels and most often can be completed online. As a result, recruiters get insights into the skill set of the candidates before the interview stage, thereby allowing for shortlisting of the most suitable candidates only. Hence, the recruitment processes can be expedited through this approach.

Interesting recruitment process

An online assessment platform enables the recruiters to define the coding language and difficulty level per the requirements. This feature makes the assessment test an interesting experience for the candidates as well as for the recruiters. By eliminating mundane recruitment processes, these platforms allow the recruiters to shortlist the candidates based on purely their performance in the technical test.

Better employee retention

Online skills assessment software allows recruiters to accurately match candidates with suitable job profiles. As the candidates possess the required skills for a given profile, they enjoy better job satisfaction when they start working. As a result, employees are more likely to continue working with the company for an extended duration as their skill sets perfectly match the job requirements.

Also Read: 6 things to look for in your coding assessment tool

How does online skills assessment software work?

A skill assessment software tests a candidate’s expected skills through an engaging user flow. Recruiters can get rid of multiple offline hiring stages with the help of online skills assessment software. Moreover, these software solutions empower informed decision-making by ensuring transparency around the performance of every candidate. Here is a summary of how online skills assessment software works: –

• Define the parameters: – First, you must select the coding language and difficulty level required for the test. You can also define the good and bad answers to help the platform grade the candidates accurately
• Invite candidates: – You can invite the candidate through email or share a direct link on the recruitment page with the candidate. You can also monitor the progress of the candidates through this software
• Check the result: – After the coding assessment has been completed, you can check the performance of candidates in the software. The candidates will be ranked based on the parameters defined by you
• Finalize a decision: – After you have assessed the performance of different candidates, it is time to make a final decision. You can email the candidates with details related to the further selection process

Also, read: Some technical interview questions that you should ask potential software engineers when interviewing

Go beyond the technical: Soft skills the right talent needs

Now that you know how to ascertain the technical knowledge of your candidates, let’s take a look at some of the behavioral aspects of a candidate that sets them apart from the rest.

Communication

Communication skills are crucial while assessing the skills of your new hire. When working on a new project, developers must know how to start, the what, why, and how of the project for successful completion. And this happens when they ace at written and verbal communication well.

Oral communication: Imagine a developer reviewing a code for errors based on their manager’s instructions. Now, they have to explain where they found the error and how they are planning to improve it. This requires the developer to communicate their explanation in a simpler way that clarifies all the doubts.

Written communication: Beyond the documentation, your full-time developer needs to communicate over email and Slack messages. So, check how clearly they can communicate their written message.

To identify whether the developer you’re hiring is good at communication, do this:

• Set up scrum meetings with the hiring managers and observe the interaction style of the developer
• Get them to write emails and see how clear they are in their written communication

Also, read: Ask the right interview questions to reveal a candidate’s personality

Leadership

While working on an important project, your team needs to take the final call— sometimes without their team leader too. That’s where they need to have the in-built leadership trait in them to ease the work.

To analyze this trait while hiring your next developer, don’t *just* emphasize asking them technical questions but also ask them about their life experiences where they displayed ownership and leadership qualities. Listening to their responses, you can identify how good leadership skills they have.

Also, read: What Leadership Means To Us At HackerEarth

Skill assessment software solutions are designed to transform how hiring processes for technical profiles are completed. Armed with such solutions and ensuring to test candidates for culture fit, recruiters are in a better position to select the best candidates in an unbiased manner.

Remember, a mix of strong technical skills and interpersonal qualities is how you spot good candidates for your tech teams.

Some days ago, we polled our Twitter and LinkedIn community and asked them if they would ever take another job at the company that laid them off. This was the result.

The two years of the pandemic (2020-2022) saw 1100+ companies globally laying off employees. In the first 8 months of 2022, we reached half that number with 500+ companies announcing layoffs in tech in August. The number of employees who had lost their jobs globally stood at 72,900+ at the end of the month.

The massive wave of downsizing has hit every tech sector in the world. Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs have reduced their employee size, with BofA and JPMorgan saying they are being cautious. Meta, Twitter, Netflix, Noom, Wipro, and Oracle are just some of the tech names that have had to let go of their workforce. Nordstrom, Wells Fargo, Beyond Meat, Peloton – almost everyone has had to take these measures to preserve capital.

The question everyone is asking is – didn’t we learn anything during the pandemic?

COVID was a bonafide ‘black swan’ event that defied predictions. However, many economists have been talking about an impending recession for a while now. Despite the warning signals, most of the corporate world ended up repeating the hiring-and-firing pattern that has become the norm after macroeconomic events.

This is what normally happens during every downturn:

1. Companies go into ‘freeze’ mode. Hiring stops, budgets are cut, and perks are canceled.
2. If the company has not planned ahead, the hiring freeze very soon turns into a layoff.
3. When the market starts to rebuild, companies hire overzealously to make up for lost time and effort.
4. This overzealous hiring usually pays off in a V-shaped recession where the markets rebound sharply after a dip. Most recessions aren’t this forgiving, and companies that have hired in a rush may end up having to find ways to cut extra baggage.

Our post-COVID normal followed the same pattern as well. There is no denying that the use of technology boomed during the pandemic, causing every industry sector to adopt and focus on new tech tools.

The overwhelming consensus that ‘every company is now a tech company’ caused a sudden demand for developers. Even as we were all still coming to terms with the ‘new normal’, tech hiring (and hiring in general) burgeoned so much that top-tier talent was able to demand a 100% salary hike in an unprecedented candidate’s market.

All of which led us to this.

Tech hiring has undergone a sea change in the last two years. We have replaced outdated modes of assessment and interviews with new AI-based tools for efficiency. Remote work is the mantra we all live by. While the overall ‘work culture’ in many tech companies has become more empathetic and people-focused, this empathy has still not trickled into the way we handle layoffs in tech.

Also, read: Greeks to Geeks: What Plato Says About Bettering Your Team Culture

Airbnb garnered a lot of ‘awwws’ when CEO Brian Chesky wrote a heartfelt email to employees announcing, and apologizing, for the COVID-induced downsizing. The company even offered outplacement support, and its post-employment care strategy was among the most detailed and comprehensive that American companies were offering at that time.

Airbnb was an outlier. Most layoffs in tech that happened during COVID happened unexpectedly, without warning, and over a Zoom call or two. Reiterating what we stated in the beginning, trust issues are an undeniable outcome of such processes.

In the past decade, Nokia received a lot of praise among the developer community for its outplacement program ‘Bridge’, which was created in 2011 when the company was faced with the harsh choice of laying off employees. The program’s objective — and the metric that Nokia used to gauge success — was the percentage of employees who knew what their next step would be the day they left the company.

Nokia’s program showed the tech world that changes needn’t always be brutal and that employers have a responsibility to their employees and the communities they engage with. Using this philosophy of accountability to create processes for layoffs requires companies to be more transparent than they have ever been before, engage in constant communication with employees and local communities, and build a robust outplacement support system that does not just end with a severance package.

This need for outplacement support was called out loudly by our developer community, too.

So, what’s a better way for handling layoffs in tech?

Let’s begin by accepting that layoffs in tech are hard – for the employee who is losing their job, the recruiter or HR professional who is tasked with breaking the sad news to the team, and the company itself.

Layoffs hurt a company’s bottom line. Facts below:

• A 2012 University of Austin Texas review of 20 companies that had engaged in layoffs found that layoffs had a neutral to negative effect on stock prices in the days following the announcement.
• A related study says that the majority of companies that conducted layoffs were less profitable for up to three years after the layoff.
• A third study conducted by researchers from Auburn University, Baylor University, and the University of Texas shows that companies that conduct layoffs are twice as likely to file for bankruptcy in the next five years than companies that had found other ways to bolster profitability.

Also, read: Fear and Layoffs: How to Cope with Tech’s Uncertain Times

When we polled the recruiters in our community, they unequivocally said that hiring post a layoff is harder, as it affects the company’s branding and sourcing efforts.

So, if you are looking for alternative ways to handle layoffs in tech, or avoid getting to the point where you have to cut down your workforce, then we have some tips for you:

• Avoid reflex hiring: Most companies speed up hiring as soon as they see signs of market recovery. The term ‘hiring frenzy’ is real. Instead of going with the trend, make realistic projections for the team you want to build, and approach your hiring meticulously.
• Hire slightly below your projection: At any given time, the HackerEarth staff portfolio operates at about 90% of what we consider ‘full capacity’ or ‘ideal’. This isn’t understaffing. We have consciously decided to not hire a full house to give ourselves some breathing space and avoid a domino effect when the market changes rapidly, causing internal “accidents”.
• Invest in your team culture: If you’re not hiring specialists for every single role, then you need to staff your team with people who are willing to wear multiple hats and adapt quickly. Note, there is a thin line between hiring talent that is willing to diversify and handle multiple projects, versus overworking your team. If you tread this line carefully though, you can build a robust, multiskilled, and adaptive team that can weather market changes without breaking down.
• Invest in your team culture 2.0: Companies often refer to their workforce as a ‘valuable asset’ when things are going well. It’s ironic that you would let go of your most valuable possession in a heartbeat! Stay people-focused first and forever, so when you have to ask your teammates to step up during a crisis, they do not feel like they are being taken for granted.
• Explore all possible avenues: Job sharing (in which two people fill a single role and take home a 50% pay), furloughs, temporary pay cuts, salary rollbacks – there are many ways to budget and save money that do not involve mass layoffs.
• Plan for crisis: We all love the Google model of workplaces that offer every single amenity one can dream of (and maybe more), handsome bonuses, and whatnot. These are lovely add-ons to our work life, but they shouldn’t become addictions. When Better.com had to lay off about 900 people in 2021, the CEO admitted in an open call that the company could have done a better job of managing funds, which could have delayed – possibly prevented – the mass downsizing. The bottom line: manage your money Better.

It’s time to lay off the layoff!

My sorry attempt at wordplay aside, the way a company handles a moment of crisis says a lot about its overall culture. About 90% of the developers from HackerEarth’s community say that they would look at layoff measures as a reflection of the brand’s EQ. On the other hand, about 21% of the recruiters polled on our LinkedIn handle said that they think there’s ‘not much’ that can be done about layoffs. They are part and parcel of the job and should be treated as such.

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When Gartner surveyed more than 3,500 employees around the world in October 2021, about 65% said the pandemic had made them rethink the place that work should have in their life, and look for personal value and purpose at work. It stands to reason then that employees who think their bosses do not value them would want to look for opportunities elsewhere.

This is precisely the message you send to your employees – and the larger developer community – when you announce a mass layoff willy-nilly, and sans any support systems in place. That you don’t care. And that’s got to hurt your employer brand for sure.

Research shows that job cuts rarely help leaders achieve their goals. More often than not, layoffs are good only for short-term gain, and the cost savings are generally overshadowed by negative employer branding, loss of knowledge, reduced employee engagement, higher voluntary attrition, and reduced innovation. You might save in the short term, but most probably you will see a dip in profits, and your employee engagement, in the long run.

Here’s your chance to be a better employer and prove that the values of empathy and compassion we all talked about so much during COVID were not a ‘black swan’ event unto themselves. Here’s hoping you handle the storm differently than how everyone else is.