As 2019 wraps itself up into a neat bow, your start-up recruitment strategy for 2020 begins in earnest. The plans for your recruitment activities include such highlights as google marketing, headhunting, LinkedIn jobs, and technology career job fairs.
Wait, did I just read that? Career job fairs?
Job fairs can be an excellent way to find and hire top talent – especially technology talent. Candidates that are technically savvy, like Full Stack Developers, or Ruby on Rails developers, are looking to meet Canada’s newest tech start-ups. Moreover, they’re looking to see who can offer the best combination of career advancement and work/life balance.
Job fairs are also a reminder that today’s recruitment market is a buyer’s market. Candidates have an abundance of choice at a job fair; therefore, businesses have to be engaging enough to win over hearts and minds. Start-ups take this especially to heart because they know that any one of these candidates could be the difference maker in their development teams.
First things first – consider your booth. It may be early, but you should plan now to have the most attractive booth at the job fair. After all, your booth truly is the first impression that a candidate has of your start-up. Make that impression count!
Once you have the attention of a top-tier talent, the real work begins. Candidates are advocates for themselves; therefore, they have questions about your start-up and you need to have answers.
Know Your Audience
When speaking to candidates at a job fair, don’t spend the limited time you have with them talking about your start-up and its offering. Instead, ask candidates about their most pressing needs. Technology candidates often have a wide variety of interests that include career advancement and remote work opportunities, among others. Have honest and real conversations with technology candidates about how your start-up can help amplify their careers while simultaneously meeting their most pressing needs.
Don’t Use Valuable Meeting Time with Long-Form Applications
Talk about a downer. A top-tier technology candidate graduating from the most celebrated computer science program in the country has found your booth to be attractive enough to spend their valuable time with. Now, you bog that candidate down with mindless paperwork. Why?
Frankly, you’ll have time later in the recruitment cycle to mine for more data on your choice technology candidates. In the interim, talk to your candidates and leave a lasting impression!
Be Prepared
As a recruiter, you need to know the open technology jobs in your organization. In fact, you’ll need to commit them to memory as if your career depended on it. Candidates will have questions about the jobs and their requirements. Please know your stuff!
Sell the Company
Don’t read the boilerplate text that’s available on your start-up website. Instead, talk about your start-up by offering real-life examples of people’s experiences working with you. The more you can link your story to the story of your candidate, the easier it will be to find success hiring coveted technology talent.
At ITS Global, we invest in business growth by effectively implementing talent acquisition programs that allow companies to scale their growth and be a success. Let’s meet to discuss further – coffees on us! You can reach out to us at 416-689-4653 or email Ross Cadastre at [email protected] to schedule a confidential free meeting today.