How to Find Experienced Software Developers for Senior Roles

If you’re struggling to find software developers with enough experience to fill your senior roles, then you’re not alone. According to Bitkom, 41% of employers can’t fill a tech position due to the general lack of professional qualifications in the market.

To fill the open senior position sooner than the industry average of 7 months, you’ll want to stand out from the crowd.

And to do that, you need to find the unique appeal of your company/ open role (or both!) and find the right medium to convey that message to suitable candidates.

In this article, we’ll provide you with some ideas on how to approach this challenge and understand:

• Where and how to find experienced developers
• How to promote your brand and your post to experienced developers
• How to communicate with senior software developers

Where to find experienced software developers

There are so many tech professionals on the market, yet it can be hard to find where the senior staff you’re looking for are hiding. There are several reasons why. First and foremost, the senior developer you want to hire most likely already has a job. If they’re good, they’re not going to be unemployed.

That means you need to find a way to get in touch with devs who - even if they already have a good position - are still looking around and keeping their eyes open for the next opportunity.

How to find senior devs open to new opportunities

Searching through LinkedIn or other social channels to find suitable talent is hard work. The same is true of expanding your networks. It takes a lot of time and effort to, e.g., attend an industry conference. And even then, the contacts you gather may not be interested in new opportunities.

It’s much more rewarding to focus on an audience that is qualified and engaged. This is where Honeypot can make a difference. All candidates active on Honeypot are interested in new job opportunities.

Reverse recruitment using Honeypot

Reverse recruitment is an alternative approach to searching for top tech talents that can be both efficient and inexpensive. As the name suggests, it is a technique where the recruiter is proactive in seeking out candidates and tailoring their approach to each individual.

The trick is, this approach works best when you can find the right people to target. Devs listed on Honeypot have been pre-screened with a CV check, interview, and coding test. This means you can search through candidates and only choose those with relevant experience and technical abilities. You can also read the notes from a Talent Success Adviser, who gave honest feedback on the candidate from a pre-screening video call.

With a pre-filtered source of quality devs, you can afford to devote more time to write personalized messages to each developer. As you are reading through their profile you’ll be able to shape your approach to acquire the senior developer you are looking for.

How to sell your job opening to senior developers

Once you’ve managed to get in touch with senior developers, the next task is to make them an interesting offer. Something that has a unique appeal, not just in terms of an increased salary, but also because of the unique qualities of your company and of the position being advertised.

Get your dev team to help you sell the brand

Your employees should be your best brand ambassadors and treating them well is a good start to becoming - and remaining - a successful recruiter.

Once you’ve won their loyalty, why not engage them directly in promoting the brand? In the end, it’s in their interest to work with the most experienced software engineers, so let them know you want their help.

Getting them to post on kununu or incentivizing them to promote to their networks is just the start. Why not have your devs help in creating promotional content? Get them to voice their experiences and share them directly with future candidates through blogs, videos, and social posts. This can be a development opportunity for your staff and a great way of advertising the qualities of a great team. Check out .cult to see lots of inspiring stories told by developers for developers.

Make your job opening uniquely appealing

It’s a buyers’ market, so you need to make your offer uniquely appealing to the right candidate. What is the strongest and most interesting thing about the job you are looking to fill? What is the feature that is unusual or that is likely to offer an additional appeal to candidates already working in similar roles? Find the unique quality of the job and focus on that. Here are some ideas:

• Is the job and/ or the team leading in a specific field?
• Is it a learning opportunity for a senior dev currently working in a different field?
• Is the job especially difficult? Does it pose a real challenge that might whet the appetite of an ambitious dev, feeling a bit bored and comfortable elsewhere?
• Is it a chance to manage a larger team and get support in that transition?

Discuss this with the hiring manager and the team lead and try to get to the very essence of what it is about the job that has a unique appeal.

How to communicate with experienced software developers (getting the tone right).

Avoid ‘fluffy’ language or corporate speak

A lot of tech professionals self-identify as no-nonsense, anti-establishment, and anti-corporate. So try and speak their language, be transparent, and focus on the nuts and bolts of the job. Avoid grandiose statements about how your company is shaping a better future for all of us (unless it really is!).

Know what you are talking about

By the same token, senior software engineers tend not to suffer fools gladly. Consider them as tech wizzes who want to be inspired by the prospect of meeting like-minded, inspirational individuals in your organization. So try and have the concrete facts at your fingertips and get other team members involved as soon as possible.

• Make sure you know and understand the details of the role before you pick up the phone (or send a message) to a candidate
• Progress promising candidates to speak to the team lead as soon as possible
• Allow the candidate to meet their potential future colleagues and get insights about day-to-day work

Get help from the experts

Let Honeypot be your expert partner, helping you find and win the tech talents for your vacant positions.