Bull sessions with Tech Recruiters. Joe Burridge
A series of articles by Tech Recruiters for Tech Recruiters.
Please welcome our next interviewee Joe Burridge and his recruiting hacks.
1. Short Bio
My name’s Joe Burridge, I currently live in London and am a Senior Recruiter for Hudl. I’m passionate about video games, burgers and triathlons (in that order). Interesting fact about me? I dabble in competitive eating, one of my favourite challenges included eating 7 foot long hotdogs in under 10 minutes. Nice.
2. Your social links
3. Your way to tech recruiting
I graduated in 2012 with a BA Philosophy from Cardiff University and went straight into tech recruiting on the agency side. When I graduated all I knew was that I wanted a people focused role in the tech industry. I looked around at software sales, HR and eventually discovered recruiting. I love my career and I’m glad that I figured out what my passions are early on.
4. What are the best websites/blogs to stay tuned in to?
Having a strong network that shares interesting books and articles is essential to keeping up with the industry. Very often a great article comes from a lesser known source that you may not have discovered on your own.
Some of the regular places I go to find relevant content are: LinkedIn Talent Blog, TechCrunch, Guardian Tech, Recruitment Buzz and searching Medium for recruiting or HR articles.
5. Tools you use to facilitate the hiring/sourcing process
At present, we use Greenhouse for our entire hiring process but also Travefy to make our final interview itinerary’s look sharp. For sourcing, we use Entelo as it provides a large net of candidates due to it being a data aggregator. Much better for those harder to find candidates, i.e. those who don’t have LinkedIn (what?!).
6. Do you keep in touch with your ex-candidates?
It really depends on the circumstance of why they’re an ex-candidate. Honestly, if they’re not a culture fit then I don’t. If they’re a great culture fit and I think they’re skills could fit into the business in the future, then I set reminders to keep in touch every 3 months. Again, it depends on the candidate and the situation.
7. Is it a must to separate your business and personal social accounts?
I currently use LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Medium and my own blog for both work and personal. I really don’t mind mixing professional with personal on social media, showing what you do outside of work hours is more human hence more interesting. Getting the right balance is certainly trial and error and not every platform will have the same tone, for example, I rarely make personal posts on LinkedIn whereas Instagram I do all the time.
8. What are your favorite candidate sourcing channels? Why?
For anything on the business side (sales, marketing, support, business development, operations, etc.), I find LinkedIn to still be the best here. As mentioned before, I use Entelo which a large majority of the time can pull an email from somewhere, I find emails to be so much more effective than messages on social channels. Outside of that, it’s about knowing the industry for the role you’re hiring for. For example, discovering intriguing portfolios on Dribbble and Behance for Designers, or finding Developers who take pride in their reputation on Stack Overflow.
9. What makes a recruiter technical? Is the only prefix ‘tech’ enough?
I think it’s fairly simple, a tech recruiter must be able to hire technical roles. For software companies, a tech recruiter must be able to hire all product development roles with ease. That includes understanding the concepts, methodologies, tools, programming languages, platforms etc. that the business and industry uses so you can find, attract and assess talent effectively.
10. What challenges do you see in the modern tech recruitment world?
Due to the lack of technical skills available it’s a candidate lead market. The competition for talent, or should I say the War For Talent, is high. The best companies understand that investing in their employees (work environment, training, culture, benefits/perks, career progression etc.) and then promoting their unique culture is one of the best ways to attract talent.
11. Your piece of advice for young/future IT hunters
There are many reasons to get into tech recruiting, but the 2 reasons that made me start a career in tech recruiting are the same 2 keeping me here. I’m passionate about technology and love working with people. Does a career in technology recruitment line up with your passions?
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