Bull sessions with Tech Recruiters. Rob van Elburg

A series of articles by Tech Recruiters for Tech Recruiters.

Please welcome our next interviewee Rob van Elburg and his recruiting hacks.

1. Short Bio

My name’s Rob van Elburg and I’m from the Netherlands. I started RAVE-cruitment — full service IT Recruitment — in 2000. Here I’m the Product Owner of in-house talent acquisition solutions. I’ve also been a.i. Global IT Recruiter at ING for the last 5 years. There I staff projects like the global advanced analytics center and fintech initiatives (such as Yolt & Payconiq). I’m passionate about the perfect match in the most difficult tech environment. Top level strategy sourcing to make a real strategy difference. For instance ING. That’s a bank, but even more an IT company with financial services. A huge change. Beside work I’m a proud dad of Aviana (5) and Joshua (2).

2. Your way to tech recruiting

I started tech recruiting in 1999. The awesome dotcom days, when everything was “New”. Wehkamp, Dutch most well known homeshopper at that period, needed IT engineers to set up a website. As for the global tech recruiting, I started it in 2004, travelling the world to create the best network. I worked a.i. for Wanadoo. In 3 years I had to replace 100 contractors for highly skilled migrants. In this period my network in Ukraine started.

3. What are the best websites/blogs to stay tuned in to?

I get 50 newsletters a day. IT, HR & Recruitment. I also have over 50 Google alerts: stakeholders, companies, CEO’s, thought leaders, etc. Every day I spend at least 2 hours reading and screening all this stuff. I can’t even see that as work. It gives me more fun than watching Temptation Island or something. Computerworld, Banktech, Werf& (Dutch), BusinessInsider, TechСrunch and VentureBeat.

4. Tools you use to facilitate the hiring/sourcing process

To be honest, I’m a tech recruiter, but I don’t have a specific recruitment tech fetish. Every day there’s something new “that will change tech recruiting forever”. Most of such tools disappear in the Deadpool one year later. So I use a lot of the regular stuff — Google, Outlook, LinkedIn, GitHub, Slack, StackOverflow, Codility, etc. Do you know that 75% of all IT hiring managers are still using a separate Excel sheet for their own recruitment process? I’m still pissed off the way that LinkedIn killed CheckIn. That was an awesome tool I really liked and used. I do like Textkernel semantic search solution as well. And one of these days I’ll start a pilot with Recruitz.io. Recruitment tools are important. But don’t overrate it. Hiring managers want hires. And it doesn’t matter how you find them… via boolean search, smart algorithms, trendy events, or being drunk in a nerd pub.

5. Do you keep in touch with your ex-candidates?

Absolutely. Of course, everyone I speak, mail, chat or match is a LinkedIn connection. Every day I post jobs & info via the status update. Also I have a Top 1000 VIP list. This group I try to follow, and to stay in touch as close as possible.

6. Is it a must to separate your business and personal social accounts?

Global Tech Recruitment is a 24/7/365 job. It’s a continuous mix between personal and business. Each can make one another better and stronger. The challenge is to find the right work-life balance. Since I’m a dad that’s much easier.

7. What are your favorite candidate sourcing channels? Why?

I find everything via Google, so also People. I think LinkedIn is still hot. I also use StackOverflow and follow Kaggle as well to source awesome Data Scientists. That was a smart move from Google to buy this platform. Just wondering…Who’s going to buy Codility? Awesome (100% score) top engineers in their database!

8. What makes a recruiter technical? Is the only prefix ‘tech’ enough?

Once I was at the Hadoop Summit. I had a chat with an engineer and after 30 minutes he asked me if I was “Tech or HR”? He was confused cause I knew about Hadoop. I guess that makes a Recruiter Technical. Tech Recruitment is a specialism. You have to accept that in the first place. Your ambition should be a real bridge between an engineer and a hiring manager. More than any other HR or general Recruiter can or will ever be.

9. What challenges do you see in the modern tech recruitment world?

In IT everything is Agile these days. Sprints in 2 weeks. As a modern tech recruiter you have to staff this. Perm, Temp, long period, short period, outsource, in-house, remote, local or global. Your skills, drive, network and knowledge need this 2 week sprints engagement. Simple, because your IT business wants and needs this more and more.

10. Your piece of advice for young/future IT hunters

Do IT! You’ll love it. It’s an awesome job with very smart people, continuously improvements and the most challenging developments. Currently I’m recruiting for a company which wants to kill cash and change it for the digital wallet. How cool is that?

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