Software Developers don’t like IT Recruiters (Software Engineering recruiters); they chase us, they spam us, they stalk at us.
However, there are some recruiters out there doing a great job. The thing is that once you get so many unrequested contact requests then you start feeling harassed and you tend to don’t like them as a group of professionals.
But, what if you find yourself in a position where your would like a change in your career? Then you should definitely be actively looking at job boards where you can find all offers in your location (Something like what Startup Jobs BCN does in Barcelona) but you should also be more open to recruiters.
Well, to be honest, I removed all my software development skills like Obj-C programming for iOS and OSX and also my projects in Rails from my linkedin profile just to avoid recruiters… And it works!
But the crude reality is that getting chased by recruiters is better than chasing jobs because it makes you feel loved. Who doesn’t like that? But seriously, there are also two practical reasons for getting the job offers inbound:
- It puts you in a better negotiation position (i.e. to negotiate your salary).
- You will be talking with companies that might be interested in Visa sponsorship you (which might be interesting if you are in a different country that the company offering the job).
So, if you are in the situation where you want to change your job, the more recruiters that get to contact you, the more chances you have to receive good offers.
This might sound quite obvious, but it’s worth remembering that ALL recruiters use Linkedin to seek candidates. So you should be updating your professional profile. But, first you need to understand how recruiters use Linkedin to find you.
We’ve been conducting interviews with high profile IT recruiters in the last weeks where they showed us in person how they use Linkedin to search for candidates. More or less the process goes like this:
First they extract all the relevant technical skills as keywords from the job opening. May it be the keyword HTML or Reactjs. It doesnt’t matter, all skills have the same importance for recruiters. Sometimes they use OR/AND/NOT operands to express “php or php5” but the query for skills doesn’t get any more complex than that.
Once they have their keyword list they paste it either in Google (with site:linkedin modifier) or directly in Linkedin to search for the perfect candidate who matches the keywords query.
But, what happens if you don’t have HTML and in the recruiters keyword list appeared this keyword? Then you either won’t appear or if you do you will be way down the profiles list.
So, what I recommend you is to update your linkedin to show all your skills (even if they might not seem to add value to your profile like HTML). By doing so you will increase the number of recruiters bothering you, but you will also receive more job offers that might be of your interest.
Your last position
Are you a software developer and want to know what salaries to expect in this companies? Check our Software Developers Salary Guide in Barcelona.
Want to recycle your skills? What technologies should you learn? Check our article about the Obsolescence in Software Engineering careers.
Want to know which startups are growing faster? Check Hot Startups hiring in Barcelona post.