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Top 2020 technical recruiting trends and predictions from the experts

Did you know only 0.33% of people know how to code?

It’s pretty clear that the technical recruiting industry is highly competitive. Candidates have options – which means organizations need to be ahead of the top technical recruiting trends to attract and hire the best talent out there. 

That’s why we wanted to ask a few technical talent acquisition experts their thoughts on 2020 technical recruiting trends and predictions. 

We’re beyond excited to share these expert’s answers on three key questions: 

  • Do you believe resumes and LinkedIn are still valuable sources for candidate’s skills?
  • What percentage of companies will have a technical assessment test in their interview process in 2020? 
  • What’s your #1 prediction for technical recruiting in 2020? 

Brianna Rooney, CEO & Founder of Techees.com

Brianna has worked in technical recruiting for the last twelve years and recently found Techees.com, a recruiting site for both companies and individuals. 

She believes “Resumes are being used just as much in tech as they were before. The only difference is LinkedIn spits out the resume in a nice format for you. You don’t need to have two different docs. Companies will always look at a LinkedIn right after they see the resume.”

Most organizations do use LinkedIn for recruiting. We know top engineers who get dozens of InMail messages every week from technical recruiters, which is why it’s still critical to have a strong LinkedIn presence, although we believe the hiring process shouldn’t necessarily start here. 

“In 2020, being good at tech recruiting is going to become even more important. The demand in tech is stronger than ever and the competition over good engineers is the fiercest it’s been. 2020 will continue down this path. Tech companies can’t hire without a strong recruiting team and good external recruiters. There are too many moving parts to get it done quickly. Therefore, resumes and/or LinkedIn will need to be extra clear about what they specialize in and what they want to do in 2020. There is no time to read in between the lines.” 

“I think companies will start to abandon their own in-house tests and go with ones already made and ready to be graded by an outside source. It’s very cost effective and cuts down on time. Engineers time is far too valuable to constantly be in interview mode. Hiring in the tech sector is already extremely costly. Taking their engineers away from production makes it even harder and more expensive.” 

Organizations should be using outside expertise to ensure they don’t introduce bias into their assessments and can actually measure skills across the entire candidate pool. Save time, reduce bias, and create a powerful recruiting machine by putting skill-based assessments at the top of your funnel.

“All too often we see companies just trying to be fast and not thorough. You need to find that balance. Engineers have too many options to not have a thoughtful process.” We couldn’t have said it better. Your technical hiring process needs to not only be optimized for your organization, but for your candidates. 

Brianna stated her “Number one tech recruiting prediction in 2020 is Diversity recruiting will continue to have huge importance and priority. Only 3% of the Fortune 500 companies currently report their diversity numbers. There is a lot of pressure for that to change. I predict in 2020, recruiters will start to get certified in diversity and inclusion. Too often I see and hear the wrong way to go about it. It’s time everyone get training.”

Cheers to that, Brianna! 

Alex Sokolov, Senior Software Engineering Manager at iTechArt Group

“Resumes are like a business card that introduces you to a candidate whereas their LinkedIn profile is more like an elevator pitch.” 

That’s a very interesting thought. How do you use your resume versus your LinkedIn profile? Are they differentiated enough?

“LinkedIn gives the candidate a way to show more of their personality and include “social proof” with recommendations from others as well as show any content they have published that demonstrates expertise in their field. The most important thing for both resumes and LinkedIn profiles is that they highlight achievements and results rather than just where they worked and when.” 

We couldn’t agree more! Proxies like title, company name, and education don’t tell recruiters what someone actually accomplished and the technical skills a candidate possesses.

“I think the use of technical skills assessment testing will grow into a standard procedure for all hiring practices. In fact, I recently read TalentBoard’s research report stating that 82% of companies now use assessment tests as part of their overall hiring process.”

“Technical-based assessments really help to weed out the candidates that do not have the level of technical skills we’re looking for. They help in the pre-screening process and save both the HR team and me a lot of time and effort when it comes to interviewing. This is especially helpful when we are looking for a developer with a very specific set of skills or a certain type of programming language.”

That’s the power of starting with assessments, not resumes! Alex has highlighted the reason we believe every organization should #GoBeyondResumes! 

 “I think recruiters in 2020 will start to leverage more advancing technologies such as big data, AI, machine learning, chatbots and more and incorporate all of these into their pre-screening, hiring, and onboarding processes.

“Also, the use of AI-enhanced “personality” tests will become more standard as they help determine how the candidate will fit in with the culture of the company in addition to skills testing that shows how qualified they are. Finding the perfect teammate is just as important as finding the perfect candidate.”

We’re big believers that you should start with technical, skill-based assessments but not put all your eggs in one basket. Ensuring that a candidate will be a good team player, while making sure you’re not just hiring carbon copies of the same individuals. 

Martin Luenendonk, Co-founder of Cleverism.com

“Many people have a profile on LinkedIn, but why do we contact only some? The answer
is quite simple — because of their well maintained and self-explanatory profile. So, candidates should not only create a profile on LinkedIn but should also make it optimized and add the desired information about their academics, career, and interests.”

“It is crucial for us to test the technical knowledge of employees before hiring them. In 2020, I believe 90% of the software houses will conduct these tests for mid or entry-level jobs.”

We believe that all positions should start with a skill-based assessment! 

In terms of the number one prediction for 2020? Martin knows it’s all about going beyond proxies, especially education.

“Companies will be hunting individuals with required skills instead of degrees. This degree trend will be diminished soon. It is an era of online learning. Platforms like Udemy, Udacity, Coursera, and Code Academy, etc. have made professional learning easy for everyone. People can enhance their skills easily and can land good jobs in the IT sector.”

We’re in the background snapping our fingers and clapping our hands at this statement. Education has become democratized thanks to the internet and degrees will become less important while having the real skills will become critical.

Patrick Algrim, Founder of Algrim.co 

“Will LinkedIn and resumes be a valuable resource for understanding a candidate’s skills? No. They never were, either. GitHub and open source code contributions on behalf of that engineer will always be the way to test and see their skills. You can see what types of code languages they contributed to and what those contributions were. This is tremendously helpful.” 

We believe that Github and other code repositories are a great way to get insights into a candidate’s previous experience and passion projects. However, this type of skill assessment is only accessible to hiring managers and very small percentage of developers have any open source repositories. In order to fix recruiting at scale we need metrics that are accessible to recruiters who might not necessarily be able to read, understand or evaluate someone’s code.

“I predict nearly all organizations will implement skill-based assessments. Most organizations already do, but it usually takes place in whiteboard sessions. The prediction will be that a majority of companies will move to digital assessments to make this process faster and save employee time.” 

Patrick kept his top hiring trend and prediction pretty simple, “More hiring from websites like Kahn Academy and other dev boot camp style companies.”

Sarah Doughty, Director of Recruitment at TalentLab

“There’s no doubt that resumes will continue to be crucial. There has been much doomsaying over the last five years about the end of resumes, but in reality, it’s still the most efficient way of detailing your professional experiences for potential employers. I haven’t personally seen a decline in the use of resumes, and I would wager that the majority of companies will expect to see a resume from an interested candidate in 2020. While creative ideas like videos or websites will help set a candidate apart, those situations will continue to be the exception, not the rule.” 

That’s an interesting phase; the exception, not the rule. What ways can candidates stand out in the interview process? Would you appreciate if someone created a video resume when your job posting didn’t require it? What about those stories of pretending to be a pizza delivery person to get in front of the boss?

“LinkedIn is harder to gauge. In my opinion, the quality of the LinkedIn platform has declined over the last few years, but I believe that without a viable alternative option, corporate and agency recruiters will continue to use LinkedIn as their core tool. Candidates looking to improve their careers will naturally gravitate to the platform where they will reach the largest audience of recruiters and hiring managers. All that considered, I believe LinkedIn will continue to be the dominate career platform throughout 2020, but we could see its decline over the next few years if they fail to continue to engage with key demographics. It’s early to determine how much Gen Z will engage with the platform as they mature into their careers, which I believe will ultimately decide its fate.” 

Can you imagine TikTok resumes?

“Technical assessments will continue to be included in the majority of interview processes in 2020. However, the trend is moving towards more collaborative problem-solving formats rather than traditional academic testing style. We have seen an increase in collaborative white-boarding sessions included in interviews or online coding tests where interviewers can interact with the candidate during the test to provide real-time feedback on choices. Savvy employers are aware that technical work is not done in a vacuum, so creating unrealistic testing ecosystems where candidates aren’t able to rely on colleagues or resources is not useful for gauging their potential job performance.” 

Interesting focus on collaborative problem solving!

“My number one prediction for technical recruitment in 2020 will be a move away from rigid requirements, such as a certain university program or experience coding with a specific language. We are seeing a growing trend of companies willing to consider candidates with coding boot camp or non-academic technical experience so long as they have the right functional skills. The breakneck speed of the industry evolution means that the future will be about embracing change and learning to adapt. Employers have begun to realize that finding great technical talent is less about what a person knows today and more about what they can learn tomorrow.” 

That last sentence has us giving a slow clap, especially for candidates who just graduated. If someone can learn, they can do anything. If they have a fixed mindset and a fixed skillset, it will be difficult to ride the waves of the rapidly transforming engineering environment.

Pete Sosnowski, Head of HR and Co-Founder at Zety

“Resumes and LinkedIn profiles are good sources to learn about the candidate’s background and experience, but they certainly don’t convey necessary information regarding a candidate’s technical skills. So although these would remain necessary in applying for tech jobs, they will not be sufficient on their own.”

Yes, yes, yes!

“At this stage, nearly every company out there hiring for technical positions implements technical assessment tests in the recruitment process. You see, you can’t hire a developer without checking how he/she handles code writing. And the technical task is the only way to find that out. I’d say in 2020, pretty much 100 % of companies (that think of employing professionals and maintaining employees’ retention) will use technical assessment tests in hiring for tech roles. It’s hard to say what percentage of these companies use available software platforms to test candidates, but this trend is definitely on the rise too.”

Many organizations are still using their own tests or whiteboarding sessions to judge a candidate’s skills. We believe there are better ways to measure skills while ensuring you reduce bias, save time, and create a friendly candidate experience than these traditional assessment methods. 

“More and more tech recruiters will use professional software platforms that help assess candidates’ skills by testing their code and other tech skills online. A larger number of companies will also engage in organizing in-house and online hackathons. Hackathons let recruiters test candidates’ programming skills on a real project while observing their approach to solving tasks, how they react to stress, and cooperate with peers (and even the best personality tests will not replace this!).” 

This is the first time we’ve heard hackathons be mentioned. Hackathons create a fun, learning-first environment for candidates and can be implemented without even mentioning that they’re recruiting tools.However, they typically attract younger, junior candidates who have the time to spare on free events like these.

What do you believe are the top hiring trends and predictions for 2020?

You’ve heard from a handful of talent acquisition experts. So… what are your thoughts on resumes, LinkedIn, coding assessments, and overall hiring predictions for 2020? 

Nearly everyone mentioned, in one way or another, our core belief: #GoBeyondResumes. While they have different opinions on what that looks like, it’s pretty clear that LinkedIn or resumes only paint half the picture needed, especially for hiring technical talent. 

We’d love to hear your thoughts about hiring trends and predictions for 2020. Let us know by shouting us out on LinkedIn and using the hashtag #GoBeyondResumes.