How to find a technical recruiter on LinkedIn in 2022

Our favorite tips and best practices for finding the all-star technical recruiter you need on LinkedIn.

May 5, 2022

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Min Read

If you’re a company looking for top-tier technical talent to join your team now and into the future, there’s a good chance you’re also on the hunt for a rockstar technical recruiter. You know, someone to bring in-house who can help you address the challenge of your burgeoning technical recruiting demands with exclusive focus.

Given how today’s tech job market is equal parts wildly exciting and intensely challenging, we get it:

The Great Resignation is still making headlines as record numbers of professionals across all industries are leaving their current roles.
In the tech job market specifically, the number of job postings for technical roles almost doubled in 2021, an increase almost exclusively attributed to startups, public, unicorn, and other types of companies.
As if hiring for tech talent wasn’t already hard enough before the pandemic, the increase in demand for technical talent has been met with an inverse trend – a 25% contraction in the number of technical professionals applying for jobs.

Building out technical teams that move the world forward is not easy in today’s climate.

So, for those of you who need to hire a technical recruiter in-house as part of your growth plan and you think LinkedIn may be a great way for you to find them, stick around. We’ll arm you with the knowledge and best practices you need to find who you’re looking for on LinkedIn.

The case for using LinkedIn to find your technical recruiter

When you’re looking for great humans to join your team (no matter the role), yes, you absolutely should use LinkedIn.

This is even more true when you’re talking about recruiters. Out of any professional on the platform (maybe outside of sales and marketing), recruiters spend countless hours on LinkedIn looking for the candidates they need for their companies.

We’d even say that if a currently working recruiter isn’t actively on LinkedIn, it’s a red flag; they should be very engaged on the platform as part of their job.

Do you need to have a live job posting to use LinkedIn?

Having a job description published publicly is tremendously valuable. A well-written job description not only establishes credibility, it also demonstrates to others you are serious about finding someone to fill the role, so having one ready should be a priority.

At the very least, however, you should have available some documentation around what the role will entail, or be able to speak to those expectations and responsibilities with clarity in conversation with potential candidates.

👉 Related: How to write better job descriptions

If you’re a founder, C-suite executive, or a VP in your company, you may have an added advantage if you’re doing the outreach on your own. As someone at a higher position within your company, you can reach out to potential technical recruiting candidates directly with more informal messaging because who you are speaks volumes.

With some backstory and context around your current goals, needs, and challenges, you can ask if someone would be open to a 20-minute call about your technical recruiting position without also having to send over a link to a published job description.

For example:

Hi (name),

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Repurpose, a startup focused on disrupting how the world approaches recycling through innovative technology and machine learning. We have exciting growth plans for the next couple of years and have raised a significant amount of capital from investors like __ to bring our vision to life.

A key part of this plan is to build out a team of top-tier engineers, developers, and other technical players, and I am looking for an experienced technical recruiter to help lead this effort, and you’re exactly the type of person we're looking for. Your experience at (XYZ) doing (ABC defining details) are the type of accomplishments we hope to achieve in the coming months. I’m confident you can make a huge impact here.

Would you be interested in an informal 20-minute conversation to discuss this opportunity further?

Thanks,

John Doe
CEO and co-founder, Repurpose

To a recruiter, that approach coming directly from a company leader will likely seem friendlier, more interesting, and open-ended. On top of that, recruiters know better than anyone else that often, the best positions are filled through direct outreach before someone ever has the chance to take a job description public.

Still, keep in mind that to go forward without a job description increases your risk of hiring the wrong person. In the absence of documented responsibilities, expectations, and requirements, you are more likely to rely on faulty, intangible criteria for hiring.

Best practices for recruiting on LinkedIn

The best way to find the right technical recruiter for you is not to fire up LinkedIn and type “recruiter” in the search bar. You’ll end up with millions of results from tons of different industries, and virtually all of them will be wrong for you.

Instead, here are a few tips to help you get started:

Target the companies you would love for your ideal technical recruiter to be coming from. Start with companies you respect or high-growth companies that are similar to yours. (Yes, your success in finding a technical recruiter will likely involve a bit of light “theft” in the form of poaching a technical recruiter from another company.)
Don’t be afraid to ask around within your network. For example, does anyone you know have someone–a friend or colleague who may be interested in a new technical recruiting opportunity?
Personalize your outreach messages as much as possible based on someone’s profile and why you think they might be a great fit for at least an initial conversation about the role you’re trying to fill.
If you want to make your message stand out, use tools like Vidyard’s Chrome Extension or Wistia’s Soapbox to create a personalized video message to accompany your outreach, and make sure to include “(X-min video)” as part of your message’s subject line. Video helps to increase engagement with cold outreach of any kind.
Make your search more effective on LinkedIn with boolean search. Boolean searching empowers you to combine specific keywords with clarifying operators like AND, NOT, or OR in your searches. It can also handle quoted searches and parentheticals to perform a complex search.

Remember, the best recruiters, technical or otherwise, understand how critical it is to meet the people you’re looking for where they are. So, if you’re looking for a technical recruiter, rest assured LinkedIn is definitely where you want to be. And with the right strategic approach, you’ll be building out your technical dream team in no time.