How to stand out and attract tech talent: Tips from HubSpot, Seen by Indeed and Wayfair

3 mins, 33 secs read time

Whether you’re enhancing your engineering team, doubling down on data scientists or adding to your AI acumen, hiring for technical roles can be tough. How do you stand out from the competition and get the attention of notoriously elusive tech talent? That was the question guiding our recent webinar, Talent marketing to the most competitive talent pool: Tech professionals.

Greenhouse’s Technical Recruiting Manager Katie DiCioccio moderated a discussion with HubSpot’s Product & Engineering Recruiter Gus Brewer, Seen by Indeed’s Head of Engineering Peter Zejda and Wayfair’s Head of Strategic Talent Sourcing & Employer Branding Elliott Garlock. The panelists shared insights on every aspect of talent marketing from sourcing and initial outreach to involving engineers in recruiting efforts and measuring their success with data and analytics.

We’ll share a few highlights from their conversation below, or you can click here to watch the webinar on demand.

Data drives employer branding at Wayfair

To kick off the conversation, Katie asks Elliott about Wayfair’s approach to talent branding. “What differentiates us is being obsessively focused with data. We think of employment branding as a data, technology and analytics issue,” says Elliott. “We measure, monitor and optimize everything.” That includes everything from Wayfair’s career website and social media posts to email outreach to candidates.

We think of employment branding as a data, technology and analytics issue.
–Elliott Garlock, Head of Strategic Talent Sourcing & Employer Branding, Wayfair

By collecting data and running tests, they can determine which type of content is more engaging and effective at converting prospects. For example, one recruiter recently created branded video, photographic and written content for a specific role and ran an A/B test against the regular content. They discovered that the hiring rate almost doubled for candidates who received the branded treatment and are now confident about investing more time and resources in creating branded content for other roles.

HubSpot’s evolving approach to attracting tech talent

There are two major parts of talent branding, says HubSpot’s Product & Engineering Recruiter Gus Brewer. You can’t ignore all the tools, analytics, content, and Glassdoor and job descriptions, but at the same time, “You have to build a great company that’s worth talking about.” HubSpot invests heavily in company culture, viewing it as “the flywheel behind the content.” A great culture is how you get people interested in your company.

You have to build a great company that’s worth talking about.
–Gus Brewer, Product & Engineering Recruiter, HubSpot

It’s important to acknowledge that your company culture is not stagnant – it will evolve over time, and as a result you may need to rethink your approach to recruiting. Now that HubSpot has grown to a global company of over 33,000 employees, for example, they’ve reconsidered the criteria they use to evaluate candidates. The recruiting team realized they can be less traditional with things like years of experience and previous job titles – they’re more interested in seeing what candidates can actually do.

Motivating engineers to participate in the recruiting process at Seen by Indeed

One of the easiest ways to get engineers involved in the recruiting process is by creating an employee referral program, says Peter. “If employees are happy and excited about work, they’re more willing to refer friends.” He has also seen great success with bringing engineers to university recruiting events and job fairs. Prospects get excited about “talking tech” with potential coworkers and learning more about what the job would involve.

If employees are happy and excited about work, they’re more willing to refer friends.
–Peter Zejda, Head of Engineering, Seen by Indeed

Peter also finds that engineers enjoy participating in roundups when it’s time to assess several candidates and make a hiring decision. Katie echoes this sentiment, sharing that the engineering team at Greenhouse will hold a retro for the entire hiring process. They look at the job description, interviews and all other aspects of the recruiting process to identify what worked and what didn’t. Since “it’s in their nature to want to tinker and improve processes, getting engineers involved in this way appeals to their strengths,” says Katie.

Want to hear more from our panelists, including their approaches to Diversity & Inclusion, attracting talent in different geographical areas and what to do when you’ve got a limited budget for talent branding? Tune in to the on-demand webinar here.