Best Site to Source Developers (Poll Results)

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Last week, I ran a poll on LinkedIn- “Which site, do you think, is the best for sourcing Software Developers?” which attracted a massive 60K+ views and 1,400 votes.

It was a bit of a trick question. I had hoped to facilitate a discussion on combining sites for sourcing – and so it did (see the comments). Other sites were suggested, including Twitter. But most people just voted.

While the poll was intended for Technical Recruiters, it attracted Developers themselves (mostly voting for LinkedIn!) and others working in Tech. The “Other” votes included some folks who sell sourcing software 🙂

Here is a word cloud of the participants’ Headlines:

So – “which site is the best?” If I were to choose only one site, that would be LinkedIn. It is common sense: LinkedIn shows Software Developers’ job titles, companies, and years of experience and at the company. In comparison, Github does not have a field for job titles and few have filled out the company field. Stackoverflow and Twitter have free-form bios rarely disclosing the necessary info to prequalify someone for reaching out.

The fruitful approach is combining data across sites. This allows you to find prospects who will not be found on any (one) site – LinkedIn included.

As an example, someone who is popular and active on Github (but does not tell us where they work) with a “shallow” LinkedIn profile where they did not even mention programming languages, can only be identified through cross-referencing. And if you get their info from a “code authors” file, all you have is the name and email (plus you know that they worked on the project).

People aggregators like Amazing Hiring “pre-cross-reference” professional profiles for us ahead of time. That provides a productivity boost and ease of use – and I highly recommend trying them!

However, information in databases:

  1. gets outdated
  2. may not have the data for your particular needs or locations (that you can check during a trial).

You can do some “live” cross-referencing for free, targeting your requirements, and will pull today’s data. Check out the recent posts Who Are You? The Art of Cross-Referencing, Github Example, and How to Collect and Cross-Reference All Emails in Search Results for some ideas.

Our Scraping webinar next week will help if you want to dig deeper into cross-referencing – check it out!

 

 

 

 

 

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