Top Free Ways To Recruit Developers — Part 1 🧑🚀
In this series you’ll learn how to scale manual search & outreach into a fast, automated process — with as little spending as possible.
There are more than a few effective ways to find talented developers, such as:
- Searching through LinkedIn — very effective, but manual
- Searching through GitHub/GitLab profiles
- Searching in programming groups on social media
Today we’ll start with “Searching through LinkedIn,” but not the way you think.
Recruiting developers using LinkedIn
Before reaching out to people, make sure you already know:
- Which technologies/skills are a must? e.g. React.js, Python, Angular.js
- Are you looking for junior or senior developers?
- What’s the relevant location?
Next — go to the Google Workspace Marketplace and search for “HR Candidate Search”, then click Install (it’s free to use).
After installation, open Google Sheets and look in the “Add-ons” menu — you should see it there. Open the sidebar (almost there!).
Now we’re ready for business — think about:
- Good titles/keywords — try more than one
- Location
- How many profiles you want to get
Tip: some jobs go by several names — for example, Data Scientist = AI Developer = ML Engineer. To cover all bases, search for each one.
After clicking “Search Candidates” you should see, within seconds, all the results with a picture, a name and more in your sheet.
A few more tips to optimize the process
- Search for a general title plus a specific title (e.g. “Frontend Developer” + “React Developer”) to get better results.
Not sure how to phrase it? Check LinkedIn Jobs and look up a term like “React” — you’ll quickly find the specific term people use.
- Don’t search in too specific a location — people don’t write their neighborhood in their LinkedIn profile 😉
What’s next?
At this point you can connect with people and approach them one by one.
There are also automated ways to do that too — we’ll cover those in the next parts of this series.