Engineering and IT recruiting is a numbers game until it isn’t. You can write the best job description, optimise every last keyword, and even, in theory, have the best sounding project of all time, and still loose out on the best candidates at all, just for the fact that you never found a way to contact them. But when you’re up against more senior engineers, the ones who aren’t looking at job boards, knowing how to find people at specific companies is usually the difference between filling a position in three weeks or three months.
This guide outlines a step-by-step method to locate and contact passive candidates at targeted organizations without wasting hours speculating on email formats or relying on the off-chance that a LinkedIn InMail elicits a response.
Why Passive Candidates Require a Different Approach
The most effective engineering & IT talent in software development usually are not in the job search mode. They’re busy working on a project, somewhat happy, and not looking at job boards. It means they won’t respond to traditional recruiting tactics like just posting a listing and waiting.
Before you can recruit passive candidates, you must identify who works where, their current role, and target them via a channel that GETS noticed! This is a more targeted research-based approach than a post-and-pray one.
Step 1: Identify the Right Target Companies
Getting the full picture of actionable target companies in which the talent you seek is likely to be has to come before you can uncover contacts. For instance, if you are hiring for a senior backend engineer, simply targeting companies renowned for their engineering cultures and closely comparable tech stacks gives a far more statistical chance of a hit than a more general search.
Once you have a list of target companies, the next step is to understand exactly who works there doing the work you want to do.
Step 2: Search Company Rosters Directly
Instead of running random searches on LinkedIn, other recruiting tools allow you to get an entire list of employees for a specific company filtered by role, seniority or department. For instance, if you wanted to see everyone who they work in Google in a specific engineering discipline, this kind of company-level search shows you the actual staff currently in those roles, rather than outdated information from a resume database.
It is not only used for competitive intelligence but passive sourcing as well. Instead of waiting for the right candidate to find the job posting, you can go out and find out exactly who’s doing the work you need done, at the companies that are known to do it right.
Step 3: Verify Contact Details Before You Reach Out
Finding a name and title is only half the job. You confirm that you have a functioning email address or means of contact before spending the time to develop outreach, that is where the value actually lies. No one wastes recruiter time faster than a well-crafted message that bounces or lands in a dead inbox.
This is where browser-based tools come in handy during your day-to-day recruiter sourcing. A well-built extension helps to find emails directly from a LinkedIn or company profile page, without forcing you to switch between five different tabs and manually cross-reference data. You identify the candidate, confirm the contact, and go straight into outreach without a pause in your workflow.
Step 4: Personalize Your Outreach Based on Real Context
When you have a verified contact, don’t use a generic template. Be specific: about their project, an announcement at the company, or the technology stack they currently use. Copy-paste recruiter messages are a dime a dozen for passive candidates. The ones that get responses are the ones that clearly relate to research.
Keep your first message short. Who you are, why do you want to speak to them in particular and close the deal with an easy opt-in for a quick talk. Controlling placement with a single email is definitely not your goal; starting a conversation is.
Step 5: Build a Repeatable Sourcing Workflow
Those “recruiters” who those that are filling hard roles are not always working harder, they are built around a process. Extract target companies, scrape validated contact lists for roles of interest, double-check everything before sending, personalize by actual research. This is what allows recruiters to build a solid pipeline of qualified passive candidates rather than scrambling to fill technical positions on the go.
Final Thoughts
One of the most effective tactics for creating a strong technical talent pipeline is identifying contacts at the employers of your ideal candidates. Merge company-level research with proven contact discovery and you’ll be able to spend much less time going down rabbit holes and far more of your time engaged in actual conversations with the engineers and IT professionals who are capable of influencing your teams ability to move the needle.
