[INFOGRAPHIC]: What does geography have to do with hiring skilled tech candidates?

As David Anderson wrote recently, despite a relatively high rate of national unemployment, many companies are facing a talent gap. When it comes to the tech industry and top tech talent, the gap between supply and demand of candidates is especially wide.

With tech candidates so hard to find, part of the solution is knowing just where to look. In this infographic, we analyzed our own database to determine the best areas for recruiters to find tech talent - and found the cities that are most rich with tech talent (per capita).

While the jury on telecommuting is still out, your company will fall behind if you don’t find the top candidates, wherever they might reside.

Thanks also to Tech Cocktail, Business Insider, and Huffington Post for also sharing our infographic!

New feature: “Viewed” and “Contacted” Flags

See a familiar face in your RemarkableHire search results? Not sure if you’ve seen that candidate before? You’re in luck! We now provide an indicator to show which candidates you’ve previously viewed. Here’s a sample:

In addition, if you’ve used the “Contact Me” menu to initiate contact with the candidate, that indicator will show that you’ve contacted the candidate, which channel you used (email, twitter, etc.) and the date and time when you sent them a message.

More great features are on the way soon!

RemarkableHire, Under the Hood (Part 1)

Breaking down RemarkableHire’s Search Results

For the first part of the RemarkableHire, Under the Hood series we’re going to head straight for the engine. At the heart of it, the results you see when searching for the top tech candidates in your area epitomize the Social Evidence-based sourcing process. On RemarkableHire, searching for the top Python developers in Seattle, WA doesn’t just give you a list of candidates and contact methods, it shows you an analysis of their skills, sorted and ranked by specific area and endorsed by their peers.

Here’s a more in-depth view at the engine that will power your next tech candidate search.

Oddball Interview Questions: Do They Work?

Employee skills assessment can be difficult for recruiters and employers. Businesses want to ensure they’re hiring candidates with the right skills and fit for company culture, but it can be difficult to determine the best way to go about this. Many major tech industry players like Google and Dell are turning to oddball interview questions to get the job done. But do they really work?

There are plenty of strange interview questions asked at tech orgs these days. Here are a few examples from Glassdoor, an online job search and company information website:

Asked at Forrester: “If you were to get rid of one state in the US, which would it be and why?”
Asked at Google: “How many cows are in Canada?”
Asked at JetBlue: “How many quarters would you need to reach the height of the Empire State building?”
Asked at Clark Construction Group: “A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero. What does he say and why is he here?”
Asked at Dell: “What song best describes your work ethic?”
Asked at Amazon: “Jeff Bezos walks into your office and says you can have a million dollars to launch your best entrepreneurial idea. What is it?”

These interview questions are admittedly pretty wacky, so do they really give you insight into candidate behavior and attitudes? Are they helpful for employee skills assessment, or should they be abandoned?

The Importance of Your Employer Brand

The job candidate search is tough, especially if you’re a small company. Your brand may not be a household name, but it’s still important to maintain a solid reputation, particularly if you’re looking to fill out your team with more talent. So just what is an employer brand, and why is it important?

Having a solid brand means developing a positive company image and reputation. This not only makes your company attractive to potential customers, but it can also help you to snag talented professionals who are excited to work for you. Today’s job market is competitive; there are plenty of candidates sifting through tons of companies for potential employment. Job seekers want to stand out to you, but it’s also important for your company to stand out to them.

So what are some easy ways to ramp up your employer brand for the job candidate search? Follow these quick tips for ensuring your employer brand attracts the best job seekers:

How to Assess a Candidate’s Online Brand

Every employer knows having the right team is the key to building a successful company. The hiring process can be difficult, but today’s technologies—namely, the Web—offer new ways to assess job candidates that go beyond the cookie-cutter cover letter and resume.

These days, a promising job candidate will recognize the importance of having a solid online identity to showcase their skills. That’s because hiring managers are increasingly turning to social media recruiting to snag top talent. Online profiles—like social media sites, personal websites, and blogs—offer added insight into a candidate’s personality and expertise, something that can be hard to derive from standard job seeker documents. Not only can this help companies to find the right fit for an open position in terms of skills, but online brand assessment can also help to ensure businesses are hiring someone who will mesh well with company culture, too.

So for hiring managers looking to employ social media recruiting as a strategy, how can you know what to look for in a candidate’s online brand? Here are a few ways to accurately assess their online presence:

Using Social Evidence to Snag the Best Job Seekers

Social Evidence. You may not have heard the term before, but it’s an increasingly important factor when it comes to getting ahead as an employer and snagging the right candidates. So just what does it mean? And how can recruiters use Social Evidence to determine who would be the best fit for their open positions?

Sourcing Top Tech Talent Is Easier Than You Think

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The best of the best is essential when it comes to candidate sourcing for technology positions—but locating the top talent can be exceptionally challenging.

Finding highly skilled technology professionals is an issue which continues to plague the entire technology sector. With the necessity of advanced, highly focused skill-sets for the currently available technology positions, it’s clear to see there is an unmatched demand for qualified tech candidates.

In the face of the current tech talent shortage, recruiters and employers everywhere are scrambling to innovate their talent sourcing strategy to ensure they’re sourcing the most talented candidates available. But sourcing top tech talent is truly easier than you think, it just involves knowing the answers to the following questions: What kind of skills am I looking for? How do I effectively find candidates with said skills? Where do skilled technology candidates reside?

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RemarkableHire at SourceCon Atlanta Next Week

Our Co-founder, Jamey Jeff, will be at SourceCon Atlanta next week to meet with Sourcing and Talent Acquisition leaders from across the country. Here are just a few of the sessions we’re most excited about (spoiler alert: one of them includes us!). You can follow Jamey’s updates on Twitter at @JameyJeff and conference updates on the official hashtag: #SourceCon

What Does a Good Sourcer Look Like and Why Does It Matter?

Thursday, February 7, 2013 | 10:00 am – 11:00 am

Talk given by Adam Lawrence, Global Head of Sourcing at Alexander Mann Solutions.

Adam’s session about identifying the value that good sourcing professionals bring to the recruiting process looks to be an interesting topic for a changing industry. At RemarkableHire we know that even the best sourcing tools can only do so much and that at the end of the day it’s the recruiter’s skills and intuitions that will get the job done.

Adam understands the truth that “once you strip the cool tools and tricks that sourcers use to find and engage candidates, it’s really all about the value we bring to the recruiting process.” The session will revolve around three questions: What is the role of a sourcer? What are the metrics that matter? and What does “good” look like?

We’re looking forward to hearing what Adam thinks about these questions.

The Dream Software ( a New Generation of Sourcing Software Tools)

Thursday, February 7, 2013 | 2:15 pm – 3:15 pm

Talk given by Irina Shamaeva, Partner at Brain Gain Recruiting

Irina wrote back in November, 2011 about a trend towards more powerful sourcing software, or what she called the “Dream Software.” Irina saw this trend as revolving around distributed profiles and the potential to bring together diverse information from across the internet that is not limited to social profiles.

Of course this topic strikes close to home as RemarkableHire is part of Irina’s concept of “Dream Software” for sourcers. This session will go into further detail about the differences between various platforms and help those unfamiliar with the benefits of this method of sourcing understand just how much potential it offers.

Keep an eye out for RemarkableHire as our platform will be one of those featured in Irina’s talk!

Sourcing for Technical Requisitions

Thursday, February 7, 2013 | 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Talk given by Mark Tortorici, the Sourcing Manager at netPolarity

This presentation serves as a primer for recruiting professionals who want to get up to snuff on finding, evaluating, and engaging with tech candidates. Because RemarkableHire focuses on technical talent, this issue is near and dear. Many recruiters and sourcing professionals might falsely believe that keyword mining is a meaningful tool for finding tech candidates. But keywords on a resume or profile are just like number of followers on Twitter or connections on LinkedIn; they do not represent the skills you’re looking for, only the skills necessary to strategically place keywords or network through social media.

This digital facade can be a pitfall for recruiters trying to find real talent. But even when you find talent, Mark points out, you might not understand the technologies well enough yourself to engage properly with the candidate. We’re interested to see what Mark has to say about this topic and what his recommendations are for recruiters who don’t have a technical background.

4 Tips For Changing The Way You Hire With Social Media Recruiting

Change Ahead Social media recruiting can be the light in the darkness your hiring process desperately needs—but only if utilized correctly.

Originally created as the combined answer to the social media boom and the increasingly competitive (and time-consuming) hiring process, social media recruiting has the ability to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the way you find, evaluate, and hire talent. While sourcing and evaluating candidates is being made easier through the use of social recruiting, it’s important to note that this innovative recruiting process isn’t necessarily the end-all, be-all that was originally promised to employers and the recruiting community.

Why? Recruiters and hiring managers attempting to recruit socially end up with a search focused on active candidates who happen to be social media experts, rather than workers with a highly desired skill set. Integrating social media recruiting to source and evaluate candidates can change the way you hire, but only if you’re doing it properly.

Here are four tips to take into consideration when recruiting socially:

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