Tech Talent Matrix
The first matrix that measures recruiting performance and provides the actionable insights you need to successfully hire tech talent.
Growing need for skilled developers can only be solved through better teamwork
As every company transforms into a technology company and today’s tech talent market continues to become more and more competitive, it’s crucial for recruiters and hiring managers to work as a team to attract and hire great technical talent. Unfortunately, lack of alignment is the biggest obstacle standing in their path to winning talent.
You can strengthen internal alignment by boosting visibility into your technical recruiting performance. If you know which areas to improve - whether it's the relevancy of your talent pool, the quality of your skill assessments, or your rating for candidate experience - you can make better decisions as a team.
The Tech Talent Matrix arms you with the data-backed insights you need – not only the where but also the how – to improve your tech recruiting process. For the first time ever, talent acquisition and technical leaders can have a data-driven approach to measure their own evaluation process while benchmarking against their peers.
Tech Talent Matrix helps you work as a unified team
to deliver the right experience and quality assessments
to successfully hire the talent you’re seeking
Using Machine Learning to Drive Insights
Customers across different industries from around the world use HackerRank to drive their technical recruiting. Roughly 1 assessment is taken every 8 seconds on the HackerRank platform, powering our unmatched database of over 150 million assessment and candidate data points.
Performance metrics that inform the Matrix are based on insights gathered from applying machine learning to our database, analyzing the assessment and candidate data as well as identifying signals that have a significant impact on candidate evaluation. These metrics make up the Candidate Response Score and Assessment Quality Score.
Your position in the matrix is the graphical representation of the Candidate Response Score and Assessment Quality Score.
Learn more about the methodology behind Tech Talent Matrix here.
Candidate Response Score
Measures the performance of your candidate outreach by tracking candidate journeys from the stage they are invited to take your technical assessments and measures the conversion of those invitations to test attempts.
Assessment Quality Score
Measures the quality of your assessments and how well your assessments are designed for the role to evaluate candidates. The inputs focus on factors such as test design and candidate feedback.
Evaluating Your Performance on Tech Talent Matrix
Leaders
What you're excelling in:
Your team is well-aligned on both deploying quality assessments and attracting tech talent. Your team designs relevant tests, excels in candidate communication, and has strong brand recognition among developer talent.
How to achieve the next level:
It’s time to take a data-driven approach to your tech recruiting process. Dig deeper into your recruitment strategy to see how you can customize your approach for different technical roles for even better results. Use the data and insights provided by the Tech Talent Matrix to experiment, expand, and strategize for the future to keep up momentum.
Attractors
What you’re excelling in:
Your team is well-aligned on candidate engagement. Your organization is most likely communicating successfully with candidates and/or you have a strong technical talent brand overall. This has led to strong developer interest in working for your company.
How to invest more in experience:
Increase the quality of your assessments by re-evaluating your tests: Are they screening for the right skills? Are the test questions relevant to the work that the developer will actually be doing in the role? Are they engaging and appropriately challenging developers? Are you providing the right candidate experience? Consistently measure how well your team’s efforts have worked and use the data to inform future decisions.
Achievers
What you’re excelling in:
Your team is well-aligned on skill assessments. Your team is administering assessments that are screening for the right skills for the right roles while engaging and challenging the developers taking the tests.
How to manage more for brand:
Focus on increasing developers’ interest in your company by investing more in your company's tech talent brand and improving candidate communication. Consistently measure how well your team’s efforts have worked and use the data to inform future decisions.
Learners
What you’re excelling in:
Your team recognizes the importance of having a strategic tech recruiting process. Now, your team is taking the critical first steps towards having the right skill assessments and attracting tech talent.
How to increase focus on candidate outreach and assessments:
It’s time to give hiring managers and recruiters visibility into the quality of the talent pool as well as the strength of candidate evaluations to drive alignment. Start by deciding on common hiring goals, achievable expectations, and a unified strategy to reach your goals.
Key Takeaways
In short, organizations need to have all of the following essential five elements in their technical recruiting process in order to be successful:
Data-driven approach
Alignment at all levels
High-quality calibrated tests
Thoughtful candidate engagement
Respected tech talent brand
“Taking a more data-driven approach to technical hiring makes it possible to have a more refined set of candidates and helps save a lot of time.”
Scott Crowe | Lead Recruiter at Canva
Top Learnings
We dug deeper into our database of 150 million data points to uncover the following learnings:
Financial Services & Tech Lead the Way
Of the top 5 industries, financial services and tech performed better than all other industries. On average, companies from these industries had the highest Candidate Response Scores and Assessment Quality Scores, earning many of them positions in the Leaders quadrant.
Over the last decade, technology has transformed financial services – creating new opportunities through advances like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. The financial services industry quickly recognized the need for tech talent early on and has continued to focus on tech hiring.
Naturally, the tech industry has prioritized developer love from the start and HackerRank’s data shows they’ve continued to maintain their dedication to finding the best developers for their needs.
Retail & Automotive Gain Steam
On average, companies from retail and automotive industries had very high Candidate Response Scores and high Assessment Quality Scores, putting most of them in the Attractors quadrant. While these industries are newer to hiring tech talent, they’ve made a concentrated effort to build their tech talent brand and effectively communicate with candidates.
Retail has faced a considerable amount of digital disruption in the last decade, pushing industry players to begin further integrating technology into their businesses to thrive and remain competitive. Similarly, the automotive industry has also had significant digital disruption with the advent of electric cars and autonomous driving, and now the industry is starting to focus more on tech hiring.
Bigger Isn’t Always Better
Organizations with less than 1,000 employees emerged as a Leader more than companies of any other size. Our analysis showed that the larger a company was, the less likely they were to be a Leader. This indicates that hiring managers and recruiters become less and less aligned as companies grow. Hiring is most often a top priority for CEOs of smaller companies. As a result, hiring managers and recruiters are more invested in the recruiting process and work closely together to create quality assessments. Given their size, it’s also often easier for them to communicate effectively and thus quickly make changes to their recruiting process as well as stay aligned. On the other hand, change management in larger companies is often more difficult.
Quality Tests Strongly Associated with Developer Love
When assessments are relevant, calibrated well, and communication is strong with candidates, developers have a more positive view of the companies they are interviewing with. We call this developer love. The higher the quality of the test, the stronger the association companies had with developer love. In a hyper-competitive market, building a strong technical talent brand in the developer community is key.
Want to learn more?
Already a HackerRank customer and want to learn more? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager.
