As we are about to enter 2025, the beginning of a new year offers the perfect opportunity to refresh your approach to hiring top developer talent. The tech landscape continues to evolve rapidly, and companies that want to thrive must align their hiring practices with the needs and expectations of today’s candidates. January is a time for resolutions and fresh starts, so why not resolve to refine your hiring process? Here are five ways to boost your developer hiring success and set your organization up for a stellar year.

Create a Consistent Talent Brand

To ensure you’re attracting the right talent, use the new year to first discover how your company is perceived in the labor market. Brand is not just about selling to customers or clients, it’s also about selling to potential employees. Tech candidates want to grow their skill set, work on the latest technologies and know that they’re not going to stagnate. Find ways to weave this into your talent brand. For example, talk about the new technologies you’re using, or the way technology impacts the products that you’re developing. Make it clear how these potential employees can make an impact.

When candidates research your company, you want them to get excited. Positive Glassdoor reviews are always good but consider blog posts that highlight the new technology being created at the company. Also, current employees can blog about the company culture or real experiences they’ve had working for your organization.

The key is to project a consistent talent brand through all the avenues where candidates “see” you. Whether it’s GitHub, social media like LinkedIn, your company website, job postings, etc. the story should be the same – “This is who we are and why you want to work here.”

When the brand message is consistent across the organization – company brand, marketing, HR and technology department – finding good candidates becomes easier. The table is already set. Candidates are primed and interested when you post the job.

Write Clear, Compelling Job Descriptions

It’s also a great time to break away from outdated job description templates. Think of your job postings as your first conversation with a potential hire. Use January’s momentum to rewrite or refresh job descriptions with a focus on clarity, excitement, and relevance.

It’s important to do the work up front on the job description. Think about what you need – what’s a “must have” and what’s a “nice to have.” List all the programming languages, and definitely include (if applicable) the cool new programming languages or technologies you’re going to use because this will interest candidates. Also, when customizing the job description, don’t hesitate to add some passion. If employees are excited about where they’re working, put that passion into the job description. The goal is to attract as much talent as possible and then have more candidates to choose from.

Plan Your Job Posting Strategy

January is a month of high activity in the job market, with many professionals considering a career change as part of their resolutions. Take advantage of this timing by revisiting your posting strategy. Diversify the platforms where you share opportunities, especially tech-specific sites and coding communities that developers frequent. Go beyond the typical sites to post such as your company website or LinkedIn. Go where developers gather like GitHub, coding sites and tech-specific job boards. The more places, the more potential candidates and the more you have to choose from. Posting in a wide variety of locations also increases the odds that you’ll find more diverse candidates, be it diversity in talent, skills or interest, or other perspectives.

Encourage hiring managers and team members to post the job on their networks adding a brief personal message. Networks could include not just LinkedIn but developer’s networks, personal networks or college alumni channels. You never know where you’ll find that ideal candidate.

Prepare for the Interview

Too often, interviewers wing the interview. “I know what we’re looking for,” is the typical thought, “and I’ll know when I see it.” With all due respect for experience, this isn’t an effective method for getting the information you need from the candidate. Without a strategy, you run the risk of wasting valuable time and effort, hiring the wrong person, missing the right person or even legal issues if you’re asking inappropriate questions.

The starting point is to identify the skills needed including both technical skills and soft skills, like teamwork, mentoring or management. Next, create interview questions that are tied to these skills and ask for specific examples of when the candidate has exhibited those skills (e.g., “Tell me about a time when you mentored a coworker.”) If you’re not getting the details you need, dig deeper. Objective, skill-based questions will lead you to the information you need to make a good hiring decision. The hiring manager should plan the interview strategy and communicate to the interviewers.

Technical skills can be assessed in a number of ways. Some employers ask candidates to take a pre-interview technical assessment to ensure developers have the basic technical level needed. Most interviews also require the interviewee to code in-person so that the hiring team can verify their skills as well as ask questions about their process.

Interviewers also need to be prepared to answer questions about the project or job. For instance, how long is the project? What tools are being used? What is the importance or impact? How do people learn and grow here? Ideally, the interviewer should answer these questions in a way that excites candidates. And because it’s more than just the technical, hiring team members should prepare to answer questions about the company and what it’s like to work there in an authentic and personal way.

Conduct an Effective Interview

Even before the candidate walks in the door or signs into the virtual interview, it’s the hiring team’s responsibility to set them up for success. Here are some tips to make this happen and get the data you need to make a decision.

• Technical prep. If it’s a virtual interview, make sure candidates have the appropriate technology for the interview including meeting software and whiteboard technology. Communicate with candidates ahead of time which tools they will need for the interview.
• Put the candidate at ease. When people are relaxed, they tend to share more information and that’s what you need. Do everything possible to make the candidate comfortable. Make it a conversation, not an interrogation. To that end, be sure to turn on your own camera. It’s not just a technical interview. And remember, the candidate is interviewing you as well, trying to decide if this is the right job for them.
• Ask open-ended questions linked to skills. Open-ended questions (who, what, when, where, how and why) pull more information than close-ended questions, which are answered with a simple yes or no. Use these types of questions to follow up your initial skill-based questions. For example, “What did you do in that project?” “Why did you decide to solve the problem in that way?”
• Use pre-interview assessment results. One of the advantages of giving developer candidates an assessment before the interview is that you can use the results to learn more. For example, “I saw on question #2 that you coded it this way. Can you tell me what you were thinking?”
• “I” not “we.” Development work is often done in teams so it’s easy for the candidate to describe their work in that context. But you want to know what they did specifically in the project. If you are hearing “we did this” too much, ask follow-up questions. For instance, “Please explain your role, what you did and how you made an impact on the outcome.”

In today’s competitive hiring environment, the key to attracting and retaining top developer talent lies in preparation, authenticity, and strategic execution. By creating a consistent and compelling talent brand, crafting job descriptions that stand out, and strategically sharing opportunities across diverse platforms, you can cast a wider net and connect with the right candidates. With these steps, your organization will be better equipped to secure the exceptional talent needed to drive innovation and success in an ever-evolving 2025 tech landscape.

Looking for more hiring advice? Check out our Step-By-Step Guide to Hiring Tech Talent.

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