I started a Tech Podcast at my company for the purpose of hiring engineers.
Engineer recruitment background
- Not doing mass engineer recruitment
- Want to hire about one engineer each (backend, frontend)
- Committed to engineer recruitment but exploring cost-effective methods
Current engineer recruitment situation
Scouting services
I still use Wantedly, which is well-known in the IT world. I’ve been using it since its launch and have hired many people, not just engineers. Most recently, I hired one frontend engineer.
I hear that the AI headhunting service scouty（スカウティ） is good, but I haven’t used it yet.
Hosting engineer events
I’ve hosted an engineer study session once in the past. The content was our in-house engineers giving lightning talks to create opportunities for engineers from other companies to become interested in our company.
Through this event, I was able to hire one backend engineer. However, hosting engineer study sessions requires considerable preparation and operational overhead, so I haven’t held any since.
Instead, I held several “engineers-only anime viewing parties,” and through these events, I was also able to hire backend engineers.
I think both types of events are effective when you want to hire many engineers (3-5 or more).
Writing technical blogs
I think many companies write technical blogs.
However, since most companies write technical blogs, unless you make them go viral, they won’t become topics of conversation. They get buried among the many pieces of information published daily and are difficult to get read. This article might be the same.
Tech Podcast
The last approach I arrived at was Tech Podcast. In Japan’s tech community, there are still people who continuously publish podcasts, but many are individuals, and very few companies are broadcasting. I’m only aware of two: Gunosy’s gunosy.fm and Mercari’s mercan.fm. By the way, Mercari’s Podcast has fewer technical topics.
Given this situation, there are surprisingly few competing players, so I thought “Maybe we can target the Tech Podcast niche?” and decided to start. Many companies write tech blogs, but few companies broadcast podcasts, so we might not get buried?
Also, I think audio conveys more information than text, so our engineers’ personalities might come across better. For the first episode, I talked with our tech lead pchw, but from the next episode onwards, I plan to have in-house engineers appear in turn. With over 12 people, I think we could continue for a year even at a monthly pace.
By the way, I published the Tech Podcast I recorded about two weeks ago today.
Since this is our first attempt, (the tech lead) apparently spent quite a bit of time editing the audio, but I want to reduce operational overhead as much as possible and continue consistently to build up content.
That’s all from the Gemba that wants to convert engineer recruitment through Tech Podcast.