How To Use GitHub Advanced Search For Recruiters

The demand for tech expertise is substantial, but the pool of certified candidates is in brief provide. It also does not help that unemployment is small, as it even further narrows down your talent pool and helps make it more durable to locate great workforce. 

With competition for tech talent high, you are possible on the lookout for new and progressive methods to identify, catch the attention of and recruit fantastic tech pros. This post will aid you do just that by conveying a one of a kind sourcing tactic, Github state-of-the-art lookup. You’ll find out what Github is as nicely as why and how you need to source tech industry experts from the platform.

Table of Contents

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a cloud-centered social sharing site. As an alternative of sharing everyday living updates, occupation postings or photographs, even so, GitHub customers share code. The system runs on an open up-resource framework, which means the code is open to the basic general public and can be altered by any individual. The adjustments are tracked through the platform’s Git revision regulate process (that’s why the title GitHub), so people can see how code changes from its unique form. 

Why Recruit on GitHub?

In this day and age, just about each individual organization needs professionals with coding, producing or programming expertise. Irrespective of whether you’re updating your firm’s web site or constructing an application, you require program engineers and software developers — each of which are some of the most in-need roles in the task market. 

Businesses need to get much more strategic with their sourcing practices if they want to beat out the competition and entice prime application engineering talent. Simply because tech gurus have countless career options, they’re not actively hunting for employment or updating their electronic resumes. They are also not heading to answer to the long checklist of recruiters making an attempt to connect and get them to apply.

In its place, for all those challenging to seek the services of technical roles, you want to satisfy expertise on the platforms they regular. For most application engineers and builders, that platform is GitHub. 

How to Recruit with GitHub Sophisticated Look for

In order to find wonderful software package engineers and builders on GitHub, you to start with have to have to fully grasp how the system is effective and what to glimpse for. Start off by making an account on GitHub that includes information and facts on your enterprise.

In addition, build a prospect persona so you know what to look for in the course of your research. Your prospect persona really should include info like locale, expertise, education and learning, programming language and techniques.

Equivalent to other social sharing web pages, GitHub end users have profiles with the next information:

• Basic: Title, Location, Day joined, Tackle (or monitor name)
• Skilled: Task title, Employer, Training, Skills, Site, Speak to information
• Community exercise
• Followers/Next
• Forks (code which is been copied)
• Sources (authentic code from user)
• Stars (GitHub’s edition of likes)

GitHub profiles also involve a calendar graph of when and how quite a few contributions a consumer has produced to open source code in the former yr.

Also, there is a section called repositories, or “repos”, which are locations on the platform in which open up-source progress initiatives or program deals are stored. On a user’s profile, you can see which repositories the consumer has labored on and how much their get the job done has been starred or forked. Repositories give you perception into what languages and expertise a consumer has shown, which is significantly additional insightful than bullet factors on a resume. 

Search for Candidate Personas

Repositories are a goldmine for recruiters browsing for precise information to find aptly proficient pros. Depending on what you’re hunting for, GitHub breaks down a selection of lookup inquiries and how to make the most of their web page to slim down your outcomes.

Once again, your prospect persona will enable you identify what you will need in your upcoming software package developer or engineer, so make positive you finish that to start with. In this article are the most popular methods to search for users by criteria on GitHub: 

• Language
• Variety of followers
• Amount of forks (copied code)
• Number of stars (likes)
• Subject or range of topics
• License
• Repository sizing, title, description, or contents of the README file
• Inside of a user’s or organization’s repositories
• Research centered on the contents of a repository
• Lookup based mostly on regardless of whether a repository is a mirror
• Look for primarily based on no matter if a repository is archived
• Look for based mostly on the range of concerns with good 1st concern or support wished labels

Relying on your lookup metrics, you can reorganize the research final results you get by greatest match, most followers, fewest followers, most recently joined, least lately joined, most repositories and fewest repositories. Whilst it may perhaps seem counter-intuitive to find folks with number of followers or repositories, if you’re hunting for a junior software engineer, this can be beneficial to locate people today new to the subject.

Slender Down Top rated Candidates

As you start out to recognize industry experts that resonate with your team and replicate the prospect persona you created for the role, you can commence narrowing down your options more by seeking for more distinct requirements, these kinds of as:

• Site (location:chicago)
• Expertise (language:ruby)
• Followers (followers:<100)

On the profiles that stand out, make sure to take note of important information on their profiles, like:

• Name 
• Job title
• Email
• Website
• Public activity

Additionally, you can use Boolean search tactics on Google to further narrow your search on GitHub. Boolean search is like a DIY version of advanced search fields, and using Boolean search in recruitment saves time sourcing candidates, ultimately reducing your cost-per-hire.

Let’s break down some examples of how to use Boolean search to find information on Github. 

URL: AND SITE:

You can search for results on a specific website by entering the URL: or site: Boolean search operator to target specific candidates on GitHub (or any other site for that matter). You can use this search to narrow down candidates by keywords, like their job title, current company, location, skills and language. 

Boolean Search Example

• site:github.com software AND (engineer OR developer) AND ~resume -job -jobs -hire -hiring

*Do not include an extra spacing between operators. Follow the format above exactly.

This is an example of a search query for someone looking for:

• Candidates on GitHub (site:github.com) 
• Who are software developers or software engineers (AND (engineer OR developer))
• Who have a resume or something similar (~resume)
• And wants to exclude any job postings (-job -jobs -hire -hiring)

INTITLE: / INTEXT: / INURL:

You can also utilize Boolean search tactics to search GitHub for resume pages or links within a website. Candidates often create websites with digital portfolios and professional documents. Such documents are often uploaded under a file name that includes “resume” or “CV.” Use the following search string to locate those downloadable documents on GitHub.

Boolean Search Example

• site:github.com (inurl:resume OR inurl:CV) software AND (engineer OR developer) -job -jobs -hire -hiring

*Note: intext: searches the body text of a web page, whereas inurl: searches within a URL.

This example is for recruiters who are looking for:

• Candidates on github (site:github.com) 

• With a downloadable resume or CV ((inurl:resume OR inurl:CV))

• Who are software developers or software engineers ((software AND (engineer OR developer))

• Excluding any job postings (-job -jobs -hire -hiring)

Connect with Candidates 

Once you’ve identified a few prospective candidates you want to pursue, do your due diligence and learn as much as you can about them before connecting. Go onto other social platforms and search their name to see where they’ve worked and what projects they’ve worked on. The more information you gather, the more personalized your message can be, and the better chance you’ll have at standing out from other employer inquiries.

Consider the projects they’ve worked on in the past and inform them of similar or more challenging projects your job opportunity has to offer. If you know their interests, you can identify how they will add to your company culture, and you can share elements of your culture that will entice them to take a closer look at your company.

Most profiles have a public email address so you can reach out to candidates and add them to your talent pipeline. Even if they’re not interested in your job opportunity now, it doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in your company altogether. You can always ask them to join your talent community so they can hear about open positions in the future.

In the event that they are interested in pursuing your offer, prepare your team for how to handle salary negotiations. In a candidate driven market where tech talent is scarce, these candidates know they’re in high demand and will wait around for the best opportunity. Having a solid negotiation strategy will make sure you’re prepared to meet the candidate’s expectations while staying within your budget for the role. 

GitHub is one of the best resources out there for companies looking to find exceptional tech talent. All it takes is a little learning and adaptation to optimize your search tactics on their website. Once you get in the swing of things, you’ll become faster and more efficient at finding the specific candidate personas your team needs to drive business and boost your culture. Continue to grow your tech recruiting expertise by brushing up on additional tech recruiter resources.