How To Use GitHub Advanced Search For Recruiters

The demand for tech talent is significant, but the pool of capable candidates is in shorter provide. It also doesn’t aid that unemployment is lower, as it additional narrows down your talent pool and makes it harder to discover terrific workforce. 

With opposition for tech expertise high, you are likely wanting for new and progressive techniques to determine, appeal to and recruit outstanding tech pros. This post will assist you do just that by detailing a special sourcing tactic, Github state-of-the-art look for. You’ll find out what Github is as nicely as why and how you ought to resource tech pros from the platform.

Table of Contents

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a cloud-based social sharing website. As an alternative of sharing life updates, occupation postings or shots, nevertheless, GitHub end users share code. The system operates on an open up-supply framework, this means the code is open up to the typical community and can be altered by any one. The improvements are tracked by means of the platform’s Git revision manage method (as a result the identify GitHub), so customers can see how code improvements from its authentic sort. 

Why Recruit on GitHub?

In this day and age, just about each and every firm requirements gurus with coding, developing or programming expertise. No matter if you are updating your firm’s website or setting up an application, you want software program engineers and software program builders — both of which are some of the most in-desire roles in the job market. 

Employers need to get much more strategic with their sourcing strategies if they want to defeat out the competitiveness and bring in prime application engineering expertise. Simply because tech professionals have countless work possibilities, they are not actively searching for positions or updating their electronic resumes. They’re also not likely to respond to the lengthy checklist of recruiters hoping to connect and get them to apply.

As an alternative, for individuals hard to seek the services of specialized roles, you need to meet talent on the platforms they recurrent. For most application engineers and developers, that system is GitHub. 

How to Recruit with GitHub Advanced Lookup

In order to uncover wonderful software engineers and builders on GitHub, you initially will need to recognize how the system operates and what to seem for. Start off by developing an account on GitHub that consists of info on your enterprise.

Also, generate a candidate persona so you know what to appear for during your research. Your prospect persona really should contain information like area, expertise, training, programming language and competencies.

Very similar to other social sharing web pages, GitHub consumers have profiles with the following details:

• Typical: Title, Area, Date joined, Take care of (or display screen identify)
• Experienced: Career title, Employer, Education and learning, Capabilities, Internet site, Make contact with facts
• General public activity
• Followers/Adhering to
• Forks (code that is been copied)
• Resources (primary code from consumer)
• Stars (GitHub’s variation of likes)

GitHub profiles also involve a calendar graph of when and how numerous contributions a consumer has made to open up resource code in the earlier 12 months.

Also, there is a segment referred to as repositories, or “repos”, which are destinations on the system in which open up-resource growth tasks or software offers are stored. On a user’s profile, you can see which repositories the user has labored on and how considerably their work has been starred or forked. Repositories give you perception into what languages and techniques a user has shown, which is a lot more instructive than bullet details on a resume. 

Search for Candidate Personas

Repositories are a goldmine for recruiters seeking for distinct information to obtain aptly qualified pros. Dependent on what you’re on the lookout for, GitHub breaks down a wide range of look for inquiries and how to make use of their internet site to slim down your success.

Once again, your applicant persona will support you determine what you want in your upcoming software package developer or engineer, so make guaranteed you complete that to start with. Right here are the most typical methods to research for customers by criteria on GitHub: 

• Language
• Range of followers
• Variety of forks (copied code)
• Variety of stars (likes)
• Topic or range of subjects
• License
• Repository size, title, description, or contents of the README file
• Inside of a user’s or organization’s repositories
• Search centered on the contents of a repository
• Lookup based on no matter whether a repository is a mirror
• Lookup based on whether a repository is archived
• Research based mostly on the amount of challenges with fantastic to start with problem or help required labels

Depending on your lookup metrics, you can reorganize the lookup final results you get by finest match, most followers, fewest followers, most recently joined, the very least lately joined, most repositories and fewest repositories. Even though it may appear to be counter-intuitive to come across men and women with several followers or repositories, if you’re hunting for a junior program engineer, this can be beneficial to locate individuals new to the industry.

Narrow Down Major Candidates

As you start off to detect gurus that resonate with your team and mirror the prospect persona you produced for the job, you can begin narrowing down your possibilities further by exploring for much more specific standards, this sort of as:

• Area (site:chicago)
• Competencies (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.