Thomas Lennon

​Many businesses are now realising the long-term value of partnering with a specialist recruiter. Within the digital and tech sectors, having the right skilled professionals on your team can be the difference between success and failure. Here’s 5 reasons why you should use a specialist recruiter…​​Bad Hires Are CostlyThe cost of hiring the wrong candidate for a role can range from £30,000 to £150,000. That’s a big mistake and a lot of wasted time and resources for your business. The biggest mistake hiring managers make is not doing their homework.To make the right hire you need to understand the market. A specialist recruiter will be able to advise you on industry trends, provide job role insights and even benchmark your salary offering to ensure it’s competitive. They will take the time to understand the role, your company culture and business objectives so that they can create a bespoke hiring strategy to suit your needs.Specialist recruiters might come with a fee attached but that fee gives you access to candidate talent pools, social platforms and job board advertising. All ways to target and attract your ideal candidate. With this, they should also be able to produce marketing campaigns to engage the appropriate talent.​​Tight ResourcesHiring processes can become messy, long and unproductive if you don’t have one person driving the recruitment process. When you are trying to do this on top of your day job, it can easily unravel.If you’re a hiring manager and running a busy team, your day-to-day work will naturally take priority. Using one exclusive recruiter will make life so much simpler. You have one point of contact who will manage the process and work to your schedule, involving other key stakeholders as necessary.Another way to save time and speed up your hiring process is with video profiles. We give our clients access to our video platform where they can view videos of candidates talking about their experience, while scrolling through a copy of their CV.In doing this, managers can get a feel for personality, communication and find out about skills in more depth. You can also shortlist, reject and give feedback in a few simple clicks. This approach can reduce your interview process by up to 30% and save manager resources, as well as environmental impact by reducing unnecessary travel.​​Hard To Engage CandidatesSome of the best candidates for your role, won’t be actively looking. Specialist recruiters use innovative tools to identify and match the best fit for your business, and then engage this diverse talent pool. They can find the most niche candidates with unique skills using tailored search technologies.At Hanover we use video to showcase your brand by filming your offices, employee testimonials and managers taking about roles. This gives candidates unique insight into your work/life balance, benefits and business objectives.It also allows you to find someone who is excited by your goals and aligns themselves with your values. This is key to finding the perfect fit for your team and employee longevity.Specialist recruiters are also an excellent choice if you need to scale quickly but sustainably, hiring multiple roles or in multiple locations. They generally have access to a huge talent base or can specialise in certain global markets.​​Time Is A Turn OffOne of the biggest mistakes we see companies make when hiring, is not acting quickly enough. Candidates will drop out if your interview process is too long or if you delay in making them an offer. If you’ve identified a fantastic candidate then the likelihood is, so has someone else. Two days after the second stage interview candidate interest starts to tail off, so once you’ve had that interview it’s important to feedback fast!Specialist recruiters will have worked closely with both you and the candidate throughout the hiring process. So they are in the unique position of knowing what you can offer and what the candidate will accept as a package. Salary isn’t everything and a good recruiter knows what drives their candidates and how to close a successful offer negotiation.At this point in the process, your recruiter will have built up a rapport with your ideal candidate and initial marketing stages should mean the candidate is bought into your culture. Our culture videos and interactive job specs showcase your company culture, values and objectives, creating 60% more engagement with your brand. This means your candidate will be less likely to accept an offer from a competitor.​​Onboarding & RetentionRecruitment shouldn’t just tail off when you’ve identified the right candidate(s). Recruiters should be able to offer screening, testing and candidate assessments.We utilise assessments to measure emotional intelligence and workplace behaviours so you can ensure the right match for your team. These types of assessments support diversity goals and reduce unconscious bias, as well as provide more insight.This data is important as it shows a candidate’s leadership potential and learning styles. This can be crucial when onboarding, as it allows you to evaluate how they manage, how they will work with a particular manager, or fit within an existing team dynamic. Ensuring a good character fit ultimately leads to a more productive, positive team and less staff turnover in the long-term.By opting to use a specialist recruiter you’ll create stronger engagement with the talent you want to hire and boost your employer brand. Not only that, but you’ll save time and resources and even money in the long-term.​​Hiring for your team?Hiring and retaining talent in a competitive environment is a big challenge. We give our clients more choice, save them time and provide greater insight.We want to make your talent search simpler and more cost-effective. Hanover can reduce your interview process by 30% and increase candidate engagement with your brand by up to 60%.Find out more here about how we can help you​Or looking for a new job?We work with a wide variety of employers in the UK and across Europe. Choose from exciting tech, marketing and digital roles at big brands, startups, software houses, creative agencies and many more.See the latest jobs​

​Which core competencies are common among top tech talent, ones that make the difference between a good developer and a great developer? Here are some of the most important soft skills that all developers should have: ​Eagerness to learnMost developers will have gained solid fundamental knowledge from a degree program or online course, but the best software developers are excellent self-learners. Curious by nature, they find the balance between learning and doing, constantly applying their knowledge to practice. They’re never afraid to try out the latest tech– in fact, they relish it.​Problem Solving SkillsSoftware development is ALL about solving problems! All software is designed to solve some user problem regardless of the programming language or technology you use. Effective developers strive to avoid making the same mistake twice. An experienced developer should be able to identify problems that look similar to problems they’ve dealt with before, which is a skill in itself. They recognise past issues and transform past solutions to work within the current context and even better, improve on the solution every time.​Big Picture ThinkingA great developer will always have the ‘big picture’ in mind. It’s not just about writing code, but also how the other life-cycle stages like requirements, design, testing and maintenance impact coding and vice-versa. Whether it’s Agile, Lean, Waterfall, Iterative, Spiral or a DevOps model, awareness of the software development life-cycle as a whole is important.​Positive AttitudeThe best programmers genuinely care about the product they’re working on. They maintain a positive attitude and are usually willing to go the extra mile to get the job done. In software development there’s often urgent deadlines, whether a product is being brought to market or a particular feature is being released– so a team player attitude is invaluable. They should also be able to receive feedback well and take it on board. Code reviews and pair programming are common, which help to improve even the most experienced people!​Communication SkillsThe stereotype of coders who sit alone in front of their screen is old news. Collaboration is key in agile teams, which means strong communication skills go hand in hand with great development skills. It’s crucial for developers to articulate their ideas in a way that the rest of their team understand, and in turn listen to what others are telling them.​​Looking for a new job? ​Check out our jobs page for our featured roles or send us your CV

​You’ve been approached about a job or applied to a new role. You’ve had the initial CV screening, the interview and are now being asked to go back in for a presentation, to present a piece of project work or do a task. So, should you really commit to doing interview tasks?It’s quite common for employers to ask candidates to undertake tasks as part of the recruitment process. This is to determine if you have the right skills for the role, understand industry trends and also if you’ll be a good culture fit for a certain type of team. Sometimes interviews don’t go as well as we would like them to, so extra tasks give a fair chance to all applicants.On some occasions with tricky roles, it’s difficult for an employer to make a decision without a task but it’s important that interview tasks be fair and benefit both the employer and candidate.​Pro’s of interview tasks for candidates:It’s a perfect chance to show off what you can do and what the company are missing out on, by not having you on their team.If you don’t like what your being asked to do, or feel you may not be capable of the tests, this is a good chance to decide whether or not the role is for you. However, if you are excited by the opportunity or the task interests you, it’s worth doing to secure the job you want.Con’s of interview tasks for candidates:Projects or bigger tasks can be time-consuming so it can sometimes feel easier to say no, but if you want the job then you need to decide if it’s worth investing the time.If you are being asked to undertake a significant project that will benefit the company in the long term but there’s no guarantee of securing the position, it’s also a chance to question whether or not you want to give a company your free expertise. All tasks should be ‘dummy’ tasks, so feel free to question this.​Pro’s of interview tasks for employers:As we know employee turnover can be costly. It’s also time-consuming to hire someone who ultimately might not work out or might not have all the skills you require. Having candidates complete tests ensure you’re going to hire the right person each time and it’s not just that they are a good interviewee.Con’s of interview tasks for employers:If you are setting a task or audition that is too demanding, this can be a deal breaker for candidates. Make sure you communicate to a candidate why the tasks are necessary, or you could end up losing the hire you want.​Whether you’re a client or a candidate, interview tasks should be appropriate and relevant to the role. They shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours and should be able to showcase skills without taking advantage of intellectual property. It’s a balancing act but get it right and both parties will benefit from a great new working relationship.If you need help with your hiring, head over to our homepage to see how we can help!​