How To Use GitHub Advanced Search For Recruiters

The demand from customers for tech talent is high, but the pool of certified candidates is in quick source. It also doesn’t assistance that unemployment is small, as it even more narrows down your talent pool and helps make it more challenging to obtain excellent workforce. 

With levels of competition for tech expertise higher, you’re possible on the lookout for new and ground breaking methods to determine, attract and recruit extraordinary tech pros. This post will support you do just that by detailing a special sourcing tactic, Github advanced lookup. You are going to find out what Github is as well as why and how you should really supply tech pros from the platform.

Desk of Contents

What is GitHub?

GitHub is a cloud-centered social sharing web-site. Instead of sharing existence updates, job postings or pics, nevertheless, GitHub users share code. The platform operates on an open up-supply framework, that means the code is open up to the common community and can be altered by anyone. The variations are tracked through the platform’s Git revision management method (consequently the title GitHub), so consumers can see how code alterations from its unique type. 

Why Recruit on GitHub?

In this working day and age, just about each company demands industry experts with coding, developing or programming knowledge. Whether or not you are updating your firm’s web page or creating an app, you will need program engineers and application developers — each of which are some of the most in-demand roles in the career market place. 

Employers have to have to get much more strategic with their sourcing strategies if they want to conquer out the competitors and bring in leading computer software engineering talent. Simply because tech specialists have endless occupation alternatives, they are not actively looking for careers or updating their digital resumes. They are also not going to respond to the prolonged listing of recruiters seeking to hook up and get them to apply.

Instead, for those people tricky to seek the services of specialized roles, you have to have to satisfy expertise on the platforms they recurrent. For most program engineers and developers, that system is GitHub. 

How to Recruit with GitHub Sophisticated Lookup

In purchase to uncover wonderful application engineers and developers on GitHub, you first want to realize how the platform works and what to glance for. Start out by generating an account on GitHub that features info on your organization.

Also, generate a candidate persona so you know what to glance for for the duration of your research. Your prospect persona should really involve info like spot, experience, instruction, programming language and abilities.

Very similar to other social sharing web pages, GitHub buyers have profiles with the pursuing facts:

• Basic: Name, Locale, Date joined, Deal with (or screen title)
• Qualified: Career title, Employer, Instruction, Abilities, Website, Call details
• Public activity
• Followers/Pursuing
• Forks (code that’s been copied)
• Sources (authentic code from person)
• Stars (GitHub’s variation of likes)

GitHub profiles also include things like a calendar graph of when and how a lot of contributions a person has designed to open resource code in the prior 12 months.

In addition, there is a area called repositories, or “repos”, which are places on the platform where open up-supply development projects or computer software offers are saved. On a user’s profile, you can see which repositories the consumer has worked on and how a great deal their perform has been starred or forked. Repositories give you insight into what languages and expertise a consumer has shown, which is significantly a lot more instructive than bullet factors on a resume. 

Search for Applicant Personas

Repositories are a goldmine for recruiters hunting for distinct information to find aptly expert gurus. Dependent on what you’re hunting for, GitHub breaks down a selection of research inquiries and how to make the most of their web-site to narrow down your results.

Once again, your prospect persona will help you figure out what you need in your next computer software developer or engineer, so make absolutely sure you finish that initially. Below are the most prevalent means to search for people by criteria on GitHub: 

• Language
• Amount of followers
• Variety of forks (copied code)
• Variety of stars (likes)
• Matter or number of matters
• License
• Repository size, identify, description, or contents of the README file
• In just a user’s or organization’s repositories
• Research dependent on the contents of a repository
• Search centered on no matter if a repository is a mirror
• Search based mostly on no matter if a repository is archived
• Search primarily based on the quantity of difficulties with great 1st difficulty or aid preferred labels

Relying on your search metrics, you can reorganize the lookup outcomes you get by finest match, most followers, fewest followers, most not long ago joined, least recently joined, most repositories and fewest repositories. While it may well look counter-intuitive to find persons with several followers or repositories, if you are seeking for a junior application engineer, this can be valuable to find persons new to the area.

Narrow Down Best Candidates

As you start to identify industry experts that resonate with your crew and replicate the candidate persona you made for the job, you can start off narrowing down your options additional by seeking for far more specific standards, these types of as:

• Place (locale: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.