4 Creative Ways to Recruit Web Developers

For jobs other than technology jobs, applying for a job and creating a resume hasn't changed much in the past decade;  if you're a tech person, however, recruiting developers certainly has changed.  Some prospective employers advertise on LinkedIn or typical job recruitment sites.  I've recently spotted a few more creative ways to advertise tech jobs and wanted to share them with you.

Browser Console

Oftentimes developers will go to sites they like and open the console to experiment with the site's DOM, view the site's CSS and JS files, or view load times.  Vimeo uses the browser console to recruit developers:

Since only developers will have their console open, this is a great place to target developers who are interested in your site.

Page HTML

Again targeting developers that are interested in a site's front-end code, placing a HTML comment to recruit developers like Yahoo! did (at least within their Fantasy Football section):

<!-- 
	Hello there.  Thank you for showing interest in our source code.
	Perhaps you'd like to join our team?  To learn more, visit:

	http://yahoo.com/jobs
-->

Odd that only the Fantasy Football section featured this HTML, but using HTML comments is another creative way to recruit developers.

Robots.txt and Humans.txt Files

You need to very interested in a site's strategy to be checking out robots.txt files, and viewing the humans.txt file essentially provides a developer insight as to who their prospective teammates are, so these two files are another place to recruit:

# We're looking for talented developers like you:  https://davidwalsh.name/jobs !

There are very few persons who would view these two files, but they're prospective recruitment files nonetheless.  The UK's Daily Mail publication has used this strategy in the past.

Custom HTTP Headers

The ultimate "nerd alert":  adding custom HTTP headers to recruit developers:

header('X-Recruitment: Find jobs at https://davidwalsh.name/jobs!');

These headers can be seen by any requesting user, via the browser console, a cURL request, or any other requestor.  Almost no one will ever see these headers, but the few that do may be exactly the type of driven developers to improve your organization.

The tech industry isn't your typical resume-and-cover letter crowd.  There are loads of driven, creative developers that are sifting through a site's source code, so why not target those developers in creative ways.  Know of another creative way to recruit developers?  Share!