7 Technical Recruiter Certification Options To Advance Your Career

Technical recruiters collaborate with HR managers to identify, screen, assess and onboard qualified candidates for various technical roles. Certifications can help impress potential employers by validating your knowledge and skills across multiple hiring tasks, and related responsibilities. Knowing more about the different online courses and credentials available for tech recruiters helps you choose the right one that aligns with your career goals. In this article, we examine what a technical recruiter certification is, who can apply for it, review six credentials to advance your career and share tips to improve your IT recruiting strategies.

Please note that none of the companies, institutions or organisations mentioned in this article are associated with Indeed.

What Is A Technical Recruiter Certification And Who Can Apply For It?

A technical recruiter certification is a professional course that teaches you the skills, techniques and tools to identify, assess and hire technical talent. You can learn how to post engaging job listings to attract qualified candidates, conduct interviews and use data-driven tools to improve the efficiency of the hiring process. Tech recruiters require specific knowledge in software engineering, programming, hardware engineering and other IT domains to select eligible candidates for open positions. It also introduces the best practices for sourcing and assessing candidates, and helps build familiarity with the latest recruitment trends and laws.

Including a recognised certification on your resume showcases your qualifications, skills and expertise to potential employers, helping you secure the best roles. It also accelerates your career and enables you to advance to senior managerial positions by staying current with the latest tech recruitment practices. While anyone can apply for a tech recruiter credential, it is most suited for:

• Current technical and IT recruiters who wish to advance to senior managerial roles

• Entry-level recruiters and HR team members who want to learn new recruiting skills, and techniques

• General recruiters and HR managers who also hire for technical positions as part of their role

• Recruiters who want to become more efficient in hiring tech talent

• HR managers to streamline their hiring process

• Other team leaders and product managers who build technical teams, including coders, programmers, developers, testers and software engineers

Related: Why Consider A Career Change To Recruitment? (With Tips)

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Technical Recruiter Certification Options To Consider

Here are a few tech recruiter credentials that add value to your resume:

1. DevSkiller Tech Recruitment Certification Course

This free IT recruitment credential is ideal for HR managers, tech recruiters, team leaders and product managers. It helps you stay updated on the latest trends in the IT recruitment industry. Once you have completed the e-learning course materials, you can take the final exam. On passing the examination, DevSkiller issues a certificate you can mention on your resume and share with prospective employers.

The course teaches you how to:

• Design a fully functional IT hiring process

• Screen and interview candidates

• Improve quality of hire

• Reduce time to hire and cost per hire

• Increase diversity in tech hiring

• Avoid tech sourcing mistakes

• Learn about inbound and social sourcing

• Use tools for sourcing and screening tech talent

Related: How To Become IT Recruiter (With Salary And Qualifications)

2. Certified Talent Acquisition Specialist (CTAS)

Identifying and onboarding the right talent is a significant challenge for tech recruiters. With a massive demand for skilled tech employees, recruiters deal with multiple hurdles in managing their talent base, building a pipeline of future recruits and reducing employee turnover. Offered by Middle EarthHR, this certification teaches you key strategies to plan and acquire quality tech talent. It also helps you develop an agile approach to attract, engage and hire critical talent to meet the demands of evolving market conditions, and align the recruitment plan with organisational goals.

The topics covered in the course include:

• Recruitment and talent acquisition process

• Talent engagement through employer branding

• Building a candidate pipeline

• Candidate sourcing and effective recruitment

• Recruitment trends and laws

3. Certified IT Recruiter (CITR)

The CITR is ideal for HR managers and other recruiters seeking to understand IT recruitment concepts. It helps enhance your tech recruiting skills, as the broad range of topics covered in the course helps develop comprehensive expertise in all major IT disciplines. You are awarded the CITR credential when you pass the associated exam. HRCERTS, the organisation that issues the CITR certification, conducts the exam across ten IT domains with the help of subject matter experts. The topics are updated periodically to keep them relevant to the latest trends in IT recruitment.

The CITR exam consists of 100 multiple-choice questions and is conducted online. You are eligible for the certification if you receive a passing score of 70% and above in the exam, and have at least six months of IT recruitment experience. The certificate is valid for three years, after which you can renew it by retaking the exam. The IT domains covered in this course include:

• Agile and project management

• Big data and data sciences

• Cloud computing

• Databases

• DevOps

• Education, certification and digital badges

• Information security and data protection, and privacy

• IT management

• Networking

• Programming

Related: 14 High-Paying Recruiter Jobs (With Salaries And Skills)

4. AIRS Certified Technical Recruiter

This self-guided certification course helps you understand the various aspects and challenges of technical recruiting, and sourcing strategies. It teaches you how to develop an effective IT recruiting strategy for sourcing engineers, developers, coders, product managers, data scientists and other specialised tech candidates. Some of the topics covered in the course include:

• Data integration, software development lifecycle, IT governance, frameworks, big data, web and mobile development, blockchain, software testing and information assurance

• Sourcing technical talent

• Finding tech communities online

• Reviewing and analysing resumes

Once you complete the training materials at your own pace, you can apply for the certification exam. The certification is valid for two years and requires retaking the exam after the validity period. Enrolling for this certification exam also provides you complimentary access to a few other certifications and courses from AIRS.

Related: How To Find Tech Jobs (With 11 Popular Roles To Consider)

5. Hirist Tech Recruiter Certification

If you are looking for a quick and easy tech recruiting credential to add to your portfolio, this is an excellent choice. This two-hour free course helps you gain the basic skills and techniques to onboard quality tech talent. It teaches you how to create engaging video job descriptions, use the best tools for recruitment, improve employer image via branding and build a seamless, and efficient interview process. The course also discusses key tech recruitment strategies, equipping you with the knowledge and techniques to advance in your tech recruitment career.

Related: Recruitment Vs Selection: Definition And Key Differences

6. Building A Data Science Team from Coursera

Offered by Coursera in partnership with John Hopkins University, this course is specifically designed for data science recruiters and other IT employees involved in building, and managing data analysis teams. This one-week programme teaches you how to find suitable data science candidates and empower them to complete projects successfully. Some of the topics covered include:

• Roles in data science, such as data engineers, data analysts and data scientists

• The impact of the data science team on other teams in an organisation

• Qualifications for data science team members

• Relevant questions to ask in an interview while hiring data scientists

• Strategies to manage the onboarding process

• Techniques and tools to guide data science teams to success

This course is part of the executive data science specialisation on Coursera. You can enrol for this certification separately or complete the entire domain. This programme's flexible deadline makes it easy to complete at your pace. The programme is 100% online and you receive a digital certificate for completing all modules, and the final exam.

Related: Learn About Data Science Careers (With Skills And Duties)

7. Tech Recruiting Tactics 2.0

This beginner course from Recruiting Innovation is ideal for entry-level IT recruiters as it introduces the various steps of tech recruitment. You can learn how to onboard candidates, identify qualified candidates using tools like Xray and boolean search, and write compelling job descriptions. Furthermore, the course teaches you how to create a positive candidate experience while hiring for tech roles. This free course consists of 30 lessons and covers the following topics:

• Recruiter workflow

• Talent personas

• Sourcing strategies

• Job descriptions

• Outreach messages

• Team interviews

Each module contains video lessons that explain different recruitment practices and tools. You can complete a quiz at the end of each module to test your knowledge. After completing all e-learning materials, you receive a free digital certificate to share with prospective employers.

Related: Top 10 External And Internal Recruitment Strategies

Tips For IT Recruitment

Here are a few tips to refine your tech recruitment strategy:

• Optimise the job description. Creating an engaging and compelling job description can make more candidates interested in the role. Collaborate with team leaders and hiring managers to write an accurate job posting that reflects your expectations, and aligns with the organisational culture.

• Specific required technical skills in job ads. Specifying the tools, frameworks and technologies needed for the role improves your chances of receiving applications from eligible candidates, and helps to eliminate unqualified candidates early in the process.

• Ask for referrals. Referrals make current employees feel part of the hiring process and increase your chances of finding suitable candidates quickly. You can also incentivise employees for every candidate you onboard via their referrals.