How to Become a Technical Recruiter - Vocabulary & Key Concepts

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering technical roles, recruiting tools, sourcing methodologies, and messaging best practices based on 'How to Become a Technical Recruiter' by Jonathan Kidder.

Jonathan Kidder

A top-ranked technical talent sourcing recruiter, corporate trainer, author, and founder of the WizardSourcer recruiting blog in 2015.

Tech Talent

A term used to describe the skilled workforce driving growth and innovation in tech companies, spanning developers, engineers, data scientists, and IT professionals.

Tech Roles Ranked By Employer Demand

An Indeed data chart measuring job posting volume per million postings, showing Engineering Manager and Front-end Developer as the top demanded tech roles.

Frontend Developer

A developer who builds and maintains client-side website or application components (visuals and functionality) using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript frameworks like React or Angular.

Backend Developer

A developer responsible for building and maintaining server-side application logic, databases, APIs, and servers using languages such as Java, Python, Node.js, C#, or PHP.

Full Stack Developer

A developer proficient across the entire web development stack, capable of managing client-side browser interfaces, server-side code, database management, and cloud deployment.

Data Science Hierarchy of Needs

A hierarchical pyramid model detailing data maturity levels required before AI, progressing from Collection (sensors/logging) up to Move/Store, Explore/Transform, Aggregate/Label, Learn/Optimize, and AI/Deep Learning.

Quality Engineer (QA)

A specialist in the quality assurance team tasked with creating documentation, devising automated and manual tests, and establishing criteria to ensure software products meet requirements.

DevOps Engineer

An engineer who combines cultural practices and software automation tools (such as Git, Docker, and Jenkins) to automate development and IT operations workflows for rapid software deployment.

Data Scientist

An analytical expert who combines statistics, computer science, and mathematics to process, model, and analyze large structured and unstructured datasets to derive actionable insights.

Data Analyst

A specialist who collects, processes, and performs statistical analysis on datasets using tools like SQL, Excel, and Python to create business reports and answer specific queries.

Solution Architect

A technical leader responsible for evaluating business problems and designing the overall technical vision and infrastructure solution to integrate systems safely and effectively.

System Engineer

An IT professional responsible for designing, testing, and managing hardware/operating system platforms, network routing, and infrastructure automation using scripting languages.

Systems Administrator

An administrator responsible for the day-to-day operation, security, active directory configuration, and maintenance of an organization's computer networks and servers.

Applications Engineer

A developer who creates, designs, modifies, and tests software application modules while providing direct front-end support to ensure software usability.

Data Engineer

An engineering specialist focused on building ETL pipelines, data warehouses, and big data architecture (Hadoop, Spark, Redshift) to convert raw data into usable formats.

IT Manager

A technology leader who establishes long-term IT goals, manages IT staff and project timelines, enforces compliance policies, and oversees technical infrastructure.

Mobile Developer

A software engineer who creates mobile applications for native platforms using Java/Kotlin (Android) or Objective-C/Swift (iOS), or cross-platform frameworks like React Native and Flutter.

Sales Engineer

A technical sales professional who sells complex scientific and technological products, partnering with sales executives to demonstrate solutions, model financial business cases, and address client technical inquiries.

UX Designer

An end-user advocate who structures user research, information architecture, wireframing, and interaction design to make products intuitive, easy to navigate, and satisfying to use.

.NET Developer

A software developer specializing in building applications for Microsoft platforms using C#, VB.NET, or F# languages inside the .NET Framework or .NET Core.

EDI Engineer

An Electronic Data Interchange developer who uses SQL and mapping tools to set up and maintain automated systems for exchanging corporate transactions between trading partners.

Support Engineer

A technical support specialist responsible for diagnosing, troubleshooting, and rectifying software, hardware, and network issues while maintaining strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Desktop App Developer

A developer who programs, tests, and maintains native applications that run directly on desktop operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux without requiring a web browser.

Hardware Engineer

An engineering professional who designs, develops, and tests physical electronic components, microprocessors, circuit boards, and hardware assemblies.

Business Intelligence Engineer (BIE)

A data professional who develops data models, ETL pipelines, and interactive visualization dashboards (using SQL, Python, Tableau, PowerBI) to present business metrics.

Talent Mapping

The practice of researching competitor organizations and market dynamics regarding specific job roles to assess candidate supply and guide sourcing strategies.

Stack Overflow

A technical Q&A community website used by computer programmers, which recruiters leverage via user tags and profiles to source technical talent.

GitHub

The world's largest open-source software repository site, hosting over 28 million users, widely utilized by recruiters to discover developers by analyzing public code repositories.

Devpost

An online platform for software hackathons and competitions where developers showcase projects, serving as a venue for technical candidate discovery.

SeekOut

An AI-powered talent search platform and database offering complete candidate profiles, diversity filters, talent pool analytics, and automated email messaging.

Hiretual (HireEZ)

An AI sourcing platform and extension that aggregates profile data across over 30 platforms, extracts contact details, and automates email sequence campaigns.

Seamless.ai

A real-time B2B search engine tool that uses AI to discover verified candidate and decision-maker contact details, including direct dials and work emails.

DNNae

An AI recruiting extension that parses job descriptions, ranks LinkedIn profiles based on semantic scores, and automates outreach messaging.

developerDB

A technical talent database and browser extension providing personal emails, coding language rankings, and repository insights for over 30 million tech workers.

Mail Merge

A feature in Microsoft Word and Excel that automates personalized email outreach by mapping spreadsheet data fields into custom template placeholders.

Email Drip Campaign

An automated series of scheduled, personalized recruiting emails sent to passive candidates over specified time intervals that halts automatically upon receiving a response.