How To Source Software Developers On GitHub In A Particular Country?

GitHub is a powerful tool for software developers. Recruiters can use it, too. Read this article to see how...

Was GitHub made to be an easy-to-use sourcing tool for non-tech-savvy recruiters?

Certainly not!

However, can recruiters use GitHub to source software developers?

Hell yes!

You can find on GitHub software developers who don’t even have any LinkedIn profile.

GitHub doesn’t make it easy though. For example, the location is a plain text field. Anyone can enter anything. Say, a city, a country, a combination of both, a country code, … it gets quite messy!

This is what works for me when I’m sourcing developers. I compose a shortlist of:

• The major cities
• Country name in local language and in English
• ISO country code

Then, I type “location:” in front of each of them. See on this slide…

Next, I copy-paste this to the search bar…

And I get in results all developers who live in those locations. Next, I need to split results into smaller chunks based on the number of developers’ repositories and followers.

To make this easier, I’ve created a spreadsheet that takes a few parameters and composes a URL that you can open in your browser.

You can copy this sample spreadsheet on Google Drive. This is what it looks like…

Next...

If you'd like to see a detailed case study where I show how we used GitHub to find senior open-source contributors for our San Francisco-based client, become a member of the Tech Recruitment Academy and look for the course inside the members area.