How do you become a technical recruiter? And how do you become a good technical recruiter? For many, breaking into the world of big tech is a lifelong dream. We spoke to Martin Ngo, who spent over five years as a senior technical recruiter for Meta, who offered insights into how to become a technical recruiter.
Martin also appeared at our Virtual Summit with Brett Terpstra of Oracle, Laura McClellan of The Productive Woman podcast, and Ty Schalamon of SketchUp to share how he used TextExpander to maximize his productivity at Meta.
Key takeaways
- You can move into technical recruiting without recruiting experience. Martin Ngo went from managing a Starbucks store to Meta through its Sourcer Development Program, a 12-month bootcamp, and his first advice to career changers is to talk with working recruiters.
- Good technical recruiters pair people skills with tech aptitude. Handling ambiguity, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and feedback carry over from other jobs, and you also need enough technical understanding to follow a role’s requirements, plus strong negotiation skills.
- A certification can strengthen a career change. AIRS, the American Staffing Association, and the National Association of Personnel Services offer recruiter certifications that show employers you know the process and are willing to put in the work.
- Templates keep high-volume outreach personal. Reaching 50 to 70 candidates a week takes a lot of writing, so Martin drafted general messages in TextExpander and spent his time tailoring the details for each person.
How to become a recruiter with no experience
After earning a BS in business management from San Jose University, a BA in political science from California State University – East Bay, and a MA in American Government and Politics and Comparative Politics from San Francisco State University in 2013—Martin spent four years at Starbucks as a store manager.
“I enjoyed the operations of things and the fast-paced environment,” Martin says. “But the heart of it, I enjoyed listening to the customers’ journeys and stories every time they would enter the doors,” he adds.
But Martin was looking for a new challenge and learned about Meta’s Sourcer Development Program, which is a 12-month bootcamp that teaches you how to become a technical recruiter. Meta offers a range of career pathway programs for people from all walks of life
“So I just applied, interviewed, and I was surprisingly glad that I got welcomed into that program,” Martin says.
“I found some great leaders, some great folks who helped me understand the wheelhouse of recruiting, and I was able to pick up on the opportunities. I think that’s where my experience from Starbucks came in. I was looking for opportunity gaps and how to close those gaps,” Martin says.
Outside of finding a similar program, what is Martin’s advice on how to become a recruiter?
“The first step before they even apply to a recruiting role is to speak to recruiters,” Martin says.
Martin has spoken to many who want to pivot into recruiting only to find that he’s the first recruiter they’ve spoken with.
He also recommends the Wonsulting YouTube channel for job seekers. “They’re essentially career consultants for people who want to break into tech or pivot their career,” Martin says.
Read more of Martin’s tips on how to get hired, including how to choose the right keywords for your LinkedIn profile, why a personal blog is important for job seekers, and why resumes are still important to recruiters.
How to be a good technical recruiter
What are the skills and attributes that make for a good technical recruiter? Martin lists the following skills that transferred from Starbucks:
- The ability to handle and manage ambiguity
- Collaboration
- High emotional intelligence (EQ)
- Being able to give and receive feedback
Martin also says it’s important to be a self-driven person who is actively seeking opportunities for growth. Those apply to any type of recruiting. As for how to become a technical recruiter, you need also to have an aptitude for technology, both to understand the requirements of the hiring manager and to properly gauge potential candidates.
Strong negotiation skills are also important for hashing out salary and compensation packages for candidates. While these are largely set by the company, there are details you may have to work out with the candidate, especially for candidates in high demand.
As for the day-to-day job—while many say that recruiting is repetitive, Martin doesn’t necessarily agree.
“Every recruiter is different, every relationship with hiring managers, recruiting partners, and candidates is also nuanced and different as well,” Martin says.
Most of Martin’s recruiting was outbound, so he would spend much of his day contacting potential candidates, and gaining an understanding of their history and experience. Martin would then collaborate with hiring managers, presenting them with a slate of candidates to find out if they were the right fit for Meta.
Martin also performed pre-screening calls with candidates to gain an understanding of their experience, motivations, and how well they align to the role.
“I think the biggest piece was formulating those relationships and building this trust with these candidates,” Martin says.
One tool that Martin found invaluable at Meta was TextExpander.
“When your goal is to reach out to 50 to 70 people per week, manually typing that is just going to take a lot of work, labor, and time. And I would use TextExpander to draft these general templates and then just spend a minimum amount of time tweaking those minor things to make it more tailored,” Martin says.
Read more on recruiting tools used by Amazon and Meta, including TextExpander. Try it yourself for free and discover what TextExpander can do to make recruiting easier. Paid plans start at $5 per user per month, billed annually.
How much do technical recruiters make?
How much you can make as a technical recruiter depends on your location and experience. According to Glassdoor, here are the averages in the United States for technical recruiter roles:
- Technical Recruiter: $85,602
- Technical Recruiter II: $107,718
- Senior Technical Recruiter: $132,345
Again, your compensation will vary depending on your location and these are just national averages.
How to become a certified recruiter
One way you can boost your chances of breaking into technical recruiting is by earning a certification that proves to employers that you know the process and are willing to put in the work to learn it.
There are several organizations that offer certification programs, including:
- AIRS, which offers a professional recruiter certification for $995.
- The American Staffing Association offers a number of certifications, including one for technical services.
- The National Association of Personnel Services (NAPS) offers certifications for Certified Personnel Consultant (CPC) and Certified Temporary Staffing-Specialist (CTS).
How to become a technical recruiter, step by step
To become a technical recruiter, learn how recruiting works, build enough technical knowledge to talk with engineers and hiring managers, and get hands-on sourcing practice. Many people start as a sourcer, recruiting coordinator, or agency recruiter, then move into technical roles once they know the hiring process and the jobs they fill.
- Talk to working recruiters. Ask technical recruiters what their week looks like before you apply anywhere, as Martin recommends.
- Learn the language of the roles you’ll fill. Know the difference between front-end, back-end, data, and infrastructure roles, and the common languages, frameworks, and tools behind them. You don’t need to code, but you do need to follow a hiring manager’s requirements.
- Get sourcing practice. Build Boolean searches, find candidates on professional networks, and write outreach messages. An entry-level sourcer or coordinator role, or a training program like Meta’s, gives you that practice.
- Consider a certification. The programs above help when your resume doesn’t show recruiting experience yet.
- Track your results. Response rates, screens booked, and hires show a hiring manager what you can deliver, and they show you which outreach messages work.
Technical recruiting is outreach-heavy, so a library of tested messages pays off quickly. Save your intro, follow-up, and screening messages as Snippets with fill-ins for each candidate’s name and skills, then adjust the details that matter. See how text templates for recruiters work in TextExpander, which runs in any app you type in on Mac, Windows, Chrome (extension), iPhone, iPad, and Android.
How TextExpander helps technical recruiters
TextExpander turns the messages technical recruiters write again and again, like outreach, follow-ups, screening notes, and interview updates, into Snippets you insert with a short abbreviation in LinkedIn, Gmail, your ATS, or any other app. Fill-ins keep every message personal, and shared Snippet Groups keep a whole recruiting team on the same current wording.
- Personal outreach at volume: Save your intro and follow-up messages with fill-ins for the candidate’s name, current role, and the tech stack you’re hiring for. It’s the approach Martin used at Meta to reach 50 to 70 candidates a week: draft the general message once, then spend your time on the details that matter to each engineer.
- Consistent screening notes: A screening-call Snippet with fields for experience, motivations, salary expectations, and notice period gives every hiring manager the same summary format, so candidates are easy to compare.
- Technical terms spelled right: Save role summaries, framework names, and requirement blurbs once. A misspelled language or tool in an outreach message tells an engineer you don’t know the role.
- Faster scheduling and status updates: Keep interview confirmations, next-step emails, and kind rejection notes ready to go, with a date that fills in automatically, so no candidate waits on a reply.
- One library for the whole team: Shared Snippet Groups let a lead recruiter update a message once and have it reach everyone. Permissions control who can edit shared Snippets and who can only use them.
That last point matters as a team grows. At a fast-growing HR platform, recruiters used to keep personal templates in Outlook, OneNote, and old email threads, so updates never spread. After moving to shared Snippets, the team saved 44,238 hours with TextExpander in 2025. As the company’s Lead GTM Recruiter put it, “With 70 recruiters sending dozens of emails daily, we needed a way to ensure everyone used the same current messaging without manually coordinating updates.”
You can start on the Free plan and share Snippets with up to 5 people. Paid plans start at $5 per user per month, billed annually.
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Frequently asked questions
Can you become a technical recruiter with no experience?
Yes. Career changers move into technical recruiting regularly. Martin Ngo managed a Starbucks store before joining Meta's Sourcer Development Program, a 12-month bootcamp for new recruiters. Skills from customer-facing jobs, such as managing ambiguity, collaborating, and building relationships, transfer well. Start by talking with recruiters, learning the basics of the tech roles you'd hire for, and looking for sourcer or coordinator openings.
What skills does a technical recruiter need?
A technical recruiter needs the same people skills as any recruiter, including relationship building, emotional intelligence, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to give and receive feedback, plus an aptitude for technology. You need to understand a role's requirements well enough to judge whether a candidate fits, and strong negotiation skills help when you work through offers with in-demand candidates.
What does a technical recruiter do?
A technical recruiter finds and hires people for technical roles such as software engineering, data, and IT. The work includes sourcing and contacting candidates, running pre-screening calls to understand their experience and motivations, presenting a slate of candidates to hiring managers, and helping close offers. Much of the job is outreach and building trust with candidates over time.
