How Patrice & Associates engaged top tech talent with Dice

Nick Mastrovito, a seasoned recruiter with Patrice & Associates, had been sourcing tech professionals for over seven years, primarily through generalist hiring platforms. While these platforms initially provided value, his experience steadily declined over time. His biggest challenge was the decreasing quality of candidates and limited information available, which made it difficult to identify suitable talent for specialized tech roles or access comprehensive candidate profiles. In addition, whenever issues arose, customer support from these platforms was minimal and insufficient. To make matters worse, the cost of using these platforms increased year after year, even as the quality of both service and candidate pools seemed to diminish. Mastrovito reflects on his experience, saying, “I’ve used a variety of platforms, and what I’ve noticed is that over time, they become more expensive and offer less.” With higher costs and more time-consuming efforts required to deliver the quality candidates his clients had come to expect, it was clear that a change in his recruitment strategy was necessary.

Recognizing the need for a more specialized approach, Mastrovito turned to Dice—a platform designed specifically for sourcing tech talent. He believed that focusing on a platform built for tech recruiting would allow him to streamline his efforts and produce better results. As he puts it, “Dice is the platform for technical recruiting. So, why not use the best platform out there for the space that I’m recruiting in?” Several features of Dice made a significant impact on his recruiting process. The IntelliSearch^TM feature allowed him to paste a job description into Dice’s search engine and quickly receive a qualified list of tech professionals, saving time and effort. Additionally, he appreciated Dice’s ability to layer filters and Boolean strings to refine searches, helping him narrow down his list of potential candidates more efficiently. Another benefit Mastrovito found valuable was access to Social Profiles, in which Dice scrapes the open web for additional information on candidates, creating a more complete and detailed profile that helped him make informed decisions during the hiring process.

By moving his tech hiring to Dice, Mastrovito transformed his strategy, focusing on high-quality candidates instead of filtering through an overwhelming number of irrelevant resumes. As he explains, “I’m not looking for 1,000 resumes. I’m looking for 10 or 15 really good resumes.” This shift was supported by quarterly check-ins with his Dice account manager and client success partner, helping him stay on track and improve his results. This new approach also helped him win new business. For example, when a potential client struggled to find a local software engineer through Indeed, Mastrovito quickly conducted a search on Dice, targeting candidates who fit the requirements and had updated their resumes in the past six months. He immediately identified 30 qualified candidates, earned the client’s business, and several candidates were interviewed for the position.