I’ve spent a lot of time over the last six months with CoTalent talking with our clients about their struggles when it comes to hiring Software Development and Technology resources. Most of my clients freely admit that they do a very poor job of attracting, selecting and retaining talented (and in high demand) Tech professionals. The consistent theme is “We don’t understand why it’s so bloody hard to find and keep good people.”
I believe that the problem can be distilled down to three key issues: People, Process & Partners.
People
The most obvious and impactful of the three, People refers to the fact that for the most part, the Technology Recruitment industry, Hiring Managers and Interviewers all forget that we are dealing with people. The standard job brief for a Technology contract role is a shopping list of programming languages, systems and hard skills. Very rarely is the human aspect of the hire given much more than cursory attention.
We forget that we’re trying to hire a human to do a job, not a robot. We dictate terms, tenure and scope with the assumption that paying a premium on top of a daily rate will get the deal done. In a market where Work/Life Balance was recently found to be the top driver for job seekers, it’s not hard to see why this strategy is often not successful.
Smart businesses are now looking at their offering more holistically, with an eye to creating a win/win for themselves and the candidate, that goes further than just money. Flexible working, development, and a focus on building teams with a coherent and positive culture are at the forefront of the talent war.
We suggested to a client that they take prospective employees on a ten-minute tour of their offices to meet the people they’ll be working with, before starting their gruelling technical interviews, and received immediate positive feedback from both the client and candidate. It’s a simple thing, but they build better rapport, are able to get a better gauge of each other’s personalities, and can more easily visualise whether the role and candidate are a good fit.
Software Developers, Business Analysts and Agile Practioners are in extremely high demand. They are looking for a challenging role, with a great team, that pays well, and allows them some measure of control over when and where they do their work.
Process
If you’ve hired someone, interviewed for a new job, or work in recruitment, none of this will come as a surprise to you. The vast majority of recruitment processes are absolute garbage!
Only a very few companies have established robust, sensible and time focused hiring processes. Most companies go to market with an “urgent” hire but then set no specific timeline around this business-critical process. Interviews happen in random gaps in interviewers’ diaries. Feedback is high level, unconstructive and often forgotten altogether. How many times have you heard a Hiring Manager say they need a new resource to start “Yesterday!” and then had to wait a fortnight to hear how a candidate has performed in an interview?
By treating a hiring process as a Project, you can define timelines at the START, giving the Manager, Candidates and other stakeholders clear visibility of when to expect interviews to happen, feedback, and most importantly, start dates.
Our research also clearly shows that giving timely and constructive feedback has a significant positive impact on the reputation of a Company, even when candidates are unsuccessful.
Partners
The Beatles said it best when they sang “I get by with a little help from my friends”. The companies with the most effective hiring processes use a multi-channel approach to finding the most talented people.
Internal Recruitment/Talent Acquisition teams play a critical role in pipelining talent, allowing companies to take a more proactive approach to identifying and engaging talent. In many cases, Internal teams are more than capable of getting roles filled quickly, efficiently and importantly, cheaply.
Specialist Recruitment Agencies are also key to a complete talent attraction strategy, and certainly don’t need to work against the Internal teams. Companies who engage with Recruiters effectively have a much higher capability of attracting passive talent, have a faster time to fill and have access to a broader range of candidates.
This is where the concept of “partnership” comes in. If you are a Hiring Manager who treats Recruiters as a transactional resource to be used only when you have an immediate need, expect to be underwhelmed by the poor service you receive. You’re no doubt used to wasting your time interviewing irrelevant candidates sent to you by Recruiters, and see this as a necessary evil. It’s not.
Find a couple of Recruiters who are knowledgeable in the specific technical verticals you care about, and take some time to build a relationship with them. Spend time with them regularly, explain your culture and what you’re trying to achieve. Let them see your vision for the business. Be generous with your time, and treat things like job briefings seriously. The number of Hiring Managers who have “mission critical” hires to make, but who can’t be bothered to sit down with their Recruitment partners for 30 minutes to explain what they want, is staggering.
Once you’ve found Recruitment partners who you trust, and invested time in helping them understand your business, demand more from them! Don’t accept shoddy service. Don’t allow them to send you the profiles of candidates who haven’t been met, screened and referenced. You deserve better. If you both invest time and energy into the relationship, you’d be surprised how painless the hiring process can be.
If you’d like to discuss a better way to attract Technology people for your business, give us a call. We’d be happy to help.