The tech sector has grown substantially in the past decade. In fact, job opportunities in the sector are at a 10-year high – they now account for 14% of all open opportunities, up from 11% in 2019. There are nearly 5m people working in the tech sector – over double what there was in 2011. With nearly 2m opportunities in tech over the past 12 months, it’s evident that companies need to improve their tech recruitment.
As well as needing skilled technical employees, there’s also demand for other roles, such as Product Managers. This demand has increased 8x over the past year, showing a significant need for non-technical roles.
As with other industries, there are of course, a number of things you can do to improve your tech recruitment.
How can D, E & I help improve your tech recruitment?
Diversity, equity and inclusion is an imperative part of modern recruitment. There are many benefits of having a D,E & I strategy in place for any business. Below are some examples of the benefits of improving your D,E & I.
- Boost talent attraction/retention
- Give you a wider talent pool to choose from
- Help you gain more partners, unique ideas, contributions and innovations.
It’s very easy as an employer to overlook D,E & I. Businesses with a fledgling or no HR department may not know about tools or methods used to improve D,E & I. Methods such as blind hiring (removing all personal and demographic information from an application) helps remove any bias in recruitment. Blind hiring helps ensure the only influences come from the candidate’s skills and experience.
Neurodiversity in the workplace is starting to be taken more seriously. Business leaders are learning that neurodiverse people offer qualities that are highly valuable to many industries. Approximately 14% people in the UK and between 15-20% of the U.S population are neurodiverse. If businesses aren’t including people from those groups in their search for talent, they’re missing out on a significant number of potential candidates.
EVP & Employer Brand
EVP & Employer Brand are linked and both contribute to improved tech recruitment abilities in their own way. An attractive EVP can contribute to you having a strong Employer Brand – your employees will be happy, leading to lower turnover, better talent attraction and retention. Employees value a company if they’re treated well, have job security and a good quality of life.
Employer Brand is more your employees opinion of you as a company though – it’s how you’re perceived by everyone. By having a strong and well-communicated Employer Brand, you’ll not only attract the right candidates you may well also exclude those who don’t consider your business a good fit for them. This can save recruiters a lot of time and effort.
Something to consider with EVP and Employer Brand is that they are constantly evolving. Employees want different things over time and if you don’t adapt to provide what they want, this can affect your Employer Brand. You should set regular reviews of your EVP to ensure that you’re still providing what your staff want. There is no set amount of time for this, as each business is different, it should be constantly monitored. Not doing so may leave you susceptible to people looking for opportunities elsewhere.
Recruiting fractional leaders for tech
If your organisation is struggling to find c-suite executives, fractional leaders could be a solution. Companies are increasingly using this method to fill part-time or short-term leadership vacancies. This practice has benefits for both parties – the leaders can fill their spare time with other roles and the company doesn’t have the pay for a full-time or long-term executive. For some businesses, this can help them grow and/or scale the business with a lower initial cost, as c-suite executive salaries can be prohibitively expensive.
The ability to adjust capacity is another benefit of employing a fractional leader. This is the ideal scenario for companies that have very limited budgets, as they can still get the experience and know-how needed to achieve their goals, but they don’t have to make any long-term commitments. It’s also a good test to see what executive support you actually need – some businesses will find part-time might be enough for their needs, others may find that’s not enough.
Tech recruitment: Hiring the right people
How do you make sure you hire the right people?
One of the first things you must do as an employer, is figure out who the ‘right people’ are. Making sure that they fit your company culture can help ensure you hire people that add something to the business. Our blog ‘Hiring at volume: How do you evaluate if you’re bringing in the right talent‘ looks at the various things you can do as an employer before, during and after hiring someone to ensure you’ve got the right person. Some of the key points include talking to your team, checking your turnover, using performance metrics, ensuring your team is diverse and perhaps most importantly, talking to the candidate.
As mentioned previously, D,E & I practices can be useful when looking for the right candidates. These practices help you focus on the important aspects of a potential candidate such as skills, experience and knowledge. These are arguably the most important attributes of a candidate, so using them as the first filter should provide you with a solid foundation to find the right person.
In order to simplify hiring the right person, there is work to do beforehand. Figure out what your culture is and find people that would complement that. Use D,E & I practices to make sure you’re being as inclusive as you can and make sure that you’ve discussed the hiring needs with your team and drawn up metrics to measure performance. Combining all of these things should go some way to ensuring you’re hiring the right people for the right positions.