Team A play­ers play with their peers

The rapid devel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy is the biggest dri­ver of change and oppor­tu­ni­ty in the world of work today. The way soft­ware is built has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the last decade. Tech­nol­o­gy play­ers have had to scale their oper­a­tions into the wider open world in order to be able to inte­grate into the func­tion­al envi­ron­ment required by their cus­tomers. The homo­ge­neous world of com­put­ers and browsers is a life left behind. Instead, we build appli­ca­tions that run across mul­ti­ple clouds, devices and envi­ron­ments. Tra­di­tion­al ways of pro­duc­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion and train­ing are not scal­able to mod­ern appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment. New ways to learn things and build a cred­i­ble employ­er image in the mar­ket are needed.

With such a change, it is some­what sur­pris­ing that the change in tech­nol­o­gy recruit­ment skill require­ments has not yet been con­crete­ly imple­ment­ed gen­er­al­ly. This rapid devel­op­ment has cre­at­ed new chal­lenges for recruit­ment. It has become imper­a­tive for com­pa­nies to map proac­tive­ly the demand for cer­tain tech­ni­cal skills in order to iden­ti­fy the right tal­ent and get the right tal­ent in time to meet the grow­ing need. Recruiters and HR pro­fes­sion­als in com­pa­nies around the world are strug­gling with tech­ni­cal recruit­ment. There is a world­wide short­age of tal­ent­ed technicians.

The US Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics has pre­dict­ed that by the year 2020 there will be more than one mil­lion IT-based jobs in the US with­out qual­i­fied grad­u­ates. The sit­u­a­tion in Europe is not much different.

Hir­ing top tech­ni­cal experts is becom­ing a com­plex process, with pre­vi­ous­ly learned meth­ods becom­ing obso­lete. In the face of ever-chang­ing skills require­ments, it must be ensured that the recruiter also has suf­fi­cient under­stand­ing of the tech­nol­o­gy. Time is also a crit­i­cal fac­tor in get­ting the best can­di­date and how he or she expe­ri­ences the recruit­ment process. When tech­ni­cal tal­ent is of para­mount impor­tance, recruiters must respond by updat­ing their screen­ing process accordingly.

The first step for recruiters is to have more aware­ness and knowl­edge about the tech­nol­o­gy roles and the pur­pose they serve in the com­pa­ny. You need to stop reg­u­lar­ly in order to check in which direc­tion and how the skill require­ments of your orga­ni­za­tion are evolv­ing. Know­ing the role and expec­ta­tions of the tech­ni­cal tal­ent to be sought after will help recruiters nar­row their search when seek­ing the right can­di­date and skills. Often­times can­di­dates also appre­ci­ate such clar­i­ty. This also adds val­ue to the orga­ni­za­tion in the eyes of appli­cants as they com­pare the var­i­ous options that these top pro­fes­sion­als sure­ly have.

At Islet, we put togeth­er the best tips for recruit­ing tech­ni­cal tal­ents that we have found help­ful to attract poten­tial candidates.

If you real­ly want to build a bond and leave a mark on poten­tial can­di­dates, you need to learn to speak their lan­guage. You don’t have to be a cod­ing expert to inter­view tech­ni­cal experts, but you still need to know what you’re look­ing for, under­stand the basics of a devel­op­er’s job, be able to explain the direc­tion in which your busi­ness is going in this area, and what new poten­tial might be invested.

High-tech tal­ents make sure they are chal­lenged in the right way. They enjoy the oppor­tu­ni­ty to test and demon­strate their skills and intel­li­gence. For exam­ple, in a recruit­ment sit­u­a­tion, you can give them a chal­leng­ing task to solve. With cer­tain­ty, they jump in eager­ly to try it.

Most of our tech­no­log­i­cal tal­ents are so-called pas­sive can­di­dates. This means that the best tech can­di­dates are not active­ly seek­ing for work. They do not vis­it cor­po­rate web­sites to eval­u­ate a poten­tial employ­er or read job announce­ments through adver­tis­ing chan­nels. So where do you find the tech­ni­cal expert? We need to look at the right places and tap into exist­ing potential.

Here are some tips for seek­ing poten­tial candidates:

• Tech­nol­o­gy com­mu­ni­ty sites across dif­fer­ent social media channels
• Col­lab­o­ra­tion with enti­ties pro­vid­ing train­ing in the field of applied technology
• In-house con­tacts and a reward­ing incen­tive bonus for suc­cess­ful tips
• Direct per­son­al contact
• Par­tic­i­pat­ing in tech­nol­o­gy events and fairs
• Orga­niz­ing your own events around top­ics of interest
• Spar­ing and exchang­ing infor­ma­tion with oth­er tech­nol­o­gy organizations

Career blogs and videos from experts in your orga­ni­za­tion play an impor­tant role when can­di­dates eval­u­ate a poten­tial employ­er after first contact.

Although only a frac­tion of the tech­ni­cal per­sons are active­ly look­ing for work, I noticed that most of it them , how­ev­er, are inter­est­ed in hear­ing about new job oppor­tu­ni­ties. Usu­al­ly the best way is to con­tact them direct­ly, either by phone or email, and be able to explain why you think an open job and com­pa­ny would suit that per­son. After that, you should be able to describe clear­ly the tech­nolo­gies in use and the relat­ed projects and future opportunities.

How to suc­cess­ful­ly recruit tech­ni­cal tal­ents?

First of all, make a bench­mark study. Find sim­i­lar job list­ings in your area to iden­ti­fy dupli­ca­tion and make your ad to stand out, pro­fes­sion­al and engag­ing. It is also good to ask your own employ­ees, espe­cial­ly those recent­ly hired, what made them inter­est­ed in the com­pa­ny. Know­ing which fac­tors influ­enced the employ­ee to choose your orga­ni­za­tion from sev­er­al oth­er options will give you insight how your com­pa­ny stands out in the mar­ket. High­light clear­ly enough the strong employ­er brand that you have built and strength­en it in all your communication.

When search­ing for a tech­ni­cal expert, always start by know­ing that you under­stand the posi­tion you want to fill. The first prob­lem for HR pro­fes­sion­als and recruiters is to under­stand the sub­stance of the jobor tech­nol­o­gy. HR pro­fes­sion­als and recruiters who do not have tech­ni­cal back­ground often strug­gle to under­stand what skills are required for a par­tic­u­lar tech­ni­cal position.

Does the back-end, front-end or full-stack need a devel­op­er, for exam­ple? What are the key skills of the devel­op­er in search? Does the can­di­date have the lat­est knowl­edge of the tech­nol­o­gy or only expe­ri­ence from old­er ver­sions? In how many projects has the can­di­date real­ly worked with the tech­nol­o­gy and in what role? How do you define the spe­cif­ic skill lev­el dif­fer­ences between a junior and senior? As a recruiter, you need to know exact­ly what kind of skills and expe­ri­ence you are look­ing for in an ide­al candidate.

Once you have iden­ti­fied the most impor­tant skills for the tech­ni­cal role to be sought after, you must write a com­plete job descrip­tion. In order to suc­ceed in find­ing, attract­ing and, ulti­mate­ly, hir­ing the best expert in the com­pe­ti­tion, you need to under­stand all the nuances of the role.

In gen­er­al, most devel­op­ers are men and a large part of them may still be learn­ing a new pro­gram­ming lan­guage out­side their pre­vi­ous edu­ca­tion. Devel­op­ers, like oth­er experts, are rel­a­tive­ly mobile, mean­ing that CVs often show job changes every few years or they work on their own projects with mul­ti­ple employ­ers. Chang­ing jobs is indeed the norm today.

Find out what moti­vates them the most and what fac­tors work as a dri­ver? What are their wish­es and needs? And what, in turn, can be demo­ti­vat­ing at work? It is also impor­tant to under­stand how tech­ni­cal experts eval­u­ate the new work. How impor­tant is the reward and bonus­es offered, the flex­i­bil­i­ty of the job, the nature of the projects, and how does the orga­ni­za­tion invest in the lat­est, best tech­nol­o­gy or any­thing else?

How do you retain the tal­ent in the organization?

There must be a clear path to what a per­son can achieve in their career in the orga­ni­za­tion and the aware­ness that they are work­ing towards an agreed goal. For exam­ple, in the gam­ing world hun­dreds of hours are spent doing the basic thing while play­ing, but the rea­son why it is done is not just play, but what you can achive by doing it.

I talked to Ras­mus Roi­ha, CEO of the Soft­ware and e‑Business Asso­ci­a­tion, who is a vision­ary in the world of tech­nol­o­gy experts. Ras­mus raised two points that influ­enced the choice the job of expe­ri­enced devel­op­ers. The first thing to note is that the job itself is not as impor­tant as the impres­sion that the com­pa­ny is doing ‘mag­i­cal’ things. Nor was a com­pet­i­tive wage among the top cri­te­ria. A strong employ­er image made them want for that par­tic­u­lar job. There­fore the choice of work­place seems to be large­ly image-based. This proves that the brand of a com­pa­ny plays an enor­mous role than just the per­cep­tion of cus­tomers and consumers.

Anoth­er con­sid­er­a­tion is a mean­ing­ful work. That is, top tal­ents want to work in an envi­ron­ment where they can be in a sim­i­lar com­pa­ny, mean­ing A‑team play­ers want to play with A‑team. Sur­pris­ing­ly, if only the young, the ‘Farm League’, were hired, then from the employ­ee’s point of view, this could be a neg­a­tive thing. Thus the key is the way of doing work. The orga­ni­za­tion may have a ball pool and they tend to do all kinds of fun togeth­er on Fri­days, glass of cham­pagne etc., but in the expert’s opin­ion, the ways of doing work is far more impor­tant when going into a world of seniors-level.

The bot­tom line is that build­ing a brand image of an orga­ni­za­tion that exudes pro­fes­sion­al­ism and pio­neer­ing in a high­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket is one of the most impor­tant fac­tors in attract­ing tech­ni­cal­ly tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als. The stronger the brand, the more appli­cants you get and the eas­i­er it is to attract tal­ent and the right exper­tise to the orga­ni­za­tion in the future.

Author Piia Hoff­sten pre­vi­ous­ly held the role of ISLET’s oper­a­tive leader.

If you got inter­est­ed and want to dis­cuss fur­ther, please contact:

Jan­i­na Luoto
CEO, Isletter
janina.​luoto@​isletgroup.​fi
+358 40 574 1266

#ISLET #ISLET­Group #Soft­ware­FromFin­land #recruit­ing #employer­brand­ing #soft­ware­de­vel­op­ment #devel­op­er #soft­ware­de­vel­op­er #Islet­ter­Life