The tech industry is changing faster than ever before, and we need to be ready to meet the challenges of hiring the best talent. In this industry, if someone wants a job, they most likely have one. Unemployment rate in the tech industry has gone down to 1.7% since July of 2022. Therefore, to be successful in this industry, hiring managers must be adaptable as unprecedented situations constantly come their way. And if you think it is difficult to hire the right talent today, the situation will only get worse in the coming years. By 2029, there will be an additional 500,000+ tech jobs to fulfill in the US alone.
First of all, the most talented applicants won’t wait for you to get your act together.
Similarly, even after recruiting talents, you need to prioritize retaining them. The most talented applicants will look elsewhere if they feel like their needs aren’t being met or if their job isn’t stimulating enough for their talents in any way shape or form. If an employee feels like they’re being treated poorly at work, they’ll move on. If an employee sees no opportunity for career growth within their company then why should they stick around?
→ How long does it take to apply to this position?
The application process should not take more than 5 minutes. Are you asking redundant questions? Asking for someone’s work experience in detail even after they have uploaded their CV does not come across as a sign of efficiency or good organizational culture.According to a study by AppCast, streamlining your application process to 5 minutes or less improves conversion rates by 365%! Quite surprising, isn’t it?
An applicant should be moved from one interview stage to the next one within 48 hours or faster. That involves analyzing their performance, making the decision and communicating feedback with the applicant. Statistically, 40% of candidates end up rejecting an offer because they agreed to another one first.
→ Is your career site compelling enough?
If you don’t have a career page on your website, this is your sign to build one. If you have already done the creating, make sure it’s compelling and communicates the benefits of working for you quite clearly. It will boost the quality and quantity of your direct applicants.
→ Is your interview team on the same page?
Discuss and be clear on the expectations for the new hire. At the same time, review any bias the interview team might have. The interview team should be trained and ready well before the first candidate joins the interview so that the interviewee’s experience is not affected by it at all.
→ What will the conversation flow look like?
Plan out a cadence and flow for the interview conversation. Decide on what questions to ask and in what order. But, at the same time, be open to ask follow up questions and let the conversation flow naturally. Giving the interviewee room to share his or her thoughts without interruption will improve the experience significantly.
→ How are you representing the company culture to the candidate?
This is your way to stand out from competitors. Do something special for the candidate. It can range from sending them a ride to travel to your interview location to handwritten notes or special greetings.
Secondly, bad candidates are bad for business.
Bad hires can lead to high turnover rates, low productivity and training costs, as well as morale issues among your team members.
Now that you realize how important it is, what are the practices you need in your hiring process to attract the best tech talents going forward? Let’s dive in.
Don’t let hiring be a dark art.
Hiring is a science, not an art. When you hire someone for a job, you want to make sure that they’re the right person for the job—and that they have what it takes to do their job well. You need to be strategic with a pre-established plan of action. That’s why we’ve put together this list of tips for hiring great people:
- Understand what drives performance in your organization and culture.
- Set expectations early on so everyone knows where they stand before they start working together.
- Measure outcomes regularly to ensure the KPIs are being met.
You’re better off without testing as a gatekeeper.
Tests are time-consuming and expensive, meaning they’re often not worth their cost. The elaborate tests have led tech positions to take 70% longer to fulfill than others. Trends in 2022 showed that the average is far above 80 days! But realistically, these time-consuming tests are not necessarily predictive of future performance and can definitely be biased against certain groups. And lastly, they don’t give you any indication of how a candidate will fit into your company culture.
Instead, focus on how well you’ll collaborate with each candidate.
The first thing you need to do is hire people who will fit in with your company culture. If you want someone who is a good fit for the team, then you need to ensure their ability to work well with the rest of the team. In the current industry situation, smart companies are already realizing that hiring specialized and experienced talents is impractical. Rather, these companies are focusing on hiring for talent and collaboration, then investing in existing staff’s skill development.
Do remember that collaboration goes both ways. If you want your employees to show loyalty to the company and remain happy, your company should reflect the same. Invest in your staff’s upskilling and I am not talking about just the freshers or underskilled ones. Organizations that rely on upskilling junior employees and promoting them to middle managers have half the turnover rates than organizations that have over 25% of their middle-management relied on external hires.
Do remember that not everything can be learned on the job.
Some candidates are likely to lack some basic knowledge of how things work around your company and need time on the job before they can really contribute much value—and even then not all employees learn at the same pace or level of proficiency (or ability).
Focus on assessments that measure the right things.
While designing your assessment process, keep the following in mind.
- Candidate assessment should measure what matters most to your business and the person’s role.
- The assessment process must be valid and reliable.
- Assessments should be consistent across all levels within the organization.
- The process of creating assessments should be fair and unbiased toward any particular group of people.
- Focus on skill-based hiring instead of looking at pedigree.
This is why skill-based hiring is the best way to go –
- Fast-paced development cultures require continuous upskilling and re-skilling. So hiring someone who is open to learning and flexible enough to grow is your best bet in the tech industry.
- Education is not expensive. Which means, if someone is willing to learn, you won’t have to break the bank to pay for their training. There are plenty of free and low-cost channels to learn technical skills.
- Lack of higher education does not necessarily show incompetence. In our company, we take pride in hiring multiple undergrad students and even college dropouts. Cost of higher education makes it inaccessible to developers in many areas and even more are not tempted by academic structures. However, learning and skill development can be done without formal college education.
So the next time you write a job description, prioritize including a list of all the necessary skills instead of asking for a degree in a certain field. This will not only increase the pool of qualified candidates for you but also speak volumes about your flexible and efficient company culture.
Leverage a professionally-designed talent assessment platform that’s backed by science and analytics.
You have to know how you compare against your competitors when it comes to winning top tech talent. And you should keep your hiring process up to date with changes in the industry, too—because today’s job seekers are more sophisticated than ever before, so they’ll want to see if a company has been using the latest tools for evaluating candidates’ skills and abilities or not!
Keep your hiring process up to date with changes in the industry.
In today’s competitive market, if you don’t keep your hiring process up to date, you’re going to miss out on top talent who might not stay if they feel like they’re being left behind by their employer.
It’s also important that your employees are happy and engaged at work—and this will only happen if they feel valued by their employers. They want a job where they feel like it’s all about them (not just what the company wants them to do), where they can make an impact on how things get done, and where they don’t feel like they’re expected to do something just because someone said so!
You need to understand how you compare against your competitors when it comes to winning top tech talent. Conventional hiring practices no longer work for winning and retaining top tech talent today, which means you have to make changes fast if you hope to win top tech talent today.
Be open to anyone
The ability to be open to everyone is a key factor in winning talent today.
Be open to different cultures, ages and genders. You want your team members’ backgrounds and experiences reflected in their work as much as possible—and you should aim for diversity over uniformity when it comes to hiring practices. This means that if someone has a disability or mental health issue, don’t assume they’ll automatically fit into the same old mold of what you normally see on other teams at this company or industry level. Instead of asking “What’s your experience?”, ask them how their experiences affected the way they approach problems or issues in their own lives—and then listen carefully!
Showcase your culture
Culture is the most important thing you can showcase in your hiring process. It’s the first thing people see and it sets the tone for their experience with your company.
When you’re preparing for a job interview, make sure to ask about culture questions as soon as possible—you want them on your mind when you sit down with an interviewee so they know what they’re getting into. A recent study from Glassdoor found that 70% of candidates care about how well employees are treated at a company before even considering moving forward with an offer.
Learn the Best Interview Questions
The best way to learn about a candidate is by asking questions that are relevant to their role, the company and the position itself. The best interview questions should –
- Provide you insight into what the candidate does well.
- Give you some idea of where the candidate might need training and support.
- Allow the candidate to tell you more about themselves and what their interests are.
Conclusion
If you want to win the talent war, then you need to make changes. Your old hiring practices won’t work in today’s tech industry and they’re not likely to do so anytime soon. It’s time for a new way forward, because your competitors are already ahead of you on this front and they know it will only get harder for them if they don’t change as well.
Need help with hiring the right people for your business? We are here to help!
