Tech Talent
In today’s competitive tech market, companies keep grinding over time to keep their talent pipeline well-stocked. Be it attracting or retaining the best talent, the major priority for any company is finding the right individual at the right time who is not only qualified for the job but willing to retain their position long enough to become an effective employee. For instance, a company looking to hire a remote JavaScript developer would appreciate the longevity of employment tenure as it would be inconvenient to start recruiting in the middle of a big project.
Even though 86% of recruiters and 62% of employees believe today’s is a candidate-driven market, 72.8% of employers are having a difficult time finding skilled candidates, and 45% of employers are concerned about finding employees with the necessary talents.
As a tech company, having a coherent talent acquisition strategy gives you an upper hand over your competitors competing for the same top talent.
In this article, we are going to show you the best acquisition strategies in 2019 and show you how you can use technology, data, and cross-functional expertise to attract top talent in 2019.
What is Talent Acquisition?
Many times, talent acquisition and recruiting tend to confuse people as they are bundled together as one and the same thing. However, there is a clear difference between the two.
Recruiting can simply be defined as a short-term effort to fill vacant positions with active candidates. On the other hand, talent acquisition is a more long-term strategic effort that a company undertakes. A mission to entice qualified individuals, foster relationships, and persuade them to contribute to the growth of your company through their unique skills—irrespective of the open positions available.
The Best Talent Acquisition Strategies In Tech Market
Are you struggling to catch up with your competitors in acquiring and retaining top talent, here are some of the best tech talent acquisition strategies.
Engaging Human Resource Department At The Planning Level
For many years, the human resources departments rarely had a seat at the top. However, given the fact that talent acquisition can drastically affect the overall success of an organization, this trend is slowly changing. To successfully align the future company goals, it stands to reason that the HR manager is a key player in setting future business goals.
Inbound Recruiting
Another tech talent acquisition strategy for a company is Inbound recruiting. It allows the company to create a remarkable candidate experience either through marketing strategies or employer brand content. As a result, there emerges a positive symbiotic relationship with top talent whether they are active or passive job seekers.
For inbound recruiting to be successful, you need to base or focus your talent acquisition efforts towards the collected data which allows you to build consumer-centric experiences. For instance, you can profile and store potential employee data, similar to what companies create in form of buyer personas for purposes of recruiting.
Working with Talent Pools
In the course of recruitment campaigns, your job postings reach many potential candidates whether they are hired or not. It is a great practice to start your talent acquisition process by engaging listed candidates on your talent pool that had previously applied for a job but weren’t hired.
This approach not only helps you reduce the cost of subsequent talent acquisition campaigns but significantly reduce the turn-around time of doing it. Even if a particular candidate didn’t make it past the threshold due to limited skills, people are constantly acquiring new expertise and skills.
As such, if a candidate was previously interested in working with you, but didn’t have the necessary skills, they may have advanced to meet the required experience. Reaching out to such candidates when a new position crops up, also reduces the waiting time for your job posting to organically reach them. Furthermore, working with talent pools will turn these candidates into potential brand promoters.
3 Emerging Trends Tech Talent Acquisition That You Still Don’t Know About
In terms of emerging recruitment trends, there are a number of things that will significantly impact how companies undertake their recruiting processes.
Use Of Technology In Tech Talent Acquisition
Use of technology in talent acquisition will continue gaining ground in 2019 and beyond. Be it from having a great rapport between the candidate and your company to strengthening your processes. Although artificial intelligence and machine learning are still in the early development stages, they are starting to revolutionize talent acquisition by helping companies work faster and smarter through automation of administrative tasks and even generating deep insights.
These emerging technologies will streamline all recruiting aspects including sourcing, assessments, scheduling, generating accurate compensation models and even future candidates follow-ups.
With that said, the human recruiter won’t necessarily become obsolete. Technology will essentially free up the unnecessary baggage they deal with on a daily basis leaving them to do what they do best—offering sound advice to their organizations, and creating a great welcoming experience to the new recruits, and get results.
Employer Branding
Employer Branding entails establishing and building a reputation as a company to potential employees. For this to succeed, you will need to come up with content specifically aimed at addressing all the needs of candidates by accentuating your distinct employee value propositions.
For instance, if you’re a software development company, a short video clip aimed at potential clients should also be able to highlight your company’s inside culture, the work processes, managerial attitude, and team diversity as this will eventually resonate with potential employees.
Research has shown that almost every job seeker will try to establish the employer brand and the company’s reputation before applying for a job. If your company has a bad reputation, chances are that you will struggle to attract candidates and retain employees.
Social Recruiting
Social recruiting is whereby a company uses social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, job boards etc. to find, attract, and hire skilled workers. It goes beyond just posting vacant job ads to offer so much more!
Companies are already using these platforms to proactively hunt for potential candidates, building relationships with them, and encouraging them to apply for these vacant job positions.
Is It Safe To Acquire Young Inexperienced Workers??
What is the candidate experience? This is one of the biggest questions talent acquisition have to contend with when searching for and considering a candidate for a position.
In the tech industry, the nature of a project can potentially influence your tech acquisition strategy. Having an experienced candidate has many advantages. In the course of their career pathline, they have potentially encountered and overcome multiple common challenges and learned valuable lessons along the way which inexperienced candidates may not have.
However, there are also multiple downfalls that come with hiring such a candidate. After working for many years, the habit of “been there and done that” may start developing leading to headstrong people who aren’t willing to compromise. Not forgetting the hefty price tag that comes with years of experience.
On the flip side, young employees are enthusiastic towards their first jobs as they are keen to gain experience, always stick to company policies and tend to bring fresh ideas.
The bottom line is, a company should endeavor to maintain a balance between experienced and inexperienced workers when hiring. This ensures continuity in terms of leadership as the old folks can hand over the baton to the younger generation when they decide to call it a day.
Final Thoughts
We are living in a fast-paced environment where everyone is seeking for better experiences that will add value to their lives. As a business owner or a company, you must look for intuitive ways to make you look attractive to potential employees by turning your recruitment into a wholesome experience rather than making it a meet-and-greet experience.
Tech talent acquisition leaders in the world know that it’s not just about floating a job post and waiting for desperate job seekers to line up. It involves creating a community, contributing to its goals, nurture it, and encourage everyone.
With the increased global connectivity, people are no longer willing to work for any company they come across. Instead, they are looking to work in an environment where they feel appreciated and that they can progress on a personal and career level. Show them that you are offering more than just a mundane job experience and you will be on your way to creating a successful business.
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