Most tech-based companies are in desperate need of great tech talent to fill their open positions. According to a survey by Stack Overflow, only 6.4% of developers are unemployed, demonstrating the tech talent shortage. This is one reason why the HR professionals in your company find it challenging to fill technical job positions.
You can plan to win the tech talent war for your business by understanding the challenges and implementing the right recruiting strategies to overcome them. The best part is – it does not require significant investments and time to hire the best tech talent for your organization.
Let’s take a look at the root cause of difficulties related to hiring employees for tech roles.
Most Common Challenges Related to Tech Hiring
You might have heard or realized that the best tech professionals continue to be hard to find and catch. This can be because of the following challenges:
1. New in-demand skills amidst the talent shortage
The ease of developing tech skills via online courses has opened up ways for individuals to build their skill-set according to their interests. However, if you look at the numbers related to the demand for tech professionals, you will find a significant boom. The job postings for technology roles surpassed the mark of 4,00,000 in April 2022, says CompTIA report.
At large, vacant tech roles in both small and large-scale enterprises are related to cloud computing, full stack development, data science, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to name a few. Different organizations require a workforce skilled in these subjects or skills but face an acute shortage of trained individuals.
If you look at it from the other side of the lens, the availability of tech job roles in different companies has also attracted workers to develop the required skills. However, it will take some time for them to be ready to handle complex technical responsibilities.
2. Outdated tech stack
While every tech business wants to adopt the latest technology to build their platforms, it is not economically feasible for all. The adage of “old is gold” is not applicable to the enterprise technology stack. As the business evolves, you may find the legacy technology infrastructure holding the growth of your business back. An outdated technology stack can also severely impede the need for transformation to win the race against the competition.
Now, think about it from an employee’s angle. Being skilled in certain technology and frameworks, professionals would want their companies to update their tech stack to benefit from the latest tech trends. If the employers are reluctant to do so, the risk of losing the best talent becomes high, thus further impeding business growth. Besides this, it will become difficult to find the right talent to maintain the legacy systems over time, making their support and maintenance even more expensive.
3. Lack of challenging work
After handling the same sort of work responsibilities for a while, many tech professionals easily get accustomed to the tasks at hand. Naturally, they look for more to learn and new challenges to grow their careers. If learning opportunities are limited at their company, talented individuals will seek an organization where they can find more exciting work.
When employees utilize their significant tech skills for the job, they feel a sense of confidence and pride. They also look forward to participate in activities that stretch their skills and abilities even further. On the other hand, if the employees can’t see a path for skillset growth, they are most likely to look elsewhere. In the current era of the Great Resignation, offering challenging tech projects that allow the development of new skills has become a must to attract and retain the best talent.
4. Unavailability of local talent
As per Mercer’s survey, nearly six out of ten employers/respondents cited a lack of local talent with the required tech skills as one of the most critical hiring challenges in North America. Besides the common difficulties in filling tech roles, there are regional complexities related to employment laws and tax regulations. This is one of the reasons many organizations struggling to fill tech roles locally are open to engaging overseas talent remotely.
Tech professionals who know their way around different programming languages, analytics, and agile processes are in high demand in the overseas talent market. Particularly for international business expansion, finding local talent in a non-native country is way more cost-effective than opting for talent mobility from within the company.
If you also face this challenge, you need to reexamine the way your organization hires and retains employees for tech roles.
5. Lack of strong referral network
In general, hiring managers need around three months to fill a tech position. To further add more hurdles to the process, there are technological advancements brought forward at breakneck speed during the pandemic. As a result, industries are facing a major shortage of tech labor.
In such hard times, losing time and resources which would otherwise be spent on product development and innovation is something that not every company can afford to ignore. The next big bottleneck is the traditional hiring practices that are inadequate in attracting and retaining qualified tech talent to bridge the existing gap.
This is where employee referrals can become a key driver to attracting tech talent. Companies can rely on their internal team members and staffing agencies for their vast network of talented individuals.
This can help tap into a wide talent pool of highly skilled tech professionals. Besides this, employee referrals have a quick TAT and are hired faster than through any job board. As a result, your organization can benefit from a higher employee retention rate and lower hiring costs.
5-Step Checklist to Hire Tech Talent
1. Implement an employee referral program
If there is one thing that all tech companies do or can do to make a difference in their recruiting plan, it is not relying solely on their HR team to find tech talent. Instead, allow all employees to work like a recruiter under a well-structured employee referral program.
This is mostly done on the back of attractive rewards and bonuses for employee recommendations and the resulting successful hires. The best part is – you can do that, too, by defining specific rewards, particularly for tech employee referrals. This way, the professional network of all your employees becomes a bigger pool to pick the best talent from.
2. Define a great employee value proposition
Hiring tech talent is not just about making an offer they cannot refuse. In most cases, the paychecks offered to tech professionals are quite competitive. However, it is the additional perks and benefits that attract talented professionals to join a tech-based company. These include professional development, flexibility to work remotely, and healthcare benefits.
If you are willing to take these benefits into consideration, it’s time to build a strong value proposition for potential candidates that go beyond money. You can further elaborate on the proposition by asking your employees and recent hires about what matters the most to them.
3. Sponsor or organize tech events
Another way to streamline the tech hiring process is to invest in sponsoring events related to technology. Many tech professionals love to visit or attend such events for the opportunities to learn new things and build a network. They also like to participate in different challenges you may plan for the events. If you have heard of tech companies organizing coding events, workshops, and hackathons, the core idea behind them is to attract skillful individuals and hire them based on their expertise.
4. Provide upskilling opportunities
With the advancements in technology, the pace at which the skill set of your employees needs to evolve has become faster. With in-demand skills changing so rapidly, you can attract the right tech talent for the long term by providing learning opportunities to your employees. This will not only fill skill gaps faced at your workplace but also simplify the inbound hiring process.
This way, you will also get opportunities to address skill gaps in the future by upskilling the internal resources who are culturally and professionally fit for your business.
5. Update the legacy tech environment
Continuing the outdated tech stack at your workplace not only impacts productivity but also serves as a bottleneck to scalability. This can be best handled by modifying the tech architecture to a more robust version that can handle the increasing volume of data related to the target audience and employees. Keep in mind that the more outdated your current technology is, the more difficult it will be for you to retain and attract tech talent. It is like trying to run the latest appliances with outdated electrical systems in place. Unless you deal with the wiring, you will most likely face challenges.
Conclusion
If your organization is facing trouble in recruiting the best tech talent, it is crucial to reexamine the current hiring process, identify the challenges, and then implement the right strategies for better hiring decisions.
Partner with Connect Tech+Talent to Hire the Best Tech Talent
When facing obstacles in hiring the right talent, it makes sense to utilize the expertise of external recruiters. Hire Connect Tech+Talent – an Austin-based staffing agency having the required experience to hire tech professionals for leading organizations. To know more about Connect Tech+Talent, click here.
