6 Challenges to finding the best IT talent
Reliance of business and industry on IT has presented many challenges that are critical to solve. The present day paradox is that there are too many vacancies while the candidates are passive. Looking for talent other than straight-jacketed talent that talks often technical language are available in the common IT job market needs an open-box-thinking to meet your talent requirements. More from Mervyn Dinnen who articulates beautifully in monster.co.uk-
Our economy is becoming ever more reliant on technology. Whatever job you do there is very little that is not impacted in some way by IT, whether it’s the way your organisation does business or the manner in which you complete your tasks.
The recent Global Human Capital Trends Report from Deloitte showed that Technology was one of the HR profession’s most urgent issues yet one that they felt least ready to deal with. For those needing to leverage new software to ease the lives of their workforce there is much to learn about features and functionality, whilst those teams responsible for recruiting technology face a whole different set of problems.
Any time there is talk of skill and talent shortages you can be sure that IT will always be one of the key sectors mentioned, and it is certainly one that seems to be having it’s fair share of difficulties in finding the right talent at the moment.
Let’s look at some of the main challenges:
Too many vacancies
It’s a problem in many sectors at the moment but IT seems to be suffering more than most with some recruiters reporting up to four vacancies for each available developer. It might be time to redraft the job spec or look again at the exact skills you need, either through re-apportioning duties or looking for people who may just be an intensive training course away from being fully conversant in a new coding language.
Candidates are passive
There are some good IT operators around but they tend not to actively look for a new role. Recruiters need a subtle approach to sourcing as technology employees rarely respond to a full-on headhunting call. You need to understand where they hang out, which platforms they use, what would encourage them to move and build rapport slowly.
Try talking tech to tech
Let’s be honest, most recruiters and most techies tend to be different types of people. They talk different languages. Recruiters are often confident, gregarious and happy to start any conversation whereas tech people quite often are more reserved and prefer to talk to other tech people. Maybe the answer is for recruiters to get their own IT people involved in the early stages.