We’re all witness to one problem - we can’t seem to find and hire high-quality professionals fast enough. What’s the cause of the issues we’re encountering? There are many factors at play, and these involve both the businesses looking for employees and job candidates in the current market.
What could be the solution? Well, there’s no magic wand, but we can surely go a long way towards improving the current situation. In this article, we’ll analyze some of the most common hiring problems that tech companies face, and offer potential solutions.
The problems companies encounter
Unqualified and overpriced candidates
The market is overwhelmed with overpriced and unqualified candidates, which makes finding your new A player quite a hard mountain to climb. Companies spend a lot of resources on recruitment processes, looking for the right candidate for the role they’re trying to fill, whether that's filtering a high volume of applicants, sourcing more passive ones, or selecting from those that seem right for the role. Even so, the candidates they usually come across either don’t have the necessary skill set, or they ask for too much money in contrast with their experience.
Turnover rate
From Baby boomers to Gen Z - we’ve come a long way when it comes to employee tenure in the last decade or so. Now, the tech industry has one of the lowest employee tenure averages registered in the past few years. The thing is, life is faster nowadays. It’s only natural that we tire of a particular job faster than before.
However, that’s not the only issue here. A high turnover rate is also caused by the highly competitive nature of the market, and the employee you have today may not be there tomorrow, given a 200 Euro increase in salary and better benefits.
How can you solve these problems?
Standardized salary ranges and seniority indicators
In the last few years, it seems like you can become a Medior or Senior much faster than a decade or so ago. The way we view seniority has definitely become skewed since no one has the patience nowadays to earn their title over years and the larger salary that comes with it. This surely needs to change.
Altering this involves a clearer picture of what each seniority level entails - which skills, responsibilities, and how much experience you need in order to earn it. The best option is to define these matters internally and state what each seniority level means for your organization.
Furthermore, setting appropriate salary ranges in accordance with the market’s average salaries for the role and seniority would definitely slow the disturbance to today’s talent market.
Good selection process
Most of the problems you’ve heard about in this article would go away if you could manage to devise top-notch selection processes. That might mean introducing a tech testing stage rather than relying solely on live interviews. This would allow you to check the candidate’s skills objectively and see whether they fit your needs, instead of simply presuming they are the right choice to work on your project.
Furthermore, even if your interviewers have some experience in recruitment, educating them further is a must. From structuring an interview to consistently asking the right questions in accordance with given answers - it’s not always easy to recognize your unconscious bias. The Halo, as well as the Horns effect, is a real threat when it comes to hiring the right people.
Another alternative is to outsource your hiring and focus on what you do best - developing your business. You’ll save time, and get candidates who match your requirements and are pre-assessed by HR and tech experts. It’s actually quite easy to hire when you get a report on each candidate and choose only the ones who match your needs and who you’d like to interview.
If you are interested in finding out how FatCat Select can help you simplify your hiring, get in touch with us.
Strategic recruitment
Focusing on strategic recruitment is a smart way to prevent future hiring problems. Invest time in planning ahead and hire the right talent well in advance so that you don't end up hiring in a rush when your needs change.
That might mean investing time in beginners and juniors, as opposed to looking for unicorns, AKA the senior professionals that you need. Learn why you should give a Junior/Medior Developer a chance over a Senior one.
However, the key to strategic recruitment is in working closely with the Leadership team and knowing the company’s business plans, as well as the right employer branding and recruitment-directed marketing.
Soft skills development
It often happens that an applicant has the potential to be a true rock star, but lacks communication skills. With that in mind, don't hesitate to hire such a candidate, but think about providing a budget for soft skills development.
Strong company culture
If you want your employees to stay with you long enough to return the value you’ve invested, you need to provide value to them as well, and not just in terms of financial compensation and benefits. Pay is, after all, in third place on the list of the top ten engagement drivers.
Employees want a sense of meaning in their activity and work environment, and in the relationships they form with colleagues. They want to know the “why” of every work effort and it has to be worth it. Company culture is just that. It’s the driving force for meaning and workplace satisfaction.
Early education and internship programs
Reinventing the school system and teaching kids early on the valuable skills they’ll need later in life can also be precious if they choose to work in tech. Developing problem-solving skills is important, as well as logical and critical thinking. Doing the same for programming skills in kids would deliver an improvement to the workforce as we know it.
You can contribute to that by organizing practical and educational courses, as well as hackathons and other industry-specific competitions for primary, high school, and university students. Offering more internship programs for graduates would also provide those with little or no experience with additional opportunities to train.
Final thoughts
Hiring in the tech industry can be quite a difficult task, especially when you need candidates to have a particular skill set. Hopefully, you can adopt some of the suggestions we’ve shared with you to ease your hiring process.
Feel free to reach out to FatCat Select for more information and help!