By Carl Sautereau, Talent Deck
Recruiting the best tech talent for your business can be difficult at the best of times.
Whether you go it alone or bring in a recruiter, the process of recruiting can be arduous and expensive, with no guarantee the ‘perfect candidate’ will walk through the door.
However, technology companies are increasingly finding it ever more difficult to attract the best talent, with a severe and growing skills gap meaning there are many more jobs than skilled workers to fill them.
By the end of 2016, one in 10 of all UK job adverts came from the technology and digital sectors.
As tech companies continue to benefit from an influx of investment, the biggest challenge they now face is making themselves stand out and attract the best tech talent to continue their growth.
Our research has found that 45% of developers are currently looking for a new job, while 22% would consider a new opportunity if it presented itself, so the opportunity to recruit new talent is there.
But, with so much competition, how can they put themselves at the front of the line in a jobs market where talent is freer, and more willing, to hop from role to role and talent continues to adapt what is important to them in their work?
Define what your company is all about
Company culture is becoming more important than ever in recruiting and retaining tech talent, and businesses can no longer rely on just offering more money in their efforts to bring in the best people.
Particularly among younger workers, plying their trade in a company which shares their values and understands their motivations is becoming one of the most crucial things they look for.
In fact, company culture is so vital in the modern tech business, that our research has found that 42% of workers have left their job within a month—just because the culture wasn’t the right fit.
It’s not all about the money
Not long ago, offering a higher wage was a sure way of convincing talent to work with you, or stay with you.
A 2014 study on motivations found that pay was the biggest job factor for 69% of young workers, with culture being important to just 29%.
Compare that to today—just three years later—and how much more important non-tangible benefits have become, and you get an idea of the scale of the challenge facing businesses, which now must change their entire recruitment process and put more work into defining who they are.
For today’s top tech talent, career progression and development, the opportunity to contribute to the wider business and a better work-life balance are now much more important—so businesses must adapt accordingly.
Recruiting and retaining the best is an uphill struggle
There is no shortage of headlines describing the new phenomenon of job hopping.
Long gone are the days when talent found a job they liked and stayed in the same place for their entire career. The great irony of the tech industry is that it is technology which has made job hopping so attractive with talent—particularly younger talent—taking every opportunity to work with the latest innovations or the next exciting start-up.
Mobile, connected devices, and flexible working are all making it possible for talent to work where they want when they want, and this attitude is being grasped with both hands. In the next few years, our attitudes to work will be unrecognizable to the established 9-5 culture—if they aren’t already.
All is not lost however, and it is clear that businesses which can offer tech talent what they want—a good culture, progression and the chance to grow with the business—stand a good chance of retaining tech talent for a long time.
The challenge is, ensuring the reasons someone wanted to work with you in the first place remain long after they’ve joined and that tech companies continue to embrace changing attitudes to work, creating the kind of culture that the best tech talent actually wants to work for.
Carl Sautereau is the co-founder of Talent Deck