A recent article in Mint highlights how there’s been a surge in digital deals and cloud spending in India since the covid outbreak (Mint). However, the report also highlights the shortage of good tech talent to fill those positions, making it even harder for tech recruiters to find a good fit.
The demand for good tech talent is diverse, and traditional hiring methods like job portals won’t get you the best. But how do you go about doing this? To make your job easier, we have developed a list of tips that’ll help you easily hire the best tech talent in the country.
Six Tips to Hire Good Tech Talent
In this highly competitive market, these tips will help you hire the best tech talent.
1. Create your pool of candidates
A great way to hire good tech talent quickly is to have a list of prospective candidates handy by creating your pool. While recruiting for a role, you must be interviewing at least 5-6 candidates and ultimately deciding upon just one.
So, rather than discarding the other candidates, you didn’t hire and put their profiles into a database. Then, only add those profiles you feel performed well in the interview but fell short on a few parameters to this database.
Make a note of the areas you felt the candidate was weak. So, the next time you call them for an interview, you get to know if the candidate worked on their weak areas or not.Â
This is a great way to hire and test a candidate without them knowing.
2. Referral programs
What better way to find a candidate than through an employee who knows your company? A referral program lets your in-house employees recommend candidates for vacancies; if their candidate is chosen, they get a reward. Hiring through referral programs is also quicker compared to other methods, as you can cut down on time spent looking for suitable profiles.
Existing employees know what kind of people can function in the company, so who better than them recommends candidates for a job role? Employees would also think twice before recommending someone they feel isn’t suitable for the position, as it’ll reflect poorly on them. So, you can be assured of being recommended for good profiles.
A survey on TalentLyft shows that candidates who come through referral programs stay longer than candidates hired through other methods (TalentLyft). The key to a good referral program is the incentive you offer to the employee if their recommended candidate gets hired. Cash is the most common incentive offered by many companies worldwide, but you can come up with other incentives.
For instance, you could provide an extra few days off to an employee if their referral gets hired. Then, now that there’s an additional employee, they can relax a bit.
3. Don’t go the traditional way
There was a time when job portals were the best way to hire a candidate. While they still play a crucial role in hiring, the time has come to look at other ways.
You should be hiring the type of passionate talent about what they do, not someone who goes to work just for a paycheck at the end of a month. And the key to finding such passionate and talented people is through online professional communities like GitHub and Stack Overflow.
Stack Overflow is an online community where programmers come together to answer each other’s queries related to programming. Think of it as Reddit for programmers. Whereas “GitHub is an online open-source community” allows one to code and work on others’ codes.
Communities like these will help you scout the talent that proactively works towards improving their technical skills.
4. Hackathon
A hackathon (hacking marathon) is when coders participate in creating new software programs to refresh their memory. If you’ve got the budget, hackathons are a great way to recruit top-notch tech talent by witnessing them put their skills to the test.
Seeing the candidates in action tells you about their technical skills and approach to a problem. Another reason why hackathons are great is that they help you discover a talent that traditional recruitment methods would never allow you to find out.
For example, a hackathon is an excellent opportunity to come across highly skilled coders who don’t have a degree. Hackathons allow these coders to showcase their talent and prove their mettle.
The days of hiring based on degrees are long gone. Companies like Google and Apple use hackathons to hire skillful coders and programmers that don’t have degrees.
5. Get your budget approved.
Because of the high demand for tech talent, the best candidates are already ahead of the game regarding recruitment. They will not move unless they are given a great opportunity. The challenge here is to catch their attention. What do you have to offer that makes you different from the others?
That extra can either be in the form of an increased salary, bonuses, or other benefits. But for that, you need the approval of C-level executives.
So, discuss with your company’s C-level executives beforehand how far the budget can be stretched to get a candidate on board?
Having a precise quote in mind saves you from the trouble of having to go back and forth with executives to narrow down on a figure. But, more importantly, this will help you make a quick offer when you come across the right candidate.
6. Chase passive job seekers
If you’ve got the right budget, you may woo the best professional to your firm without them actively looking for a job change. A passive job seeker is a professional who is open to better opportunities but is not actively looking for them.
In a 2015 LinkedIn poll of more than 20,000 talent professionals, 86 percent stated their recruiting firms focused “very much” or “to some extent” on passive job seekers. Experts opine this has only grown. According to surveys, only around 15% of employees say they are unwilling to move. So a vast majority of employees are keen for a change. It turns out that more money is the most compelling reason for passive job seekers to relocate. On the other hand, better job and career prospects are the most important factors for active candidates.
So you can gauge which option works better for your firm and venture into tech recruiting accordingly.
We can help too
Apart from using all these tips, you can also use CodeQuotient’s services for hiring good tech talent. We train individuals and software engineers into market-ready full-stack developers.
You can contact us today by clicking here if you’re looking for highly qualified and skilled entry-level candidates. For more insightful articles, check out our blog here.
