Recruiting Tech Talents: Factors to Consider Before Hiring
Author:
Deborah Ng
Published:
August 2, 2023
Last Update:
October 23, 2024
When it comes to HR recruitment, many hiring managers merely focus on the employment attributes or how to attract high-quality top tech talents in the recruiting process.
Our previous blog highlighted the top 10 employment attributes that software engineering talents consider when joining a company. Although compensation is the top leading factor that received the highest ranking, there are other non-financial benefits that mid-size tech companies can focus on to win the competition from large enterprises.
In this article, we will discuss the reasons why tech talents are leaving, tech team leaders’ needs and struggles, platforms to acquire candidates for technology companies, and understanding tech employees from their EVP before you hire.
Strategies to attract talent are just the beginning of the recruitment process; understanding the reasons for their departure is vital to evaluate before hiring to formulate long-term retention plans.
1. Why do tech talents leave?
According to a study involving 562 tech employees from Gartner 1, mixed results were obtained based on the seniority of the employees.
42% of entry-level employees left the company to seek higher compensation, 25% were dissatisfied with the work location options, and 23% left due to a lack of development and training.
Similarly, mid-level tech employees who might have suffered from a pay cut in exchange for more flexible jobs previously are searching for a higher pay job considering the cost of living and surging inflation rate at 7 to 8%.
Apart from salary demand, mid-level tech employees suffered more burnout, 65% are seeking better work-life balance, and an interesting finding revealed that 20% are planning to start their businesses. For higher levels or senior tech employees, 68% are searching for more professional development opportunities, and 70% are looking for more senior positions.
As a mid-size company, providing a huge salary increment to attract tech employees probably isn’t the best option considering the great global competition.
Providing valuable training, such as offering an AWS machine learning certificate subsidization in your Job description, could be an extremely attractive reason for entry to mid-level engineers who are ambitious and eager to progress in their career to join your company.
“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” Richard Branson.
2. Tech talents won’t be on the market for long
A talent index research with 6,000 employees found that top tech talents are optimistic about the future job market, 50% are confident they can land a new role within 6 months, and 33% within 3 months 2.
Even for employees laid off previously, 79% managed to find a new job within 3 months, and 37% even found it within a month.
Due to rapid technological advancement and innovation changes, talents seek cutting-edge opportunities whenever new technologies emerge. Hence, a high turnover rate among tech companies is expected when team members have ample opportunities to explore new roles, learning opportunities and negotiate better compensations.
Employers should also pay more attention to the skill gap happening in the company. According to a McKinsey report, a digital-attacker bank found only 35% of its senior tech employees possess the skills needed upon an assessment 3.
From an HR recruitment point of view, probing the exact skills necessary to fulfill the business growth requirement is far more vital than focusing on the hiring role itself.
Another aspect for hiring managers to note will be aligning company values with top talent’s value proposition. An interesting topic discussed among the information technology leaders and CIOs in a peer community was approvals were difficult to obtain due to different perspectives and communication barriers between tech leaders and the board members.
Therefore, focusing on the business acumen level a senior tech leader should have will largely mitigate misalignment issues and improve the employee experience when both parties are aligned.
We’re here to help you on your journey to hire, manage and pay.
3. Platforms to source for tech talents
Where can you delve deeper to search for top tech talents? While there are several popular platforms, such as Glassdoor, Indeed, Monster, and LinkedIn, that most job searchers actively use, here are some additional recommendations for HR teams to connect with talents with similar value propositions, which could possibly lead to a positive beginning of their employee journey.
- Goodreads
This is one of the most unconventional ways to connect with talent. Search for a book highly related to the skill sets you are looking for, such as coding, AWS, and back-end development, and pay attention to the reviewers who have written a review for it; this is one of the ways to find both skilled and passionate candidates. - GitHub
Most of us use Google Drive or Dropbox to store large files and organize documents. GitHub is a place similar to Dropbox for developers to store their codes. Use the programming language to find your desired candidate. - AngelList
It is a platform where tech talents will put up their profile seeking investment; it is suitable to hire candidates that you wish to have an entrepreneurial spirit, an essential mindset for high-growth companies. - Stack Overflow
The Quora platform for tech talents, it is the number 1 Q&A site for coders and developers to discuss technical issues and solutions. Identify a user based on the popular questions he had answered according to his expertise, suitable to find a senior position with vast project management skills in answering the tech community’s questions. - Followerwonk
A platform where you can use keywords to search for tech candidates according to their title with 2 core skills that you are looking for; location options are available to search for the countries that you plan to hire. - Employer of Record (EOR)
Employer of Record (EOR) simplifies hiring internationally or cross-border hiring. EOR offers access to high-quality tech professionals from other countries by resolving legal and administrative complexities, enabling diverse and competent hiring plans that you are looking for.
4. Employee value proposition (EVP) to attract talents
A company that focuses on EVP can increase new hires’ commitment by up to 30% and even decrease the turnover rates by 69%, according to Gartner. What does top talent need?
1. Professional Growth:
Top tech talents are attracted to opportunities to push their innovation boundaries. CNBC reported that employers are looking to integrate newer technologies like AI, metaverse, and cryptocurrency into their core business in the near future 4.
The future work demand is consistent with a tech employee survey that 66% seek AI and machine learning opportunities, 49% for cloud-native development, 46% for blockchain, and 45% for UI design.
A notable highlight is that 72% of employees felt that their employers merely focus on attracting new employees instead of investing in them, which is a crucial factor pushing them to leave for career growth.
2. Job Satisfaction:
Many companies are resuming back to office policy or adopting the hybrid work model even though the growth of remote work reached the highest peak in 2021-2022.
A survey to understand what are the factors that attract tech talents to join a company with 1,200 US IT or tech departments from various industries revealed 5 that salary and benefits are most important (76%), followed by professional skill development (58%), work hours flexibility (56%) and locations (47%) as evaluating factors to accept a job.
When working from home is no longer a permanent trend, flexible work hours and locations become a concern when team members are required to work on site.
An interesting finding from the survey shows that most tech employees rated 9 am to 1 pm as the most productive hours.
As a hiring company, consider adopting synchronous work hours in the office space to foster work collaboration while allowing individual tasks to be completed in their flexible working hours anywhere to aid work-life harmonization and increase positive employee experience.
3. People and culture:
Numerous tech companies support the view that collaboration, networking, and a sense of belonging can only be achieved via in-person interaction. On the other hand, another research discovered that working from home blurs work and personal life, causing a lower sense of belongingness and disconnecting from the company in the long term.
While finding a balance between both options or going for a hybrid could be a difficult decision for your company, consider an employee survey to understand the challenges and which works best according to your company culture, ultimately an inclusive culture is an important EVP that enables top talent to stay attached with your company.
5. Consider a distributed workforce
A survey with 2,000 employees perceived that a 9% increment in 2023 is considered a fair increment, similar to Gartner’s finding that the salary rate employees are demanding will be above 8% to meet the surging inflation rate 6.
Acquiring tech talent from developed countries probably isn’t the most affordable option; download our salary guide to see how you can reduce significant costs in hiring without sacrificing your talent quality.
Whether you plan to employ employees in a remote, office, or hybrid model, an EOR (Employer of Record) can assist you in hiring tech employees to set up your distributed workforce WITHOUT the need to open a legal entity.
Most importantly, pay your international talents promptly in multi-currency every month with our latest HR technology solutions!
