How to hire IT Professionals
If you’re looking to grow your business, it probably means increasing your headcount so you need to understand the methods of recruitment, the attraction and selection process but more specifically a how to identify and hire IT professionals that meet your business’ technical needs.
Whilst you may have previously only recruited on an ad hoc basis as the need arose, having a more structured hiring strategy for 2020 will ensure you have the right technical skills in place when you need them.
Where to start when hiring IT staff
Having an effective hiring strategy puts you in a stronger position to compete for the best talent and avoid a lengthy IT recruitment process. Your chosen methods of recruitment and selection process should be robust enough to make sure you find the right skills, qualifications and experience for your business needs but flexible enough to allow decisions to happen quickly and in line with market availability.
Here’s our top things you need to consider in the recruitment process:
Assess your company goals and brand
The first step is to consider your company goals – what are you looking to achieve in the next 6-12 months (or even the next 2-5 years)? Revenue, profits and turnover will have a big impact on your ability and need to hire, as will plans to diversify into new markets, launch additional products or invest in the latest technology. Speak to your leadership team about significant events that you may need to consider and make sure you have the right foundations in place to launch future recruitment campaigns and manage your IT Recruitment process. Your company goals should be aligned with your corporate and employer brand so that you’ll be attractive to new recruits.
Identify your skills gaps
As part of the recruitment and selection process, complete an analysis of the skills required to fulfill your business needs. Determine whether these skills can be obtained by training or up-skilling existing staff and put succession plans in place where possible.
Look at any skills you need to acquire through hiring as part of the IT Recruitment process and write (or update) job descriptions to ensure they contain all the critical job elements.
Remember that a job description should be informative (about the skills required), realistic (about what the duties will be) and attractive to prospective applicants. Speaking to someone who has previously performed this role as part of the recruiting process can help you to get it right and make improvements.
Consider the candidate market
Make sure what or who you’re looking for actually exists in the real world as part of the IT recruitment process. There’s no point creating a wish-list of talent and a lengthy job description for a vacancy that can never be filled. Do a quick appraisal of similar jobs (or competitors) to make sure you have realistic expectations.
Using a salary survey to benchmark pay and compensation levels can help you position your vacancy at the right level. Within your methods of recruitment, think about how you will attract candidates based on how competitive your desired talent pool is or consider speaking to a recruitment consultancy to get a market appraisal on candidate availability.
Set your timeframe and budget
When you know what you’re looking for (and how easy they will be to find), you can allocate time for the recruitment and selection process and on boarding. Think about when you need the ideal person to be in place and work backwards. The length of the recruiting process will be determined by the availability of suitable applicants, the attractiveness of your opportunity, and your ability to make decisions (or compromise) as required.
Think about how much money and manpower you will need to achieve your hiring goals. Consider all your IT recruitment resources, their related cost and ROI. Urgency and difficulty will impact on the budget you set, but having an effective hiring strategy will help you avoid knee-jerk decision making that could prove more costly in the long run.
Determine your IT Recruitment processes
Creating smooth, timely recruitment campaigns requires a consistent, standardised process. You should identify the essential and desirable stages for different levels of appointment, as well as your communication and response times. Having set decision-making criteria consider the information you will provide to applicants to create a positive candidate experience.
You should also agree a procedure for accelerating time-to-hire if the need dictates. The best candidates may have multiple offers and require a speedier process and it is often not possible to have several candidates to choose from. You should have a Plan B in place, just in case your first choice does not choose you.
If you’re planning your hiring strategy for 2020 and would like expert help with talent mapping, skills gap analysis or salary benchmarking, please contact the team at Grassroots today. We have over 100 years’ combined experience in helping organisations of all sizes to meet their growth targets and deliver effective recruitment campaigns.
