When hiring tech talents, many companies don’t realize how in-demand these techies are. And there’s short supply for skilled techies. Companies need to make an effort to attract top tech talents.
Whether you’re the business owner, CTO, HR, or tech team leader, you should be aware of what makes tech talents
- Apply
- Show up for an interview
- Switch jobs
- Stay with a company
Generally speaking, the technical recruitment process differs from general talent recruitment. But that’s not all.
Having a stable work environment is an important first step. You also need to find techies who fit your company culture and apply employee retention best practices to retain those techies.
In this article, we’ll explain what is meant by ‘tech talent,’ and highlight ways companies can attract top tech talents.
By the way, when we refer to tech talents, tech candidates, or techies, we mean the same thing. Phrasing is just for variety.
What is a ‘tech talent?’
Before we dive into how to attract top tech talents to your company, let’s first take a look at who qualifies as a techie.
Software engineering roles including frontend developers, backend developers, and full stack developers, are tech roles.
Cybersecurity roles include security analyst, security tester, cybersecurity engineer or manager.
Similarly, if you’re looking for a data scientist, data analyst, or BI engineer, then you’re searching for niche techies.
Engineers for NLP, machine learning, deep learning, and computer vision are also part of this category.
UI and UX designers are also considered techies, along with product managers, and software architects.
Some companies have much harder tech hiring needs. Managerial tech positions can include IT manager, engineering manager or director, head of product, chief technical officer (CTO), among others.
● Average tech talents vs top tech talents
When you’re hiring techies, you need to differentiate between the top performers and the average or ‘ok’ developers.
Top performing techies are those that
- Are constantly developing themselves
- Try to find solutions
- Don’t mind a challenge
- Want to drive your company forward
Meanwhile, average or ‘ok’ developers may
- Lack ambition and just move with the flow
- Be unwilling to improve their skills, be they programming skills or soft skills
- Be the average 9-to-5 employee
- Have limited career growth (due to lack of ambition and self-development) and they don’t mind this. They may, eventually be forced develop or they’ll fall behind
- May lack creativity
Why attracting tech talents is harder
If you’ve talked to any tech hiring manager, they’ll tell you that the technical recruitment process is much more complex than standard recruitment. and they’re not wrong.
They face many challenges every time they want to fill a tech vacancy, whether it’s an old or new one.
The main challenges and differences between tech hiring and general recruitment can be summarized in these points:
- There are many categories and types of tech talents
- It’s harder to determine your tech needs if you don’t have a tech background
- Tech recruitment involves many variables, such as having a multi-layered process with several steps and tests to filter candidates. Sometimes you’re not sure which tech role you need or want to fill
- Techies usually work remotely, so it’s harder to engage them with other employees.
- Tech hiring is on the rise, which means there are many jobs but few skilled techies to fill those roles.
This is why compensation and benefits for tech roles differ from other roles. Many tech companies offer potential tech candidates, especially those joining as managers, employee stock options in the company.
Moreover, many tech companies work on creating a ‘tech community’ as a perk to attract top tech talents.
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How to attract top tech talents
Now that we’ve covered the basics of tech talent recruitment, let’s see how companies and tech teams can attract skilled techies.
1) Offer remote and hybrid work options
Most tech talents today, especially developers work remotely. That said, many companies are returning to work full-time from the office.
The best solution to this is the hybrid work model, combined with giving your tech team the flexibility to work remotely. You can see if you’d like your developers to come to the office once a week or once a month.
However, if you’re hiring techies from overseas, it’ll be all-remote for them.
2) Offer a competitive compensation & benefits package
If you want to attract top tech talents, high salaries aren’t going to cut it. Not every time. What you need is to offer a competitive compensation and benefits package, where salaries are just an aspect among other perks.
Although one of the trickiest aspects of hiring techies is figuring out their salaries, it’s just one piece of the tech recruitment puzzle.
For techies, salaries are usually based on skills, expertise, years of experience, programming languages, and more.
So, besides a competitive salary, what else are you offering tech applicants? Do you have an employee rewards and recognition program? Do you have monthly or quarterly bonuses? Travel perks? Educational perks?
These are all elements to consider in your compensation and benefits scheme when trying to attract top tech talents.
Need help hiring techies or even a complete tech team? Not sure what your hiring budget should be for this team? Get a free 15-minute consultation with TechieMatter, and our team will answer all your questions.
3) Highlight your tech team’s strengths
In the world of tech talents and tech hiring, the reputation of a tech team is important. It could be the reason techies want to come work for you.
So, besides salary and compensation, if you have a tech team, make sure you highlight their achievements in relevant circles.
Mega tech companies like IBM, Apple, Google, and others are known for the success of their tech team. Everyone wants to join these companies and teams.
Not only is the company name HUGE in the market, but their tech advancements, experiments, and tools are known worldwide.
While your tech team may not rival Google’s–and it shouldn’t–having a tech team that’s popular in developer circles can go a long way into attracting top tech talents for your company.
4) Consider offering equity to tech employees
If you’re a tech company or startup, one perk you may offer techies, especially those just starting out with you, is company equity.
Not only does equity allow you to hire top talents even if you can’t afford current market rates, but also helps create an “ownership mentality” among those top hires.
5) Offer a positive candidate experience
Candidate experiences matter to employees today more than ever before. Especially, when employees are skilled and in-demand, like tech talents.
Part of the candidate experience is to respect the candidate and their time. It begins from the moment a candidate sees your job posting till they receive an acceptance or rejection email. With an acceptance, the candidate experience extends into the job offer process and the physical or virtual onboarding process.
Even if a tech candidate comes to you via a referral, you should offer them a good experience. Even if candidates don’t work for you now, they may apply at a later time.
6) Have an onboarding process
Many companies around the world, and especially in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, forget the onboarding process. Which is bad for business.
With tech talents, you’ll most likely provide a virtual onboarding process. However, this process isn’t limited to introducing them to the rest of the team, providing them with their email, and workstation.
The onboarding process involves legal and financial onboarding, with documents and requirements varying based on where your hire is based.
Did you know you can make virtual onboarding a breeze with TechieMatter? Learn more here.
7) Talk about career growth in your company
To attract top tech talents and developers, you should talk about career growth and opportunities in your company.
What’s the hierarchy like in your company? How often do you promote skilled techies?
8) Highlight your people development perks
People development is one of the top ways to not only attract top tech talents but also retain those techies.
According to TogetherPlatform.com, people development not only covers training and development opportunities but also
- Employee performance management
- Career growth and progression
- Employee onboarding
Many tech and non-tech employees look at how a company develops its teams and resources as a major perk for joining the company.
9) Offer or be a part of a supportive tech community
Another perk some companies offer tech teams specifically is have a tech community. Or let them be part of one.
Communities are everything today, especially for techies. Being a part of a tech community can improve employee retention and engagement.
Find your next tech hire with TechieMatter
Whether you want to build or grow your tech team, the first step is to find tech talents that meet your needs.
But where do you find and hire top tech talents? How can you manage their recruitment process when every time you publish a job post on social media you’re flooded with resumes?
More importantly, how can you evaluate applicants if you’re not a techie yourself?
This is where TechieMatter comes in.
No, we’re not a job board. No, we’re not affiliated with a social media platform. And no, you won’t get flooded with 100+ resumes when you sign up to TechieMatter.
We help businesses like you find and hire tech talents and teams, regardless of where your business is and where your talents are.
If you’re looking to attract, assess, interview or even onboard top tech talents, then submit a job on TechieMatter and our team will do the rest.
