7 Best Tips on How to Attract Top Tech Talent

Attracting and hiring tech talent is, without a doubt, challenging. The tech job market is increasingly competitive, as the demand often surpasses the supply. As a hiring company, you need to know what you look for in candidates. Therefore, knowing the key factors in tech recruitment is important to building a tech talent acquisition plan. However, you also need to understand what candidates are looking for when they search for a job prospect because recruitment is not a one-sided process.

Nowadays, tech candidates look beyond big names when they search for a job. Most of them look at other values such as flexibility, diversity, and generosity. To be successful in attracting the right pool of candidates and hiring top tech talent, it is crucial to take those values into account. In this blog, I have compiled some best tips that hiring companies can follow to make their companies irresistible to tech candidates.

Tips on Attracting Tech Talent

In a nutshell, here are seven powerful tips on attracting tech talent that will make your company stand out from the rest of the market:

• Establish company presence and reputation
• Use employee connection
• Open a possibility for remote work
• Provide learning and development opportunities
• Offer interesting career paths
• Provide attractive perks and benefits
• Invest in the right hiring tools

Let’s take a look at each of them in detail.

#1—Establish Your Presence and Reputation in the Tech Scene

In a study by Stack Overflow, most developers learn about the prospect companies through the companies’ content and media, such as blogs, news, and videos during their job hunting. This means that it is important for organizations to be visible to increase reach, and one of the best ways is by collaborating with your marketing department.

This tactic is not only great for attracting and hiring tech talent, but it also helps to develop your company identity and image in general. Good quality content can also help to improve the company’s brand visibility and reputation in the job market. You can also combine it with events to get an even better reach. Here are some things that you can do:

• Produce topic-specific content surrounding your company’s business. Showcase your expertise, the organization’s culture, and the projects that you are involved in. Do not write overly promotional content but provide real value to the readers.
• Participate in (online) events and conferences. You can either join existing events or create your own events such as hackathons or presentations.
• Use paid advertising in your social media posts. While this may not be a recurring approach, it can still help broaden your reach.

It is important for organizations to be visible to increase reach, and one of the best ways is by collaborating with your marketing department.

#2—Use Your Employee’s Network

Besides posting jobs from your usual channels, it is also wise to ask your colleagues to help post them on their social media by simply resharing or retweeting your posts. Do not underestimate the power of your own employee’s connections; you will be surprised at how many interests a simple “share” button may generate. This method also has several advantages:

• Since the prospective candidates know your colleagues, they may work well together
• It gives the candidate more trust and assurance of the job offer
• Your colleagues can first filter out the candidates before they move to the next step.

#3—Support Remote Work

More organizational processes and operations are increasingly digitized. Activities that revolve around information technology and data often do not require physical meetings anymore, as everything practically goes virtual in this sphere. Furthermore, eligible, and top-quality tech candidates can be found anywhere in the world. Therefore, let geographical boundaries not be an obstacle in your tech recruitment – the whole world is your hiring ground. And with all the developed communication and meeting technology, managing a remote team has never been more possible than ever.

Lastly, for the candidates themselves, the remote work possibility also means more flexibility, which is beneficial not only for them but also for the company.

#4—Promote Continuous Learning and Skill Development

We are in the age of continuous innovation, wherefore if we stop learning, we will be left behind the digitalization wheel. Three out of four developers stated that what they need in a job is a chance to learn new skills and technology. Thinking about your employees’ self-development is seen as a plus point in the eyes of candidates. Surely, keeping the promises is as important as offering them.

#5—Offer Interesting Career Paths

If you want to attract top talent, you also need to offer an attractive career path. Employees want to grow in their careers, so employers need to help them to achieve their goals too. When you attract and hire candidates, your job does not stop there—you need to retain them as well. Here are what you can offer and do once the candidates are onboarded:

• Have regular conversations and feedback. Performance feedback is important for career development. It can help identify individual goals, aspirations, and room for improvement. Listen to the employees and provide meaningful guidance.
• Personalize their experience. Everyone is unique, and so are their skill sets and needs. Based on the regular conversations, design a personalized plan, which can range from learning, training, mentoring, or succession planning.

If you want to attract top talent, you also need to offer an attractive career path.

#6—Provide Differentiated Perks and Benefits That Matter

Before COVID-19, it is common to see tech companies offering unique perks such as “happy hour” or “pet-friendly office”. However, with the new normal and the future driving towards a hybrid style of working, it is unlikely that the situation will allow for more benefits like this. Think of perks and benefits that matter to employees. Get creative and incorporate the new situation into the background. Here are some examples:

• Work-from-home budget. Set a budget for employees to buy a standing desk, a better computer screen, or a better working chair for their home office so they stay motivated and healthy.
• Flexible working hours. A 9-to-5 workday is outdated. Letting employees work at their preferred hours will help them perform optimally, which in turn will increase productivity.
• Time off for personal development. Dedicate one day of the week as a “personal project day”. On this day, let your employees work on a self-development project where they can learn some new skills.

#7—Invest in the Right Hiring Tools

Evaluating the candidate’s skills during the selection stage can be overwhelming. For that reason, letting the machine take the decision can be the best choice. AI-powered tools like Coding Interview measures a candidate’s coding competency based on the overall code quality and logical correctness – not only based on the complete correctness, making it a more humanized tool.

Candidates that make small errors are still deserving candidates, and tools like this help identify talent that otherwise will be sorted out in less advanced hiring tools. Investing in the right hiring technology can tremendously increase not only efficiency but also accuracy and fairness.

Attracting top tech talent is not easy. To succeed, it is important to know what candidates want and value. Provide flexibility, learning opportunities, and benefits that matter to candidates. Moreover, build your presence in the field and invest in the appropriate hiring tools and technology. All of these will help you win in the tech talent acquisition war.

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