Last Updated on 2024-11-10
Recruiting great people is critical to the success of your growing company, but recruiting great tech talent comes with a long list of challenges and issues. Before hiring an IT expert, letโs take a look at the most common IT recruitment issues and some practical tips to solve them.
While competing for tech talent is nothing new, the demand for skilled IT professionals in the United States has vastly outstripped the supply of qualified workers. Whenever there’s a talk of skills shortages, you can bet that the IT sector will be front and center. That said, when you’re looking to hire new tech talent, there are always going to be some problems that arise.
Common IT Recruitment Issues Faced by Tech Companies
Here is an overview of some well-known IT recruitment challenges that business owners or recruiters face.
1. Motivating passive candidates
Finding the right candidate is akin to dating someone. With an unemployment rate of about 1.5% across the tech sector, quality developers are very hard to come by. Candidates with sought-after IT skills are often wooed with multiple job offers from potential employers. Since they have several recruiters in their inboxes, your email needs to stand out from the competition.
Solution:
Don’t just send a generic email when approaching potential candidates. Put some effort into crafting your email and explain why they should consider joining your team.
Keep it short and focus on whatโs most likely to get their attention. Youโre just trying to land a conversation at this point, so less is more. If you can connect it to their interests or background, youโll get a better response. For example:
โHey John, Iโm Pete. I started Fintegrate to help families pull all aspects of their financial lives together so they can control their financial destinies. Iโm hiring senior engineers to take the company to the next level, and with your fintech background, I think youโd be a great fit. Open to scheduling a 5-minute intro chat to explore further?โ
2. Top-tier candidates will demand higher salaries
Hiring experienced IT professionals is not only hard to do, but it also comes at a steep price. The law of supply and demand dictates the quality of candidates you can expect. Offering competitive compensation is one of the best ways to attract candidates with the right skills you’re looking for. So, how do you offer the best pay for top applicants?
Solution:
First, compare the average salary rates of IT professionals in specific IT positions and geographic locations. Websites such as Payscale, Glassdoor, and Indeed are virtual goldmines for stat nerds who want to learn about salary information and employment trends.
In addition, compensation is not only about salaries. In the current environment, $30-50K signing bonuses are increasingly common for US developers. Compensation may also include perks like a work-from-home setup, generous vacation leave, transportation allowance, etc. Make sure to consider all aspects of compensation (including perks) when offering the best compensation package to applicants.
3. Hiring too soon or too late
Recruitment teams need to hire as fast as possible because the longer a position stays vacant, the more it will cause delays in operations, costing companies more money. This scenario pressures recruitment teams to hire quickly, which leaves them less time to vet candidates thoroughly.
On the other hand, taking too long to hire could result in a lack of qualified applicants. A lengthy hiring process or the decision makers taking too long to decide will most likely force applicants to accept job offers elsewhere.
Solution:
The best way to deal with these challenges is to assess your current hiring process. Is it necessary for candidates to go through several stages? Are there processes that cause bottlenecks along the way? At Full Scale, we receive around 1,000 applications every month, so weโve automated and streamlined 80% of the vetting process:
- An automated response instructs applicants to complete at least 3 certifications
- If they score high enough to qualify, theyโre instructed to schedule an initial interview with our senior technical leaders
All communication and scheduling are automated and move as quickly as the applicant chooses to complete the steps.
We make the recruitment process as painless as possible so that top applicants can start immediately and our recruiters can fill vacancies quickly, too.
Where you look for prospects and how quickly you communicate with them also matter. Ensure that you’re using the right platform to find qualified people and communicate their progress at every stage of the application. Additionally, use the appropriate keywords and recruiting metrics on your Application Tracking System so you don’t unfairly eliminate potential candidates.
Still, some roles are just hard to fill, so you must exercise patience and set the right expectations from the start. Clarify to the hiring team a realistic timeline and stress the importance of hiring meticulously as bad hires can be disastrous in the long run.
4. Cultivating an employer brand
An employer’s brand is the image it exhibits to attract candidates. It includes how it promotes its workplace culture, salaries, benefits, career growth, etc.
While employer branding is not the only criterion for determining the success of an IT talent acquisition, it can make a huge difference in recruiting and retaining talent.
Gone are the days when candidates don’t know what it’s like to work for a company until they’re already employed there. People turn to social media and review sites to see if companies engage and treat their employees right. How can you create an upstanding image that attracts the right people to your company?
Solution:
Instead of worrying about how you appear to potential candidates, focus on delivering the best workplace experience for your existing employees. Employees can be your best PR officers as they’ll provide positive reviews for you if they feel that their careers are taken care of.
While the marketing team is primarily responsible for your brand, they should collaborate with the recruitment team. The former can work on delivering the brand message on your digital platforms, while the latter can nail down the features that will be attractive to candidates.
Based on the company’s common goal, the two teams can brainstorm together to present a company brand that’s professional, friendly, and a great place to work.
5. High turnover rate
Since the Information Technology sector evolves rapidly, a high turnover rate is quite common. Turnover is the process of replacing an employee with a new one.
While you can’t always stop people from leaving, a high turnover rate can put business operations off track. It can extend the amount of time needed to fill the open position. Also, this will impact the other team members’ productivity and morale when they see more people leaving.
Solution:
The single best way to reduce turnover is to hire people who are passionate about the companyโwhether its mission, technology, or the people it works with. Employees who believe in what theyโre doing and who theyโre working with are far less likely to leave.
Beyond that, issues that impact retention include career growth, feeling recognized and appreciated, and compensation. If you want to keep great people, you need to keep all of these factors in mind.
List of IT Recruiters in the US
If you need help recruiting IT personnel, check out the list of the most trusted IT recruiters in the major cities in the US:
California (CA)
Texas (TX)
Florida (FL)
Illinois (IL)
Best IT Recruiters in Peoria | Best IT Recruiters in Springfield | Best IT Recruiters in Naperville | Best IT Recruiters in Chicago |
Arizona (AZ)
Colorado (CO)
Georgia (GA)
Massachusetts (MA)
Michigan (MI)
Minnesota (MN)
North Carolina (NC)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Best IT Recruiters in Cincinnati | Best IT Recruiters in Cleveland | Best IT Recruiters in Columbus | Best IT Recruiters in Dayton |
Oregon (OR)
Pennsylvania (PA)
South Carolina (SC)
Tennessee (TN)
Utah (UT)
Virginia (VA)
Washington (WA)
Best IT Recruiters in Bellevue | Best IT Recruiters in Spokane | Best IT Recruiters in Tacoma | Best IT Recruiters in Seattle |
Wisconsin (WI)
Alabama (AL)
Hire Developers With Full Scale
In summary, you can minimize or prevent these IT recruitment issues when you take proactive measures to solve them. But the reality is that some businesses have a limited budget and time to recruit candidates in-house.
So, who can help them with such challenges? Short answer: Full Scale has helped dozens of clients hire hundreds of developers, testers, and leaders. Itโs what we do.
At Full Scale, we take care of the entire recruitment process, from selection to testing to onboarding, so you don’t have to! Contact us today to get your FREE consultation.
Scale Your Development Team With Full Scale Now
Matt Watson is a serial tech entrepreneur who has started four companies and had a nine-figure exit. He was the founder and CTO of VinSolutions, the #1 CRM software used in today’s automotive industry. He has over twenty years of experience working as a tech CTO and building cutting-edge SaaS solutions.
As the CEO of Full Scale, he has helped over 100 tech companies build their software services and development teams. Full Scale specializes in helping tech companies grow by augmenting their in-house teams with software development talent from the Philippines.
Matt hosts Startup Hustle, a top podcast about entrepreneurship with over 6 million downloads. He has a wealth of knowledge about startups and business from his personal experience and from interviewing hundreds of other entrepreneurs.