There is a war for talent in the tech field. According to research, 86% of recruiters said they “find it challenging to find and hire technical talent”.
So, why is it so difficult to hire tech talent?
In short, there is a limited pool of candidates. Technical innovations over the last few years have, rather than depleting the need for human labour, increased it. As such, the outlook for work in the tech industry is extremely positive. However, while machines have or will take over “hard, dangerous and dull jobs”, technology has “created more jobs than it has destroyed”.
What does this mean?
There is an increasing number of roles available in the tech industry, many of which the current workforce does not have the skills to fill. This is because the tech industry is developing far more quickly than the workforce has had time to keep up with. So, candidates with the right skill sets for highly-skilled roles are few and far between. As a result, 53% of recruiters “have hired tech talent despite candidates not meeting the job requirements.”
So, fears that technology will make human labour obsolete are clearly unfounded. However, until the next generations of tech-savvy talent enter the workforce, there is likely to be a skills shortage within the tech field.
For your company to continue to innovate effectively and keep up with technological advancements, there are things you can do to attract and retain the tech talent you need. Utilising Recruitment Process Outsourcing to hire your tech talent can have many benefits for your company.
So, we’ve summarised a few of these here.
- When working with an RPO which specialises in tech hiring, you can gain from the experience of recruiters who have worked extensively within the tech field. This means that they have a nuanced understanding of the role being hired for and what it requires. So, they already have a pool of highly skilled talent waiting to be contacted. All this experience can significantly reduce your time-to-hire, saving money on advertising and lengthy recruitment processes.
- In a candidate shortage, all organisations need to be thinking of ways to increase their retention rates. The good news is, an RPO can help you do just that. An RPO can ensure that your company maintains a positive employer brand throughout the recruitment process, improving the candidate experience. An improved candidate experience improves the “perception of employees about the company”, thereby increasing retention rates.
- If you don’t want to outsource all your recruitment processes, but you need to hire more staff for a specific department (such as Tech), you can utilise Project RPO. This provides a solution which is both flexible and scalable to your needs, while giving you access to those experienced tech recruiters. As such, you can utilise an RPO just for your tech hiring needs. This flexibility can save your company money and ensure you fill those tech roles quickly.
- RPO providers often have a capacity for research and industry-led insight. This means that your provider can assess the problems with Tech hiring your company is encountering and provide insight-led solutions. For example, a researcher can assess everything from salary and culture to job descriptions and broader problems within the market. This should then give you a realistic idea of the talent available and how to appeal to the right people with suitable marketing techniques and offerings.
- Some RPO providers have marketing, creative and digital capacities. This can enable the team working on your behalf to market your roles with the innovation required to attract top talent. Too many companies underestimate the value of a high-quality job advert. RPO providers with creative capacity can utilise the expertise of copywriters and designers. This ensures that your campaign is targeted to the right audience, in terms of both the language and overall design. An RPO’s digital capacity can create an application process which is quick and tech-literate, therefore appealing to tech-savvy applicants.
To get ahead of the game
You need to appeal to applicants from the very start of the process. This begins with talent attraction, refining your employer brand and EVP. So, by the time the applicant gets to interview stage, you don’t have to convince them of your company’s values because they are already aware of them.
Utilising RPO for tech talent can give you access to those insight-led techniques to ensure that your company attracts those highly-skilled applicants who are so in demand.
RPO, after all, is about much more than just recruitment. RPO can give your company the capability to truly define itself as an employer. So, it’s time to ask what your organisation wants to say and how it wants to say it.
To find out more about how RPO can help to solve your tech hiring troubles, download our RPO eBook.
