Hiring in the IT field is competitive with qualified talent having many job opportunities (and offers) to consider, and employers often losing their top candidates to their competition. Due to this, companies must craft (and follow) and effective hiring strategy to try to snag top candidates before it is too late. Here are five ways to make your IT hiring a success:
- Make recruiting an ongoing process. Without a good recruiting strategy in place, you won’t have any candidates to hire. A great first step to achieve this is to setup an employee referral plan. Offer a bonus to any employee that brings someone qualified to the team. Good employees recruit more good employees, and keeping them invested in your hiring process leads to a happier workplace, too.
- Write a realistic job description. Most job descriptions are all business: a list of skills, desired education, and occasionally a sentence or two about the company. But candidates want to know about the company they are applying to, and they want to be able to envision what type of corporate culture you offer. If you want to stand out, you need to treat your job description almost like a sales-pitch. Include some information about your company and why you’re a great place to work. When you get to the skills section, consider breaking them up by priority instead of having one long list. Three great categories to do this with are “must have,” “would like to have,” and “other qualifications.”
- Test for skills. It’s hard to learn a programming language, but easy to type it into your resume. You need to make sure that your candidates actually possess the skills they claim they do, or else you’re going to have an information technology department that’s struggling to get their work done. Fortunately, testing for IT skills is easy and your recruiting partner will be able to help execute and evaluate test results.
- Look for accomplishments. Once you’ve verified a candidate’s skill set by testing them, take another look at their resume and keep an eye out for achievements. For example, a phrase like “proficient in e-commerce,” won’t tell you that much, but, “launched an online store for a local business in two months,” will. You know they have skills, now it’s time to see what they’ve done with them.
- Offer a career path. One great recruiting tool is to map out a potential career path for your new hires. Show them how they’ll be able to rise in the ranks in your company. Taking the time to explain this isn’t common, so it really sets you apart from your competition. Show that you care about the career development of your employees and you’re more likely to land your candidate.
Looking for other great IT hiring tips? Contemporary Staffing Solutions specializes in information technology recruiting, and our dedicated team of specialized account managers who can work with you to achieve your company staffing goals. Contact us for help today!