Thoughts on Recruiting and Retaining Digital and IT People
We are seeing a common challenge on almost every project we are currently working on: our clients are struggling to recruit. Although this is an issue in every department, from engineers and planners to library services and long-term care staff, it is especially acute in the IT and digital space.
If you were fortunate enough to get budget this year and permission to hire new roles - you may still be facing an uphill climb.
So, as a team, we put our heads together to think about the best tactics for recruiting and retaining the best people in this challenging environment. Here's what we came up with:
Meaningful Job Roles: Review your organization structure and team to ensure you have modern, relevant roles with appropriate job titles that people are looking for. Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.
Update Job Descriptions: Ensure your job descriptions are up to date, reflective of where you are going, and include modern skills and capabilities (analysts, designers, cloud, integration, developer, digital, data). Remember that your job descriptions send clear signals about the type of organization you are to prospective candidates. If you haven't updated your job description in ten years, is that the signal you want to send?
Review Job Requirements: When you review your job descriptions, make sure that any qualifications and credentials are truly necessary. Are you creating a barrier to entry? Are you eliminating good candidates unnecessarily? Do you actively need a degree for this role, or the qualification you are asking for that role? Do you really need access to a vehicle?
Increase Role Flexibility: To expand your pool of potential applicants, consider introducing more flexibility for roles, which may make them more appealing. For example, consider part-time roles or job share arrangements to encourage people who can't commit to a full-time role to apply.
Hire for Attitude: While, of course, we'd like new staff to hit the ground running, this may not always be possible for particularly challenging roles to hire. Can you hire into a role based on a candidate's attitude and a strong desire to learn? Can someone learn what you need them to know? Is the experience that you are looking for really the experience that you need?
Interesting Job Ads: Remember that your job ad is an advertisement. Use advertising tactics to promote the job, the team, the organization, and get candidates excited about the opportunity. Highlight the things that you and your team think could be attractive about the role, such as flexibility, interesting work, generalist over hyper-specialism, purpose-driven work that gives back to the community, or work-life balance. But be truthful - don't deceive people into a role; that will only backfire.
Use Recruitment Firms and/or Recruitment Firm Tactics: When it is difficult to find people, the typical roles are reversed. Candidates are not job hunting - you are hunting for your candidate. So either hire someone to do the hunting or do it yourself. Use LinkedIn and other sources to find candidates that you think meet your requirements. Call them, find out if they would be interested in applying. Shake some trees. Use your personal network. Unearth potential candidates through an active search that you might not get through more passive means. We recently worked on a recruit for a CIO which in the first round failed to yield a candidate. In the second round we engaged a recruitment firm which did a fabulous job of scouring for candidates and delivered a crop of great people - we were impressed. In this case, the client certainly got great value from engaging a recruitment firm.
Incentivize Referrals: If possible, unleash your team to help you find good candidates. Incentivize your team to help you find people out there, or the diamonds in the rough.
Review Pay Rates: Offer competitive pay rates for your market. Especially with many IT roles becoming remote/flexible jobs, remember that you are not just competing in your locality. So, benchmark peers and the market in general for your roles and make the strong argument internally for paying around market rate.
Working Conditions: Applicants have the pick of the market right now. Therefore, make sure to offer good working conditions, such as genuine flexibility, work from home options, and a supportive work environment. These factors are paramount in attracting top talent.
Team Culture: Make your team a great one to work in and with. Build a strong internal team culture by setting a clear vision, goals, and objectives, measuring and tracking progress, modeling good behaviors, focusing on building a supportive environment, emphasizing teamwork, and making work fun.
Tools: Ensure that you provide people with the modern tools they need to be successful. No one wants to step back in time when they come to work. Provide them with modern tools, devices, and remove as much repetitive, boring stuff from their roles as possible.
Techniques: Embrace and adopt modern techniques that are prevalent in the broader technology industry and that people want to learn and add to their resume. Think about Agile, Kanban, Scrum, DevOps, Design Thinking, and other modern approaches.
Promote from Within: Consider who you already have in your team that's nearly there. Could you hire for a more junior role and develop someone else that you already have in your team into this role?
Grow Your Own Talent: If you can't find suitable candidates in the job market, think about developing your own talent through apprenticeships, co-op programs, and other development programs.
Create Opportunity/Clear Career Paths: Provide a clear career path, with structured growth opportunities and formal plans, for both new and existing team members to progress from role to role within your organization.
Invest in Training: Make a commitment to invest in training. Set a dollar per head target, enable team members to self-identify and pursue their training tracks, and empower individuals to invest in their own development.
Mentoring: Provide a formal mentoring and development program to team members, whether within IT, across departments, or using external mentors.
We know that individually none of these tactics are magic bullets, but combined together they can perhaps help improve your odds of finding the right candidates.
Are there other tactics that you’ve used? What have you found has worked for you?
Good luck in your search!