All companies want to hire the best of the best; that is the goal. It is the recruiter’s job to find and attract the best talent. And that is not an easy task.
How do most companies find talent? Perhaps by using job boards, or hiring researchers and sources to headhunt talents, or by spending a couple of grands hiring a LinkedIn Recruiter (and sending plenty of LInkedIn InMails to candidates).
Here’s a fact: All companies are going after the same 5% of top talent!
Via Giphy.
And the direr fact is that in technology recruitment, where companies are looking for information technology professionals, the chances of finding the top 5% talent of IT talents is even more difficult as IT professionals belong to the Top 40 in-demand jobs worldwide, and also belongs to the Top 10 hard-to-fill jobs globally. According to ManpowerGroup‘s 2015 Talent Shortage Survey, globally, IT professionals fall at the 9th most difficult jobs to fill.
According to another report from Upwork, a leading online workplace, 13 out of the 20 most in-demand skills in 2015 are information and communications technology related skills (e.g. PHP development, web development, Javascript development, HTML5 development, SEO, MySQL administration, Android/iOS App development, etc.).
The direr fact: IT professionals are both in-demand and hard-to-find.
Via Giphy.
So, how do you win the competition? How do you get the best of the best in a scarce pool of qualified talents? Will job boards and jobs aggregators suffice?
Well, not really.
Human resource (HR) technology (i.e. softwares, apps, job boards, job aggregators, etc.) helps us identify the right talent we are looking for. But a database of candidates’ phone number, resumes, emails, and other pertinent accounts or contact details won’t greatly help companies attract candidates. Every company thinks they offer the best, after all. So, you need a good story, a good brand or product, and a good hiring/recruiting strategy.
The thing is, technology can never replace the human elements of recruitment. In Skip Freeman’s book “Headhunter Hiring Secrets: The Rule of The Hiring Game Have Changed Forever”, job boards’ and job aggregators’ hit rate is only pegged at about 1-2% rate. A recent report from SilkRoad Technology entitled “Recruitment Marketing Effectiveness: Meaningful Metrics Straight From the Source” also reaffirms the finding that external online sources of candidates (i.e. job boards and job aggregators), while they remain effective, are next only to referrals from company’s inside sourcers or employees, and then followed by a company’s own career site.
Why do you need a recruiter to beat the competition?
For starters, recruiters understand “fit” and “culture”. For a highly specialised field like information technology, where talents are hard to find (as low supply cannot keep up with high demand), recruiters with comprehensive experience and expertise in technology recruitment are your biggest assets.
Technology recruiters are up-to-date with industry trends and thus, are familiar with the industry landscape. They follow the outgoing year’s trend, and pretty much have an understanding of what the following year’s going to be like.
Technology recruiters who have been in the business for years (and by the way, are solely focused on IT industry only) have a vast network of professionals they can always tap (most of them have long relationships with these professionals already). Of course, you cannot expect a senior level candidate to pick up the phone or answer a request immediately if it is coming from an unknown contact, do you? And, especially, if they are currently employed?
Technology recruiters and sources are proactive individuals. Job boards and aggregators only serve as means to their ends. The human element they inject to the job is irreplaceable by any HR technology known to man.
Certainly, you need a sales person, a good story, and a good brand. While HR technologies (and the likes of job boards and aggregators) are all part of the entire recruitment equation, without knowledgeable, experienced, and established recruiters, you are out of luck finding the top talents of one of the world’s most difficult jobs to find.
If you can’t find the right recruiter to help you filling-in your vacant IT staff positions, contact Sysgen today, and let’s make great things happen together.