Recruiting Techie Talent (The Rules Work for ‘Other’ Talent, Too)

First, let’s look at a survey that recruiting firm Dice, which specializes in technology and engineering employees, recently conducted among more than 650 passive and active information technology (IT) candidates.

What’s Missing from Job Postings?

Dice asked respondents what kinds of facts or descriptions are most often missing from IT job postings. More than one-third of respondents said that what they missed most was information about the actual work they would do.

Dice offers the following sample language as a good example of relatively meaningless job description babble:

“You will be responsible for improving our foundational software to enable our company to scale to hundreds of thousands of concurrent users. You will collaborate with operations to steadily improve the scalability of the current service without suffering downtime.”

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Other information that job seekers said they like to see are:  

• Particular skills they will need
  
• Salary range
  
• Benefits and perks, including any that are unique
  
• What they will have the chance to learn on the job
  
• How their work would serve the company’s overall mission

Don’t Forget the Culture

Ask yourself, suggests Dice, whether your organization is an aggressive Web 2.0 company with a start-up feel and an open-cube environment where flexible IT folks who can wear many hats thrive? Or is it more “big company,” with private offices, well-defined jobs, and a culture that offers great work-life balance and excellent formal career paths?

Find the advantages in your culture. For example, if many employees have long tenure, highlight the presence of potential mentors.

If employees seldom come into personal contact with customers, highlight the casual, relaxed atmosphere. By contrast, if customer contact is routine, stress employees’ roles in creating a friendly and professional atmosphere.

What About Blogs and Podcasts?

Blogs and podcasts may seem the ideal way to reach and attract technical types, but Dice cautions not to make them too slick; candidates are suspicious of hype.

Pay Up

Meanwhile, Christopher Knight of ISP-Planet recommends top pay for companies that want to be employers of choice for tech types.

With top talent, it’s pay now or pay later, Knight says. If you under-pay, you often end up paying twice, once for the problems your technical staff is incompetent to solve and once more for the expensive outside talent you bring in to actually solve those problems.

What Technical Types Look For

Here’s Knight’s list of needs that techies share:

• Increased knowledge and skill proficiency
  
• Pay appreciation and skill appreciation
  
• Paid skill training
  
• Uniqueness, a tech area to own and be individually responsible for
  
• Strong benefits package with fast advancement potential
  
• Constant praise and appreciation even though they won’t ask for it
  
• Challenge, the ability to solve a really messed up network and convert it into a smooth running scalable machine that can handle anything
  
• Employer who believes in investing in techies and their network
  
• Relaxed dress code
  
• Part of the company growth process, and not just left to clean up after what the sales team dumps on them

Gorilla Principle #1

Knight’s “gorilla top talent attraction principle #1” is get to know your competitors’ top tech talent. Participate in local user groups. Convince them that the grass is greener at your company. Your competitors are already doing this to you, Knight says.

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Gorilla Principle #2

Offer a bonus to employees who recommend their friends. Pay out $100 on the referral and another $100 on the start date, Knight suggests.

Retaining Is an Important Part of Attracting

Retaining your current top talent immediately increases your ability to attract top talent. That’s because good techs like to work in shops with talented colleagues, says Knight. Having a group of well-regarded technicians on staff sends a message to potential employees that you’ve created a tech-friendly environment.

In tomorrow’s Advisor, eight top strategies for retaining tech talent, and an amazing new approach to that most basic of HR responsibilities—job descriptions.