4 Reasons You Can’t Find The Tech Talent You Need

If you can’t sleep at night stressing over why you can’t find Tech talent your business needs or whether to risk it and hire the less-than-ideal candidate you were able to find, you’re not alone. According to a recent survey of hiring decision-makers by Indeed, 86 percent of respondents find it challenging to find and hire Tech talent. 56 percent of respondents have hired Tech talent despite the candidates not meeting the job description requirements. It’s time to stop settling and get proactive on how to improve your Tech hiring strategy.

Why You Can’t Find Tech Talent

Spoiler: The U.S. Tech talent gap isn’t entirely to blame. Turns out, companies play a role in why it’s so difficult to find Tech talent with the experience and skills you’re looking to hire for. While there are a variety of reasons why finding high-end Tech talent is so difficult, here are the reasons we’ve seen most often throughout the past seventeen years we’ve spent as a national IT, Tech, and Digital Marketing staffing agency.

• Top Tech Talent is Passive. What we’ve found time and time again is that the best Tech talent out there is passive talent, meaning they aren’t actively seeking out job opportunities. The problem with this talent is that it’s often hidden. You won’t find these skilled Tech professionals on job boards, and you might not even be able to find them on popular networking sites like LinkedIn. Instead, this talent is discovered through exclusive networks, relationships, and tech-driven hiring tools only accessible to major staffing agencies. Agencies, like Mondo, have spent decades building relationships with top Tech experts in the field and are more adequately suited to discover passive candidates that would consider a job change if the right one comes along, but rarely if ever seek out opportunities. If you continue to struggle to find Tech talent for the roles you need to fill, consider outsourcing the challenge to a professional and benefit from an effective, immediate hiring process that will provide you with otherwise inaccessible Tech talent.
• Lack of Training. The catch-22 for job-seekers is that you can’t get a job until you’ve had that job (or a similar one) previously. With Tech, it can be extremely difficult to find talent that has held the exact title you are looking to hire for. However, that shouldn’t be an immediate deterrent. The reason certain regions in Europe experience surprisingly low unemployment rates and minimal skills gaps is due to their comprehensive apprenticeship programs and similar training programs. While the integration of their programs on a national scale is not possible stateside, you can create and implement enhanced training programs at your business and enable internal talent to develop the more technical skills you’re looking for. You can also onboard more entry-level candidates or candidates lacking one or two skills you’re hiring for and implement training programs to get them to the level of technical expertise needed.
• Inefficient Hiring Process. A likely culprit for why it’s so hard to find Tech talent could be your hiring process. As is often the case, there tend to be extraneous steps in the hiring process for Tech roles resulting in unnecessary red tape and the approval of various upper-level execs before a decision can be made. We’ve seen highly qualified candidates accept another offer due to a lengthy, inefficient hiring process with the initial employer that left them waiting weeks to hear feedback on an interview and whether an offer would be made. Minimize the amount of red tape involved in a hiring decision by restricting the individuals involved in interviewing and leaving the final call to those that understand the role and the technology, solutions, and tools the candidate will work in. Reduce the amount of time between when a candidate interviews and when they hear back to ensure you don’t lose out on your top choice to a competitor with a more efficient hiring process.
• Unrealistic Salaries. When it comes to hiring the top Tech talent, you need to budget for the competitive salary ranges found in the marketplace today. Continuously posting a high-end role, yet expecting candidate’s to accept a low-range salary for it will result in a waste of time and resources for both your hiring department and the candidates interviewing. Given how in-demand specific Tech roles are, qualified talent knows the value they bring to companies and expect to be paid a salary that matches that value. If you lowball prospective talent, they won’t waste time trying to negotiate a much higher rate. They will find another employer willing to pay them a salary that matches their in-demand skill set. Before you begin interviewing Tech talent, do the necessary market research on the latest salary data of the Tech role so you’re able to offer a realistic salary that will interest top talent or, if necessary, educate business execs on why a budget expansion is crucial to net skilled talent for their Tech-related needs.

While hiring for Tech roles is challenging, it shouldn’t feel impossible to find Tech talent for your business. Stop settling for low-quality hires and paying the price of a bad hire later on. Instead, take a moment to evaluate your current hiring processes and look to see where improvements can be made.

If you have an immediate Tech talent need or want to outsource the hiring process to a qualified, Tech-based staffing agency, contact Mondo today. We have access to the skilled Tech talent you can’t find anywhere else.