To bring in top tech talent, you may need to revamp your recruitment procedures
As IT hiring ramps up in 2014, many job market experts are predicting a tech talent shortage. And certainly among the hot skill sets – security, Big Data, .NET and Java developers, project managers, business analysts and anyone with cloud or mobile experience – you can expect to see some sort of talent war, says Matthew Ripaldi, senior vice-president at Modis, a global provider of IT staffing services.
However, while recruiters agree that demand is growing faster than supply, they also say that better hiring practices can go a long way toward helping companies achieve the hiring goals. Indeed, says Michael Morell, co-founder of tech recruiter Riviera Partners, “there’s actually a shortage of companies and hiring managers who really understand what it takes to recruit top talent.”
Wherever the shortage lies, it’s time for IT organizations to take a renewed look at their hiring practices and polish them up to reflect the expectations of today’s best tech workers. “Quite honestly, companies that aren’t focused on the candidate experience are going to lose out,” Ripaldi says. “Some companies think if they can offer a lot of money, there’s no reason a candidate wouldn’t want to work there, but there’s so much more involved, and especially in IT.”
Here’s a look at five of the most common mistakes that hiring managers make, according to recruiters.
1. Making a bad first impression.
Job candidates know to put their best foot forward, but companies in hiring mode can forget to do the same, Morell says. Such was the case recently, when a client of Morell’s expressed frustration after having offers rejected by two mid-level developers. Both candidates, Morell says, reported that it didn’t seem like a good cultural fit.
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When Morell followed up with the client by making an in-person visit, he could immediately relate to their sentiment. “From the time I walked in the door, I must have literally walked past 40 people, and I kid you not, not one person greeted me, acknowledged me or asked, ‘Can I help you?’” he says. “It wasn’t a place I’d want to work.”
Creating a recruitment-friendly atmosphere is the job of the whole company, he adds. “People very much underestimate how important a compelling company culture is to the overall hiring process,” Morell says.
2. Posting an inaccurate job description.
Writing a job post seems like a basic, but candidates have shown up for interviews only to hear about a completely different job from the one for which they’d applied, according to Felix Fermin, recruiting manager at Mondo.
The causes can vary — in some cases, the hiring manager fails to communicate the job properly to the recruiter, and in others, the human resources organization posts a description based just on a generic job title.
In still other cases, the hiring company provides a laundry list of credentials, and the recruiter posts just the top items to narrow the search. “Instead of a one- or two-page description, it’s better to include just the must-haves and maybe a few nice-to-haves,” Fermin says.
Soft skills, he says, can be handled during the phone screening or face-to-face interview. After all, “traits like ‘self-starter’ and ‘self-motivated’ are things that everyone is looking for in a candidate,” he adds.
3. Inadequately preparing for interview day.
For most people, interviewing job candidates is just one more item on an already over-committed to-do list, and it can easily slide down in priority. But when that happens, it shows, recruiters say.
According to Ripaldi, candidates report waiting in the lobby for 30 minutes, and when someone finally greets them, there is confusion over who they are, which position they’re interviewing for, which conference room is available and even where the hiring manager is. “That whole experience says a lot about the company,” Ripaldi says.
Hiring managers should ensure that candidates are greeted when they arrive and that the front-office folks know who they are and who they’re there to see. Further, a replacement should be lined up beforehand in case the hiring manager gets called away at interview time.
The interview team should also be in alignment, with clearly defined roles as to who owns which pieces of the interview, such as technology capabilities and cultural fit, Morell says. “You don’t want all four people on the team all asking the same questions,” he says.
Conversely, the team should be in agreement about what the job entails and ready to discuss how it fits with the company’s goals and what they’re trying to accomplish. “It would seem silly to get different answers to questions about what the company is doing and why it’s doing it,” Morell says.
Candidates should also be forewarned about what the interview will entail, especially if additional testing is involved. “If they have two hours of technology questions, followed by a personality test or additional screening, that may not be a positive experience in the candidate’s view unless they’ve been prepared for how the day will go,” Ripaldi says.
4. Failing the enthusiasm test.
Hiring is a two-way street, Morell says, that involves not just evaluating candidates but also selling them on the job. “Companies fail to realize they have to be in sell mode,” he says. One candidate recently turned down a job with a high-paying offer because there was no sense of excitement.
“No one got him fired up,” he says. “You need to tell the candidate why it’s a great place to work. Sure, it matters how much you pay or what the job title is, but candidates don’t want to work in a place if they’re not fired up by the team, the product, the vision or purpose.”
As Ferman says, “If you’re a hiring manager at Google, you can expect that people want to work there, but anywhere else, you need to court the candidates and sell them on that position, the company and the potential roles they’ll get to play.” If possible, the interviewer should also introduce candidates to whom they’d report to and the team they’d work with.
Ripaldi says he’s seen hiring managers over-focus on the issues surrounding the job or contract position, not realizing the grim picture they’re painting. “They’ll talk about the project being over-budget and the client pressures, and it’s just so negative,” he says. “It’s important to give the real expectations but also sell the positives of the role,” such as opportunities for innovation.
Millennials in particular want to feel there’s potential to connect with the mission of the company, Ripaldi adds. That means making the interview less of a question-and-answer session and more of a conversation. “A constant barrage of questions doesn’t always work too well,” he says. “The hiring manager needs to ask candidates what they’re looking for, what their experience has been. They want to know what the company stands for, get a sense of the environment and make a connection with people.”
5. Taking too long to make a decision.
Even just a few months ago, companies may have had the luxury of waiting before pulling the trigger on a job offer, but no more, Ripaldi says. “We have hiring managers who tell candidates they’re a good fit and that they’ll reach out to the recruiter ‘tomorrow,’ and then there’s a time delay, and they lose the candidate because of it,” he says.
Ferman says he’s seen a narrowing in the hiring window, as well. Whereas companies might be accustomed to having a week to complete phone-screenings and face-to-face interviews, he advises them to compress those activities into two or three days, if possible. “When you stagger these activities over a week, by the time you interview the candidate you want, he could have two other offers, and then you’re competing with that.”
Overall, says Morell, the candidate experience really matters in a market where you only get so many chances at top talent. “If you blow your chances with one of a handful of candidates, you’ve lost a lot of momentum,” he says, “and you’ve lost an opportunity to close on great candidates.”
Brandel is a freelance writer. She can be reached at marybrandel@verizon.net.
