8 tips to make your IT recruiting process more successful

Hardly any other industry faces as many recruitment challenges as the IT industry. Enormous skills shortages, digitization, deeply rooted corporate structures and, and, and: the "battle for talent" is changing everything - and you won't win it with mass processing, but only with a specific, personal approach! Here you will find valuable tips for your IT recruiting.

Many companies still believe that recruitment "runs so smoothly" and are surprised when they cannot fill their vacancies. IT companies in particular are missing out on highly qualified candidates. We have summarized the most important tips and current trends that will help your company to dynamize the hiring process and find developers who perfectly fit the company and the advertised position.

"The IT department has the hardest time finding suitable employees," agreed more than 50 percent of the HR managers surveyed in Austria.

1. no strategy, no success! Tips and trends

Finding the right people for the business can turn into a needle in a haystack situation. But if you want to, you can avoid it. How. With an onlineRecruitment strategy, which focuses on the talent that is suitable for the position to be filled. This is in contrast to traditional recruiting, which targets the masses. Here, you have little control over who gets to see the ad. Only those who know who their potential candidates really are, what motivates them, what occupies them, what their professional goals are, and what criteria are decisive in choosing a new employer - and above all why - can address precisely these aspects and thus attract the talent that best fits the position and the team.

The analysis

To this end, the foundation of the IT recruiting strategy must be based on an analysis of the candidate persona. Especially in sectors where the battle for the best talent is fierce - such as the IT industry - a company that can rely on a persona analysis for recruiting can stand out from the competition. Companies that use content marketing for recruiting to accurately respond to the results of the analysis can tailor and personalize their messages to their candidates' favorites. This often starts when potential employees aren't even looking for work. This is a way to build trust and long-term relationships focused on shared values and goals.

In this way, you are certainly leading the way when it comes to employer attraction. This requires a strategy that moves job seekers from potential applicants to excited employees - with content that is relevant, helpful, and offered at the right time and place. Potential applicants need different information at each stage of the process. This information must be gathered and provided at the right time through the right communication channels. The content of each section has a specific function.

For example, the first phase is mainly about attracting the attention of potential applicants, the second phase is about making contacts, the third phase is about getting hired, and the final phase is about making sure employees are so satisfied in the workplace that they enter into a long-term relationship that benefits both themselves and the company.

2. create personas

Web developers are light-hearted men with drooling eyes who subsist mainly on junk food. Right? Of course not! A look at development offices shows that such clichés don't apply at all. Only those who know who their potential applicants really are, what motivates them, what keeps them busy, what their professional goals are, and what criteria are decisive in choosing a new employer - and above all, why - can address precisely these aspects and thus attract the talent that best fits the job and the team.

To this end, the foundation of the IT recruiting strategy must be based on an analysis of the candidate's character. Particularly in sectors where there is a fierce battle for the best talent - for example, IT jobs - a company that can rely on character analysis for recruiting can set itself apart from the competition. Companies that use content marketing for recruiting to accurately respond to the results of the analysis can tailor and personalize their messages to their candidates' favorites. This often starts when potential employees aren't even looking for work. This is a way to build trust and long-term relationships focused on shared values and goals. This way, you lead by example in employer attraction.

3. IT recruiting with a face

You certainly want to know who is applying to you - but that's exactly how potential candidates feel! Candidates need to show their face - but HR departments don't always do this. In an industry like IT, where you can almost talk about an applicant-demand situation, it's more important than ever to put a face to your company.

This starts with employer branding, continues with active sourcing and ends with job advertisements: However, a strong employer brand should not only help attract top talent. It should also be about always being "at the top" with potential applicants.

Employer branding is effective at every point of contact between the company and candidates - from before the application all the way through to an individual's employment and career with the company. It is crucial that the values, culture, and personality conveyed by the employer brand are not the wishful thinking of a CEO, but reflect the qualities that are truly part of the developers' daily work.

Authenticity

Authenticity beats exaggerated texts full of empty phrases - this is where videos are the ideal format for communication! Online videos enable a direct, more personal connection with the audience. Insights are offered that would otherwise remain unknown. This puts a face to the company. In addition, a video can enhance the authentic Brand effect promote, which is particularly welcome for employer branding and IT recruiting. One of the highest forms of authenticity is UGC (user-generated content). The following figures best reflect how well DIY content is received: One-third of all media consumption consists of UGC videos. However, it is also important to be convincing with a job offer: If you only fill out a general e-mail address and an account form, but do not name a contact person for (telephone) questions, you can give away decisive advantages!

4. the job advertisement itself

But a job ad has many more pitfalls, especially in the IT industry: lax job descriptions, meaningless phrases, or a copy of the company description as an employer profile evoke at most a yawn instead of a smile on a potential applicant's face. False promises and marketing language should be avoided at all costs: an authentic image with minor flaws is definitely more convincing than a falsely advertised ideal world. The days when "Exciting field of work. Internationally active company. Innovative environment." were an adequate job profile are long outdated, but so are "We're looking for rock stars, ninjas and gurus!" No one wants to be compared to drug addicts, Japanese assassins and spiritual teachers.

The Wooly Pig

However, the demand for the "eierlegende Wollmilchsau" - an endless list of requirements for the applicant - is also discouraging. It is often not clear from the job advertisement which tasks are a "must" and which are a "nice-to-have" - after all, many skills can also be improved through internal training. This can discourage top talent! A precise definition of the position to be filled and the required skills is therefore an absolute must.

Many developers are self-taught without formal university education and yet have a broad know-how. Therefore, it is not advantageous for ads to include phrases such as "university degree and at least 5 years of experience". Instead, we recommend e.g. "extensive PHP knowledge" or "secure handling of CMS systems".

5. active sourcing in IT recruiting

Active contact with developers is absolutely desirable - but be personal and situation-specific!

One of our candidates told us, "I recently received an email from a company with the subject line: "Visionary Startup Needs Your Potential ...". At first I thought it was a hip advertisement, but no, it was serious. The text actually just said that I was recommended (but no name was given), and if I was interested in a job. In three paragraphs it told me that I was the ideal candidate for the job, and if I was interested, studied IT, and had experience with HTML5 and CSS3, I should apply."

In order to contact a potential candidate for a vacancy, a database must first be established: This is only possible with a comprehensive recruitment strategy!

But what is the best way to get in touch with a developer? In order to be able to communicate at eye level and in a specialist manners a close coordination with the IT department is very important - alternatively, an employee of the HR department can also establish the initial contact: "The technical interview will be conducted by the head of the IT department, I will only establish the potential contact" shows the candidate that he or she is taken seriously and that the recruiting process is well thought out. By the way, many developers prefer to make contact by e-mail rather than by phone!

Passive candidates

"The general job platforms don't work for IT talent. They don't even reach the target group because IT specialists and developers are not actively looking for jobs due to the market situation. They are passively on the move and can only be reached through niche channels. These are, for example, WeAreDevelopers, Stack Overflow or GitHub. Most companies do not yet actively use these channels because they do not have a plan on how to reach the IT target group. This, combined with a lack of budget and unqualified HR specialists, leads to a shortage of IT specialists in their own company" Benjamin Ruschin, CEO of WeAreDevelopers.

6. IT-specific sweets

Karriere.at recently conducted a study that offers exciting insights into developers' pain points: For example, one in five (20.3%) say that the free choice of operating system would be a reason to change jobs. Currently, nearly 87% work on Windows computers, but only 70% would choose that operating system. 28% would like Linux (reality 21%) and 27% would like OS X (reality 17%).

IT employees are as diverse as their skills: many have a university education, but autodidacts are also not uncommon in the industry. Part-time jobs and projects play a crucial role for the latter in particular.

7. values and perspectives

In 2021, candidates will do their own research and take a hard look at the right company: Glassdoor talks about 69% of job seekers who would not sign a contract with a company with a bad reputation, even if they are currently unemployed, and 84% would consider quitting their current job if they received an offer from a company with an excellent reputation. This means that potential candidates look closely at the companies that are on the short list and that their values are important to them. A job offer alone does not tell them if they can identify with the company. This requires more information and interaction. This is exactly what inbound recruiting focuses on.

Another reason developers don't apply for jobs is that they are advertised to solve specific problem situations. But what happens to the employee after they solve the problem? With the help of expert employer branding and concrete information in the advertisement, you can arouse the interest of potential applicants for a career in your company! Especially this important point is often forgotten, but leads to great losses in the number of applications.

8. making success measurable

Most people will answer yes to the question "Is your IT recruiting successful?" - but how successful is it really? This is where most people start to stutter. It is in the interest of both management and HR to know what is working and why, or what needs improvement. Choosing the right KPIs is of crucial importance here. A suitable KPI is specific and provides information about a particular measure or step in the recruitment process. "Number of jobs advertised" versus "Number of employees hired" are therefore not targeted.

For this reason, we have compiled the most important metrics you need to implement in your IT recruiting strategy:

• Number of actively searching candidates

  • In order to bring the collected numbers into the right proportion, it is first important to become aware of the size of the candidate pool with the help of SEO tools such as Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush. To do this, enter the corresponding position (e.g. frontend developer) and get the monthly search volume.

• Number of positively answered contacts

  • Active sourcing is absolutely essential in the IT recruitment process. But is contact being made with the right people, or are contact attempts going unanswered and being rejected?

• Number of applications

  • How many applications do you receive for advertised positions and from where? Is the strategy already mature enough to bear fruit, or are applications still coming in via expensive job platforms? Another good indicator is the number of unsolicited applications!

• Number of interviews

  • The number of interviews in relation to the number of applications provides an indication of the quality of the talent recruited in IT recruiting.

• Offer - Acceptance - Relationship

  • How many Offers does your company have to do before it is accepted? Were you able to convince the desired candidate with IT-specific tidbits, company values, salary and prospects?

• Time to Hire

  • Time to Hire refers to the time elapsed from the time a vacancy is approved (headcount) until the employment contract is signed.

• Number of clicks and conversion rate

  • The number of clicks on a job offer indicates how well-known you are as an employer in general. The conversion rate indicates how attractive you are to visitors.

• Dwell time (quality of visitors)

  • The length of time visitors spend on your career page is an interesting factor: How attractive is your content? Do you need to make improvements here, e.g. use a video? On the other hand, the duration of an ad is also relevant: Does the visitor click away after a short time? Then you might want to improve the design. Do you get many clicks and arouse great interest? Then you have already done well - in terms of the number of applications and the number of interviews, you can determine how much you want in general and for the talents you are looking for.

• Number of followers

  • Although measuring the number of followers alone is outdated, measuring followers on specific career pages, such as a Facebook page, provides insight into how many people are looking to social media to learn about employer branding content and job openings.

Our offer for you in IT recruiting

If you want to reach the best IT professionals, contact us. indivHR helps to become even more successful in IT recruiting and to avoid common mistakes.

As IT recruiting specialists with many years of experience, we know exactly how to design the candidate journey so that you are always ahead of your competitors. So that you get the best employees.

IT Recruiting