How to: Attract Top Tech Talent (Infographic)

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again; really great tech talent is REALLY hard to find. One of our recently featured memes even likened finding a .NET developer to finding a unicorn or Bigfoot! But all joking aside, the reality is that we are currently experiencing a tech talent shortage that has left 1 in 3 employers with jobs they can’t fill and is making our jobs as tech recruiters tougher and increasingly competitive. As a result, finding top tech talent requires creativity and innovation on the part of the recruiter above and beyond what’s gone before.  That’s where this infographic from TalentPuzzle comes in.

It takes you through the challenges associated with tech recruiting, how to troubleshoot the current talent shortage, what works when trying to entice tech gurus to come and work for your organisation, and details the techniques used by the most successful tech recruiting companies.

It’s informative, it’s comprehensive and all that’s left for you to do is read it. You can find our top takeaways at the bottom of the post along with our synopsis of what it all means for you. We’ll see you there in a minute!

Top Takeaways:

• Each year, 122,300 tech jobs requiring BA degress open in the USA, yet only 59,731 computer science students are graduating. That’s a 49% difference in the number of jobs available to the number of candidates able to fill them.
• 89% of Software Engineers have applied for 2 jobs or less in the last 5 years.
• 1 in 3 IT employers have tech positions they can’t fill.
• Apart from a raise, the most successful ways to entice tech candidates are:

– telecommuting opportunities
– the chance to work with new technologies
– career advancement opportunities

• In fact, roles offering telecommuting opportunities received 3-6 times more applicants than those that didn’t, and 33% of IT workers said they would take a 10% pay cut for the chance to work remotely.
• Hack-a-thons are a great way to find top tech talent, as IT candidates like to be challenged.
• 1 in 3 IT job applicants were motivated by the company’s employer branding efforts.
• 45% of Software Engineers cited “position is relevant to my background” as their top reason for responding to recruiter outreach.

What does this mean for you?

While there may be a shortage of tech talent in the industry, clever companies are recognising that in order to attract really great candidates they need to invest in their employer brand, use alternative sourcing methods that appeal to IT candidates like Hack-a-thons, offer alternative benefits to a rise in salary such as telecommuting, and ensure their candidate approaches are highly personalised and correctly targeted.

If you’re recruiting tech talent be sure to not only check out the Employer Branding module as part of our Black Belt in Internet Recruitment online training course, but also to download our FREE whitepaper on ‘How to: Recruit Tech Pros on Twitter‘. Our Employer Branding module will show you  how to use Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter to develop your employer brand and build “talent tribes” that support and feed into your ongoing recruiting efforts, while our free whitepaper will specifically teach you how to search for talent, market yourself and engage candidates when it comes to recruiting tech professionals using Twitter.