There are many challenges that businesses take on day to day when running and growing their businesses, but one major challenge that 25% of digital businesses face during the recruitment process is talent sourcing.
Why is this?
There is a tech skills shortage in the UK, with 50% of businesses believing there to be a shortage of highly skilled employees out there. It’s predicted by 2022 that 518,000 additional workers will be needed to fill the specialist roles vacant in the digital space.
So, facing this skills gap, what can be done to attract and hire the next generation of developers?
Make skills a priority over education
Despite the popular myths, it is possible to become a software developer without going to university and gaining a formal degree. With so many online resources out there now, it’s incredibly easy to access and learn programming, so, it comes as no surprise that over 94% of UK developers consider themselves as self-taught.
Many employers make the mistake of holding degree status as a strict criterion to be suitable for their role, and are missing out on highly skilled developers who have gained achievements through a non-traditional form education.
There are plenty of successful developers out there with great achievements in software without a formal degree in software engineering. The key is to let the good candidates come to you whatever their education, and allow them to prove their capability and skill.
In order to attract and hire the next generation of developers, it is essential to be flexible on education requirements and hire for skills not degrees!
Nurture skills and continuous learning
In the technology industry everything changes quickly and for developers working in areas such as web or mobile development, it’s essential to keep abreast of new technologies. Developers are now faced with a never-ending learning curve and according to Stack Overflow 87% of respondents to their 2017 UK & Ireland Developer Hiring Landscape survey, agree or strongly agree that “learning new technologies is fun”.
Developers love to learn, and you can answer that desire for lifelong learning by offering a career pathway that enables your employees to consistently build new skills and take on new challenges. Tech teams are eager to broaden their skillset, so by fulfilling the need for further development and education for your employees you are more likely to attract the next generation of developers who will want to come on board whilst continuing to learn.
Hire for diversity
The progress on gender equality is still going at a painfully slow pace, and we still have a long way to go. When it comes to the current talent shortage, it could be significantly improved by encouraging and advancing more women into the tech sector. But alas, women in tech are still severely underrepresented. Businesses rely on an overwhelmingly male workforce with women in the majority for only 11% of these digital tech businesses.
Tech companies can play a major role in attracting and retaining women within their workforce, as well as challenging stereotypes and cultural biases in the industry overall.
There are many ways to get into tech, and as we mentioned above there are a number of successful developers out there with great achievements in software without a formal degree in computer science. As one software engineer proves “having a successful career in Stem doesn’t mean spending your teen years coding in a dark room”.
Employer branding is key
Sure, you’re not quite Google or Facebook and nor should you want to be, you have a successful company, which is why you should be attracting some excellent talent. Take a look at any advice on attracting talent and you will be told one of the key elements is your employer brand. We cover this in more detail here, but in order to attract the next generation of developers, you really need to take a step back and ask yourself questions such as; what does my company stand for? What is like to work for my company? The first step to improving is to work out where you may be going wrong, here’s why you might be not attracting the best developers.
To attract and retain great developer talent, you should keep an open mind about non-traditional education backgrounds, offer continuous learning opportunities for your tech team, hire for diversity and re-think your employer branding.
If you are looking for help with your long-term hiring strategy that includes, talent pipelining talented technical candidates in line with your specific company goals, we can help. Eligo understands your requirements on a technical and personal level to ensure that as a business we’ll save you both time and money.
Get in touch with us today!
technology@eligo.co.uk // rick@eligo.co.uk // 020 8944 4187