Appealing to the best and brightest should be the focus of organizations looking to onboard IT talent. But often there’s a knowledge gap between companies and IT professionals. Bridging that gap is the key to success.

HR teams in startups and scale-ups have to wear many hats – and often don’t have the time to dedicate to understand what IT talent really wants from a role. Because of this, they outsource everything to one or more recruiters. While that’s a means to an end, there are a couple of pitfalls.

The Big Issue

Overloaded HR managers have too many tasks and not enough time and so seek out IT recruitment specialists to handle their hiring for them. That makes sense as they don’t have the spare capacity to figure out what IT people want.

One problem though is that recruiters have their own targets as part of their business and because of that, they’re more likely to suggest increasing the advertised wage as a way to bring in more talent. That can work but is it guaranteed to get you the people you’re looking for?

Do More Than What’s Expected

But if you are out there looking for new star players for your team then what more can you do other than offer extra money and more flexibility? Well, a good starting place is advertising jobs that the people you want, actually want to do.

Your company might say “We’ve worked from home during the pandemic but now we like for developers to be in the office 3 days a week.” It’s good that we see businesses evolving to offer hybrid setups but what’s important to your business isn’t necessarily what’s important to the developer. Good money and flexibility are a great start, but there are more ways to make a job appealing.

You need to understand your best candidate and what they want. Now that might be salary or remote work but think beyond that to career progression, the ability for a developer to choose their own tech stack or personal development. Put yourself in their shoes.

And now we come back to the point at the start. You reach out to recruiters to find the best people for your organization. But there’s so much more to finding the right people than just advertising the requirements and salary. You need to seek out the candidates your business aligns with; the kind who want what you’re offering as an employer. The beauty of HirePort is that we work as the common ground between companies and recruiters –  and we help connect the dots, so that you can see exactly what the people you want to employ are really looking for.