Technology Staffing and Recruiting: A Complete Guide to Hiring the Best Tech Talent
As a recruiter, talent acquisition partner, or business owner, you naturally want to find and attract the best and brightest talent to your organization. However, there’s a lot to consider when recruiting for highly competitive roles in the tech and engineering space.
This guide is a helpful resource for recruiters looking to learn more about specialty roles across tech, IT, and engineering, and it explains how a technical and engineering recruitment agency can become a strategic partner that helps you attract and retain the best of the best. It’s a deep dive into all things technology staffing and recruiting for the most competitive roles.
Tech giants Facebook, Amazon, and Google all recently announced plans to hire thousands of new employees for corporate and/or tech jobs. While this is good news for candidates looking for tech roles, for employers, it means there’s more competition.
On top of this, we’re in the middle of the so-called Great Attrition. In the U.S., more than 19 million workers quit their jobs between April 2021 and September 2021 alone.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, employees are looking for a more human aspect of work. And employers that understand employees aren’t necessarily looking for more money, but rather a new sense of purpose, as well as enhanced social and interpersonal connections with their supervisors and colleagues, are the ones that are more likely to be successful at technology recruiting.
According to the Karat 2022 Tech Hiring Trends Report, which is based on a survey of 556 engineering and talent leaders, hiring managers are adopting their acquisition strategies to take flexible work and increased employee mobility into account.
They focused on three critical hiring process improvements to hit their business targets:
With tech giants all on a hiring spree, along with thousands of smaller companies, tech is nothing short of an arms race.
Attracting and recruiting top tech talent like engineers has become more expensive—not just in Silicon Valley, but around the globe. That’s why some employers are looking to hire high-value employees remotely from places like Atlanta and Austin, where talent isn’t as expensive.
Despite the cost increase and even with the economy slowing down, tech companies aren’t expected to stop hiring for the foreseeable future. Technology is a rapidly-evolving sector, and businesses that can ride that wave successfully need the best of the best to remain competitive.
The following tech jobs are currently in high demand:
When looking for tech and IT talent, prioritize the following skills:
With steadily rising cybercrime and a shortage of cybersecurity tech skills among IT talent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that cybersecurity jobs will grow 31 percent through 2029.
Gartner recently forecast that almost $500 billion will be spent on cloud services in 2022. Cloud technology providers, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, will continue to have a demand for talent with the skills to enhance cloud computing with evolving technology.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that artificial intelligence and machine learning jobs will be in high demand during economic downturns. As such, the employment of computer and information scientists will grow 22 percent between 2020 and 2030.
Every day, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created on the internet. Companies use this data to make better products and enhance the customer experience. Due to the growing need for data visualization, machine learning, statistics, and programming, data scientists and data analysts are in high demand.
Blockchain is the most reliable and secure type of database in the world. With more and more financial organizations creating blockchain divisions, blockchain developers with skills including Python, C++, SQL, and JavaScript are in high demand.
According to research published in June 2022, 27 percent of hiring managers said they couldn’t fill tech roles because candidates didn’t possess the right soft skills. The top soft skills employers want to see are:
When it comes to recruiting the best tech talent, it’s critical to leverage proven strategies:
Instead of using in-house resources to recruit top technical talent, consider working with a technology staffing partner. When selecting a technology staffing partner, evaluate your hiring needs, look for competitive advantages, and pinpoint what sets them apart from the competition.
In addition, evaluate the staffing solutions they offer, and consider the partner’s reputation.
There can be significant advantages to working with a specialized tech recruiting supplier, depending on their unique differentiators. In general, a tech staffing partner has a large network of proven candidates, as well as considerable industry expertise and knowledge of the hot job market and compensation packages.
A competitive tech recruiting supplier also understands the latest technology trends and is well connected in the industry. They have a refined interview process that results in faster hiring, which saves time.
There are two general types of roles a technology staffing partner can hire for: IT and technology talent, and engineering talent.
Hiring the best IT and technology talent often comes down to referrals. Top talent often knows other top candidates, so nurturing all relationships—including passive candidates—is extremely important.
Additionally, you need to offer a competitive salary and benefits package, as well as offer candidates the prospect of working with state-of-the-art technology and knowledgeable colleagues.
Engineering talent is hard to attract and retain. You need to offer candidates a highly competitive salary and benefits package, as well as the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology and thought leaders in their field. On top of that, you should offer opportunities for further education and advancement.
Any staffing agency can round up some talent for you and help you choose a candidate whose qualifications match the job description. However, only a strategic partner can find candidates who excel in their field and whose beliefs align with those of your company.
A strategic partner possesses in-depth knowledge of the technical job landscape. They’re up to date on the most in-demand jobs, the requirements for those roles, and what competitive remuneration is.
Your strategic partner conducts a job search with the utmost integrity. While they may source candidates from various pipelines, their processes are specifically designed to ensure the best match gets the job.
A true strategic partner understands that diversity isn’t merely lip service to political correctness. It offers you access to a much larger talent pool. On top of that, a team that’s made up of people from a variety of different backgrounds is more likely to be innovative.
Ideally, a strategic partner leverages innovative techniques and technology to find the best talent. This can include anything from using self-recorded video interviews to implementing skills tests and personality tests.
Trust is the foundation for a successful partnership. When you trust your staffing partner to find you the best talent, you can redirect your in-house resources to your core activities.
OSI Engineering leverages technology expertise together with a diversity of people, values, and thinking to help you invent and create better products faster—and become or remain a technology leader.
Innovation drives the tech industry at a pace unparalleled by any other sector. Our talent comes from a range of different backgrounds and has a wealth of combined experience—and is ready to put all their insights to work to help you develop your next innovation.
Refining the integration of hardware, software, and programmable logic is what our talent do so well. Propel your embedded systems development to the next level with world-class talent.
With the IoT and cloud computing growing, as well as the adoption of advanced technologies like AI and ML increasing, software development is more important than ever before. We can connect you to the brightest minds capable of creating software for the next wave of technology.
Managing technology projects requires a specific skill set, as well as in-depth knowledge of the technology being used. Whether you need a project leader to oversee DevOps cycles for a new AI program or a release manager to coordinate releases in Salesforce, we can help you find candidates with the expertise and experience you require.
Align your business with a best-in-class strategic staffing partner to find the technology talent you need. At OSI Engineering, we aren’t recruiters who know a bit about technology—we’re technologists who understand recruiting.
With our deep understanding of the various technological roles and their requirements, as well as our ability to analyze your business’s specific needs, we’re uniquely positioned to help you attract and hire the best technology talent the world has to offer. Contact us today to learn more and hire one of our experts.