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Rapid digitization and automation across industries has disrupted the traditional talent ecosystem. Draup’s research exhibits a surge in demand of skilled talent across digital stacks including big data, cloud, automation, user experience and risk management.
A remarkable number of CIOs and CTOs across industry segments are having a hard time finding and retaining talent. According to a global survey, 60% of respondents of 4,000 IT leaders said they face skills shortage. If left unchecked, this could lead to more than $8 trillion in unrealized annual revenue by 2030.
To outpace competition and grow rapidly, fast growing technology companies and large enterprises are proactively hiring large numbers of highly skilled tech talent, often paying high premiums for compensation to attract the talent. Also, digitization across industries including non-technological sectors like Banking, Insurance, Retail, Manufacturing etc., is forcing traditional companies to hire digital talent in large numbers. This flywheel effect is creating an unprecedented demand-supply gap for the digital talent.
Not just hiring, but, retaining talent is often a difficult task at such times as employees are quick to jump at challenging opportunity or higher pay, or in many cases both.
To address this phenomenal talent crunch, we have recognized few effective talent acquisition and management strategies that might help companies to stay ahead in the digital era.
Effective talent acquisition strategies
To overcome talent acquisition challenges, new age talent search requires new sourcing models, channels and frameworks. Companies are expanding their traditional recruitment methods by leveraging skill based hiring and not just hiring based on experience or pedigree. We’ve put together few ways that has helped companies attract the right talent.
- Digital recruiting: According to a report, employers who used social media to hire found 49% improvement in candidate quality over candidates sourced only through traditional recruiting channels. It implies optimizing company’s career website for mobile is unavoidable owing to increased smartphone adoption and
- Talent hotspot identification: Some tech organizations are now refining their location strategies to enhance their ability to attract critical talent. In many cases, this means operating a portfolio of locations that includes lower-cost sites to perform transactional activities. Also a good choice is locations in city centers or near universities.
- University partnerships: Partnering with top universities gives you access to technologists with cutting edge skills! This highly skilled talent comes with a clean slate and can be moulded according your working culture. Partnering with universities also facilitates setting up reskilling and upskilling programmes for employees.
- Acquiring talent through acquisitions: Some companies use M&A to gain access to talent much more quickly than they would have by building internal capabilities. For example, Allstate’s acquisition of Esurance provided Allstate with capabilities in developing online customer channels and systems.
- Draft the best athlete: We are experiencing rapid changes with the second wave of digitization already hitting many industries. At such a time, when the skill needs are fast evolving, hiring technologists with problem solving capabilities will provide techies who can adapt faster to any change.
- Using Hiring Platforms/Gamification: Gamification allows you to conduct a focused recruitment process. Google has been organizing a software-writing competition for past 12 years to attract new talent. Hiring platforms provide real time evaluation of candidates from their social media accounts and inform about talent who are passively looking for a job change.
- Reskilling talent in adjacent roles: In-house talent in redundant job-roles adjacent to the required role can be reskilled to meet the skill requirements. This saves organizations from the costly fire and hire scenario and also ingrains trust and loyalty among employees.
Effective talent management strategies
An employee working with the company for considerable time understands the company culture. Although retaining highly skilled tech talent is a difficult task, it can be achieved by keeping them productively engaged and facilitating their all-round development. Few tricks of the trade are:
- Ensure executive operations: Talent having opportunity to interact with executive leaders will stay longer in a company. The opportunity to interact directly with the institution’s most executive leaders is an irreplaceable motivator for high-performing technology staff.
- Support technology passions: Best people in technology have a passion for technology. Support their passion by letting them get involved in high-end projects, once in a while, to keep them engaged.
- Facilitate outside exposure: Activities like tech workshop or conference help the employee feel connected to a broader technology community. Such opportunities provide them with exposure and help to grow professionally.
- Proactive recognition: Top performers should be proactively recognized for their work. This informs them that their hard-work isn’t going unnoticed and motivates them to strive for even higher goals. People don’t easily leave a place that values and appreciates their hard work.
- Compensation parity: Getting the right talent is the best investment an organization can make. Investing in latest technologies without having competent talent won’t earn any returns. Large techs and banks are attracting top talent with high compensations and incentives.
- Make trainings holistic: This holistic approach to training facilitates all round development of employee and enables them to address company’s customers, products, strategies and market position as well as operations.
Charting the action plan
The talent crunch is making it debilitating for the companies as they go through massive technology and business disruption. To overcome this challenge they have to chart an action plan that analyzes their present situation and works to make it better.
- Analyze future skill needs: The first step to develop a strategy is analyzing the skill needs that will be required in future. At the same time, tech organizations must develop a clear view of their current skills and capabilities. They have to recognise who is leaving and why and how the current staff feel about their career experiences.
- Prioritize needs: To focus efforts, leading organizations develop a heat map that shows the gaps between business needs and current skills, as well as risks related to those gaps. This heat map should be informed by trends in the market and their impact on the availability of talent in near future.
- Map levers with needs: Not every lever is appropriate to every situation. In many cases, opening a new location or making an acquisition may not be feasible. Getting the right strategy in place requires systematically determining which potential levers will address each talent gap and risk.
- Track progress: To make sure the required, everyday behavior changes occur, progress must be tracked against a set of metrics and syndicated with senior leaders who can resolve issues and accelerate progress.
Draup is an AI-Driven reskilling and talent intelligence platform that provides in-depth insights on the talent ecosystem. Technology being the crux of a successful digital transformation, getting the right IT skill on-board is non-negotiable. We assist organizations in strategic workforce planning, talent recruitment and reskilling by evaluating talent ecosystem pillars such as industries, companies, locations, universities and professionals.
