This is a guest post by Darren Ellicott, Lead Account Manager at hackajob and host of The Tech Recruitment Show, which I just happened to be a recent guest on (c’mon, how could not). I consider Darren to be one of the top experts in my network at recruiting competitive technical talent.
Enjoy!
I often speak to companies and they tell me they’re struggling to hire for niche technical skill sets, yet I’m always confused as to why they begin from scratch.
In many disciplines we use templates to ensure we’re using time/resources effectively (encapsulated by language frameworks in Development), so why do we not follow this practice when hiring?
This was a question I threw at another industry contributor, and his answer was interesting, stating “It really comes down to giving Talent Acquisition a seat at the strategy table.”
This is a perfect summation of the problem recruiters face.
A lack of long-term planning in hiring, which is forced upon them because companies are reactive and not proactive to changes in circumstance, whether it's due to a lack of anticipation of attrition OR a lack of confidence in their future hiring requirements...
Therefore, my suggestions to talent teams are two-fold:
Nurture your network, stay in touch with people, and show interest even when you’re not looking. That way when you are, they’ll want to reply.
Hold your business accountable. If they can’t give you a general outlook to plan, they simply aren’t setting you up for success.
Sound info. The more posts I read, the more I can share in my floral industry. Not a tech field for sure. Yet the direction for hiring a team should be the same in any organization. Thank you.