Though the Kansas City tech workforce grew 39% between 2011 and 2016, local companies are not immune to the IT talent shortage. High level IT skills are still scarce and tech unemployment is relatively low, making traditional hiring methods a struggle. However, certain strategies have managed to improve tech hiring for companies in the Kansas City market and beyond. Here are just a few that are giving businesses a competitive edge.
Accelerate the Hiring Process
Glassdoor finds that the average interview process in Kansas City lasts 16.9 days, well below the national average of 23.6 days. This shows that many local companies already understand the importance of hiring quickly and efficiently, making additional gains in speed without sacrificing quality. The primary way successful companies do that is through upfront preparation and streamlined action as they hire.
One clear way to improve tech hiring is to ensure job requirements are set in stone prior to beginning your search. Many companies find that the candidate they want at the outset of their search is not the same as the one they realize they need by the end. Some tech skills get overinflated in importance or certain crossover skills get exaggerated. This needlessly narrows the talent pool or attracts the wrong type of candidate.
Moreover, some steps in the process need to be evaluated for cost-saving trims. If your business is using a technical test, the test itself needs to be effective rather than tedious. If it’s not measuring the traits of a good candidate for your company, it needs to be eliminated or reworked to become a better indicator of quality performance.
Create a Hiring Scorecard
Another way to improve hiring strategies requires increasing candidate consistency. Without a defined candidate criteria, even an experienced hiring manager can miss promising candidates. Look no further than Facebook for an example of a company that turned down a candidate but ended up acquiring his company for $19 billion a few years later for an example of how costly a mistake that can be.
Successful companies decrease hiring unpredictability by moving from unstructured job interviews to a process guided by candidate scorecards. By identifying the traits of their top performers, they are able to better predict what unifies candidates who will make the most significant impact on their business. A good scorecard measures important technical and interpersonal skills, offering a rubric that carries from one interview to the next.
Build Relationships
The torrent of unwanted job opportunities sent to candidates and the brief window in which candidates make your next hire difficult in different ways. Building strong relationships with candidates helps to combat both problems, gradually marketing your company and even timing job offers while candidates are passively searching or ending a contract position. Unfortunately, many companies lack the free time necessary to foster a strong connection. That’s where a technology staffing agency is essential.
Working with TriCom can help you find and hire top technical talent in half the time of other Kansas City staffing firms. Plus, our comprehensive recruiting process ensures we understand what motivations and objectives are most meaningful in your ideal candidate. And we take the time to build relationships with local talent in different stages of their search so you can focus on running your business. Contact us today to improve tech hiring effortlessly.
