Demand for IT Professionals Continues to Grow – But You Can Still Snag Top Talent!

The job market has improved over the last year, especially in the IT sector. That’s great news if you’re an IT employee; ambivalent news if you’re an IT employer. When people with the right skills and experience are in demand, you might feel like you’re desperately trying to hook a fish in an increasingly small pond.

To take on this aggressive hiring market, make sure your IT hiring process is thoroughly planned—and easy to execute. If you don’t, you may find yourself coming up empty-handed every time.

Here are four ways you can streamline your hiring process and land top talent:

1) Have a clear idea of your hiring needs.

Before you start reading through cover letters and resumes, you need to a clear picture of your hiring goals. Think about the short-term and long-term projects this candidate would undertake.

• What skills will they need to complete these projects?
• Will they need to have certain areas of expertise?
• Do they need to have leadership qualities?

Reflect on the type of candidate you have in mind and use these attributes to help craft the job description. By writing a clearly defined job description, you have a better chance of finding a candidate who is a good fit for the position more quickly.

2) Interview selectively.

Screen your applicant pool and narrow it down to candidates who are a good fit for the position. Don’t waste your—or the applicants’—time by setting up and conducting interviews with everyone who applies. Only interview candidates who seem to be a good fit for the position.

3) Plan your interviewing process.

Make sure you know who will be asking what. In most interviews, the applicant will meet with the hiring manager, potential colleagues, possibly even an HR representative. The more people involved, the higher the chances that one or more of the interviews will think, “I’m sure someone already asked that”—potentially missing out on key answers from the candidate.

Before conducting interviews, clearly designate areas each person should ask the candidate about (i.e. skills, education, previous work history, etc.). This will give the interviewers direction and will hopefully ensure all job candidates are asked similar questions.

4) Be decisive.

The longer you wait to make a hiring decision, the higher your chances of losing your applicants to other employers. Once your hiring team has met with all the candidates, immediately have the whole team debrief each other on their interview findings, and try to pare down the field to just one applicant to extend an offer to.

By having a clearly defined hiring process, you will increase your chances of hiring a top candidate and will avoid long—and costly—hiring processes. You can also streamline your hiring by working with IT staffing specialists—like Triumph—who will have extensive networks of qualified IT job candidates and can help fill your position quickly.