Tech Talent Acquisition Strategy for 2024

Dear HR specialists and Hiring Managers,

This one is for you…

We all know the tech market has been a little shaky for a while. Managing to navigate a pandemic, resignations and layoffs is quite an achievement for everyone in the industry, but letting uncertainty and change make you choose a free-flow approach in the new year is not the answer. Even though we can’t 100% be sure of how things are going to evolve in the future, we can look at past year’s trends and formulate a strategy for 2024 that is going to guide us toward better results. The key to a good strategy, though, is that it has room for adjustments as the year progresses and the market changes, and is anchored in vision and values, rather than external factors outside the control of the company.

Our success as a top tech recruitment company is reliant on the success of the industry as a whole. We want to see tech companies thrive, evolve, expand, and further innovate. This is why we want to share with you our guidelines for building a strong Tech Talent Acquisition Strategy for 2024.

First things first,

1. How to remain relevant in tech talent acquisition

Layoffs were a scary part of 2023, but it’s safe to say they were only a temporary solution to the global economic downturn. However, while still in this state of restructuring, HR needs to be specifically intentional with its organizational strategy to remain relevant. This can only be done through technology, particularly data literacy and communication. Ways to do that?

• Working with databases

• Deriving decisions from data and qualitative backups and employee feedback

• Automation of HR processes and embracing AI solutions to allow HR specialists to concentrate on strategic initiatives

Forward-thinking companies are the ones who will see significant progress during these rapidly changing times. Resistance to technology in the name of the good old days is not a means to support employees. AI tools are not designed to replace employees, but to enhance human capabilities and to help in delegating tasks. While technology won’t steal our jobs, it is expected that new, highly specialized jobs will emerge, centered around generative AI and related technologies, which will creatively and strategically transform what teams do to meet clients’ expectations.

“Automation is not merely a convenience, it’s our avenue to elevate efficiency, ensure unwavering consistency, and create the capacity needed to drive real change in our organization.” - Grant Weinberg, Vice President Talent Acquisition & HR Operations at eikon therapeutics

2. The role of managers in a remote/hybrid era

The traditional hierarchical approach to management made sense when people were working from physical offices, where leaders and managers had access to visual cues of what it means to be productive. On another note, it was then easier for managers to connect on a personal level with the other employees and understand the social dynamics of teams. This provided a certain feeling of safety for employees, and a sense of meaning in leaders, driven from the immediate result of their interventions. But now, in a remote context, the role of managers can feel a little unclear. According to a study conducted by Microsoft (2022), 54% of hybrid managers report they have less visibility into the work their employees do and 49% struggle to trust their employees to do their best work, compared to in-person managers. The desire of employees to “prove” themselves is a natural consequence of this situation, and it often leads to digital overwhelm and burnout. On the other side, 50% of employees are not confident in their manager’s ability to lead their team to success in the next two years (Gartner, 2023).

It is thus evident that manager-employee relationships need to be redefined, and HR leaders can and will have a big say in offering better employee experiences. By working proactively alongside the executive teams, HR can find effective ways to listen to employees and respond authentically. This is not only an important aspect for providing a fulfilling working environment for the existing employees, but also a way to improve your employer branding by being able to offer an attractive organizational culture to prospective candidates, that stands out from the crowd of overwhelmed teams and managers.

Managing people in remote environments while also trying to foster a cohesive, collaborative space can feel like an ambiguous task for managers. In the image below from Gartner’s report (2023) you can see why a reframing of managerial roles is needed (right side) and what are the action points to do so (left side). Read the full report for pin-point solutions to all of the below aspects.

Although challenging when flooded with several different tasks and meetings, nurturing the connection with (remote) employees will always pay off in terms of both employee satisfaction and productivity, resulting in a fruitful organizational culture. In a previous article, we addressed the topic of managing dispersed teams in detail and the ​​key steps that managers can take to ensure that all workers are treated equally and feel included.

3. Create a HR Strategy Map

According to Gartner (2023), only 32% of HR leaders state that their HR strategic planning process is fully integrated with the business planning process.

The authors provide a 5 steps planning process to help companies act more strategically:

1. Understand your organization's strategy and goals. This will ensure that the HR function is aligned to desired business results, and provides a clear business case for future HR initiatives.

2. Identify capabilities and skills for the future. Understand what the business needs in order to grow and how the strategy will impact individual functions.

3. Evaluate current capabilities and skills. This will allow HR leaders to identify gaps between the current state and future needs of the organization and identify potential talent objectives for the HR strategy.

4. Develop HR goals and criteria for success. Setting goals without having a clear criterion for measuring successful strategy execution is time spent in vain. After developing your goals, identify the best indicators (4 to 7 key performance measures) that describe the level of performance of the HR function.

5. Communicate your HR strategy. Craft a clear and concise statement that captures the core of the strategy and tailor the communication to each stakeholder group in the company to provide employees with direction for their decision-making.

4. Embrace Out-of-the-Box Strategies

The tech market is indeed challenging these days, and successful strategies from a few years ago might not produce the same results now. We were used to a predominantly passive market, and until recently talent acquisition strategies were designed mostly for a pool of candidates satisfied with their current jobs, that would only make a career change for an opportunity that can provide growth, mastery, and meaning. While the drive of tech professionals remains the same, the context of job insecurity and economic changes made it harder to attract passive talent. On the other hand, layoffs made available some highly skilled professionals that would have otherwise been out of reach.

One particularly important phenomenon in 2024 is that the market will be more proactive in its dialogue with talent acquisition representatives, mainly due to the smaller number of available jobs compared to previous years. Thus, the current profile screening and analysis systems will be challenged, and consultants will need to evaluate a higher number of candidates simultaneously.

We need to adapt to these new circumstances, focus on the available talent, and craft ways to attract them. Here are some ideas:

• Referrals. The imbalance in the ratio of jobs to candidates makes 2024 a suitable time for asking for referrals. There is some great talent out there that can be reached quicker through referrals from fellow tech professionals and improves the chances of getting a valuable and suitable candidate for the role.

• Role promoting. In the past years, as mentioned, the market was pretty passive, making role promoting a nice strategy from the employer branding perspective, but not necessarily an effective strategy in terms of actually getting candidates to apply, especially when we were talking about mid and senior roles. Now, however, the interest in finding a new position is higher, making role promoting an attractive competitive advantage.

• Tech-centered events. What other context could provide access to an abundance of talented, passionate tech workers? Hackathons, for example, are gaining popularity for technical recruiting, providing a platform for tech candidates from different backgrounds to showcase their skills in a competitive, yet collaborative environment.

• Friday. Friday is an efficient and cost-effective talent acquisition solution that streamlines your recruitment process and helps you find the right talent for your organization, through innovative tools such as AI sourcing, ATS Integration, Promotion Tools, Candidate Matching, Resume Database, Analytics and Reporting, and its Concierge service.

• Early career hiring. Hiring young talent might require more energy in the early stages of onboarding, but more and more companies are using online assessments and training programs to develop capable and prepared future workforce.

5. Get to know your target market

This one goes without saying, but entering a different country can be a milestone for a company that seeks international growth. Spreading one’s business across countries and cultures is a must for resilience in global markets, and has major benefits for the business like heightened creativity, proficient problem-solving, and efficient embracing of different perspectives that can lead to growth and development.

Of course, expanding to new countries will come with challenges in accounting for diversity, values, language, and lifestyle to name a few. Getting to know your target market is one of the most important aspects and will place you one step ahead in understanding how to differentiate yourself in a foreign country. By strategically building your strategy through the lens of culture you will manage to attract and retain top talent.

If Romania is on your radar, we have a written comprehensive guide to hiring Tech Talent in Romania. During our 12 years of experience in Tech Recruitment and Consultancy, we dedicated our time to providing the best hiring experience to our candidates and the best possible results to our partners. Through this process, we built a database of more than 120K professionals and consolidated a strong developer community that embodies high working standards. Our experience contributed to a complex understanding of the Romanian tech talent pool that helped our clients reach their business and recruitment goals and we firmly believe that it can also help your organization better navigate the Romanian tech market and design the right processes to attract and retain talent.

Our guide covers the following topics:

📌 The state of the Romanian tech market in 2023 and beyond

🌍 Cultural characteristics of Romanian developers

💯 How to attract the best talent

💸 What to expect in terms of salary and taxes

🚀 Recruitment and hiring timeline to get the team going

6. Evaluate the benefits of choosing the services of a recruitment agency

• An agency can tell you how to position your company and roles on the market, instead of wasting time and resources for months trying to explore all that yourself. An external partner with a solid background in tech recruitment can help you analyze your opportunity and highlight the attraction hooks that raise interest for the specialists you are looking to open a dialogue with. Not only can they assist you in building an employer branding plan and concrete action steps for you to follow, but they can also help you open a conversation with the candidates, knowing what to say to be relevant and obtain the desired response rate.

• You can shorten the closing time for the role, and attain your growth goals in no time when you collaborate with an experienced partner that has an extensive database and a standardized process to reach those candidates as quickly as possible.

• An agency usually acts as an extension of the internal team, offering support for the more difficult roles for which the internal recruitment resources and strategies weren’t fruitful, or supporting the TA team by taking charge of the extra work volume. Realistically speaking, the second situation can be the most impactful one, because in addition to the obvious help the agency is offering, the collaboration between the external and internal recruiters can play a formative role for the internal department and contribute to valuable knowledge transfer in the topics of market tendencies, candidates’ behavior, attraction points of different projects and many more.

• A tech recruitment agency uses additional channels to reach top talent. For example, Human Direct has a growing database of over 120K mid and senior software engineers, with their career history, preferences, and prospective career goals, which makes informing them in regards to new opportunities an organic process. The connection we built with professionals over the years makes our communication a friendly dialogue rather than a pushy recruitment approach.

• An agency will have more innovative tools for recruiting since their main focus is constantly optimizing the recruitment process both as a means to make their business more efficient and to bring added value to their clients.

• The expertise of a tech recruiter from a specialized agency is highly oriented towards optimizing recruitment strategies and finding new channels/sources to reach candidates, which gives them incredible agility in finding the right talent. Unlike internal recruiters, they are not overwhelmed with other tasks and can have an inch-wide and a mile-deep focus that brings them exceptional results.

• Agency Hook and Employer Branding. Once involved in a recruitment process, candidates’ trust in the agency grows and they become more open to discovering other opportunities that weren’t even on their radar at the beginning. We have the time and availability to explore the motivational factors involved in decision-making and support candidates psychologically as well. Furthermore, in the context of our agency, Human Direct has received hundreds of validating messages from candidates appreciating our tech approach, our flexibility, and genuine involvement and commitment to the process. This is why, our candidate's retention rate during our 12 years on the market has been 98%.

• Last but not least, collaborating with an agency can be an amazing way to grow your own database with no risks. We’ve seen our most successful clients apply this alternative strategy and use the intense sourcing and recruitment we’ve done for them during future periods of intense hiring.

Lia, our Head of Delivery at Human Direct, has worked for a wide range of IT companies, from startups to scaleups, from product companies to corporates such as 8x8, UiPath, Broadridge, Riverbed, Micro Focus, Aera Technology, GIB (IFM Group), Razor Risk, to name a few. With over 10 years of experience in the tech recruitment market, she understands the specificities of this industry and has a great awareness of the fluctuation and evolution of trends. Book a personal meeting with her, and together you will assess what would be the most suitable solutions for your company.

It is not an easy task to build a strong tech talent acquisition strategy, but we hope this resource prepares you to conquer the challenging market of 2024. We are confident that by applying these proactive strategies, your company will manage to stay on top of its game and continue growing and innovating in the tech industry. So take one step at a time, and keep in mind that our support as a tech recruitment agency can streamline your recruitment process and be a time-efficient solution to achieve your goals.

And since you made it all the way to the end of our article, we want to thank you for your efforts to upgrade and innovate the tech market by offering this amazing resource to help your team fine-tune the recruitment process in order to achieve the best results.

Enjoy our HD Sprint and sprint your way through 2024!

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