When it comes to preparing your company for the future of work, ensuring you have the brightest and best tech talent is the best way to go about it. To that point, recruiting and retaining talented tech employees can be a difficult task.
Relying on traditional college and university graduates is never a bad idea, but in recent years technology has created new educational institutions that have no shortage of talented individuals.
Partnering with these various institutions and working to recruit their graduates is a great way to source new tech talent that many companies overlook in favor of traditional recruitment sources.
After finding this talent, however, your company must be proactive in offering certain benefits that can ensure your employees want to stay around for the long-term.
After all, finding talented individuals will do you no good if your company has a fast turnover rate. Before getting too far ahead of ourselves, however, let’s first focus on the best sources for recruiting talented tech employees.
Look to Trade Schools
An often overlooked source of highly rated tech talent is trade schools. For the most part, trade school attendees are on the older side, as young adults actually do not think highly of a degree from a trade school.
However, recent studies have found that income levels are more than comparable and even higher for trade school graduates in some cases.Â
To that point, you need to understand who you are looking for when you go recruiting from a trade school. Most graduates are older employees who already have experience in the workforce, but desired a career change for any number of reasons.
Some schools even offer deferred tuition, such as General Assembly, which is beneficial to older adults who already have a slew of bills to pay.
A downside of recruiting individuals straight out of university or college is the lack of experience they may have. This could result in more training time, whereas recruiting a talented individual from a trade school may only require minimal to no training at all.
Consider looking beyond traditional sources when looking for untraditional talent. Look deeper than one source, and understand that graduates with an online degree are just as valuable as anyone else.Â
Locate Experienced Bootcamp Graduates
On the topic of experience, there is arguably no more beneficial trait in an employee than an understanding of the industry they wish to enter. Many workers end up in the wrong career simply because they believed they knew what they were getting into, but they were sorely mistaken.
However, there are educational sources where graduates know exactly what the field will be like due to the industry mentorship they receive in the course of their studies. Coding bootcamps and data science bootcamps are two popular options today that, respectively, prepare students for a job based in coding or a general job in the entire field of data science.Â
This option is popular among older and experienced employees as well because it can be done in conjunction with the current job they have. Combining this with the fact that the knowledge bootcamp graduates receive is comparable to the sum total knowledge acquired by a four-year student, and it is easy to see why this may be a strong source for recruiting talented tech individuals.Â
Understand Your Demographics
Retaining your employees can seem difficult at first, but it is really as simple as understanding their demographics. Are your employees younger or older? Needs change depending on who your employees are, and you cannot hope to retain them if you do not understand them.
For perspective, the New York Times released a piece that covered how Millennials and Gen Z prefer benefits such as more vacation days, whereas older employees preferred greater healthcare benefits. The fact of the matter is that if you don’t offer the benefits your employees want, someone else will. Learn to retain your employees by first learning what their general needs and wants are.Â
Conclusion
Finding the best and brightest employees can be difficult, but narrowing your potential recruiting pool to traditional four-year institutions makes the task even more difficult. Highly consider thinking outside the box when sourcing new candidates and look to new places for your talented individuals.
However, keep in mind that finding new employees is only half the battle. You must be aware of who your employees are and what needs they have as a collective group. This awareness will help you make important benefits choices that can ensure your employees understand how much you value them.
This is a guest post by Artur Meyster, founder of Career Karma. Career Karma lets you connect with peers, coaches and mentors to accelerate your technology career.
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