When it comes to hiring technology professionals with sought-after skills, IT leaders and hiring managers need to keep one fact in mind: speed is everything. Just as it’s true for the downhill racers and speed skaters heading to the Winter Olympics in South Korea this month, fractions of seconds are the difference between winning and losing in tech hiring.
Consider this: tech unemployment is at record lows, dipping below 2.5 percent in 2017 and falling at a faster rate than overall U.S. unemployment. One acute example is the cybersecurity sector hitting 0 percent unemployment in 2017, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. If you are slow to recruit, engage and react in this airtight talent market, you lose.
Invest in Speed or Stagnate in the Slow Lane
Reaction times on par with world record-breaking cars, such as the Bugatti Veyran or the coming Tesla Roadster, are what business and tech leaders have to keep in mind in tech recruitment today. It takes serious investment to build machines with the power to race from 0 to 60 in a second or two. The same is true of putting systems and solutions in place to hire the best people. Is it worth it?
Unequivocally, the answer is yes. Hiring top technology talent is essential to business productivity and ingenuity. You can’t compete without a technology edge. Recent Glassdoor research put the cost to the U.S. economy of unfilled IT roles (over 250,000 at the time of the study) at $20.1 billion. Unfilled tech roles are not only slowing down business success and limiting innovation, they cost businesses big money. Without accelerating to meet the demand, businesses will stagnate in the slow lane.
Accelerate Talent Acquisition to Compete
At Triple Crown Consulting, we have accelerated tech talent acquisition to an unprecedented pace. A few days, less than a day, a few hours. Sometimes it’s all you have to snatch the right software engineer, data analyst or algorithmic specialist. Here’s how we reach that level of swiftness, and why it matters:
- On-Demand Access – Combining real-time data on tech consultants coming on and off assignments with the constantly growing databases of our nationwide recruiters, we built a one-of-kind, dynamic platform for engaging an on-demand talent pool. It tells us the very minute a top candidate is ready to work. Like Google, a company that engineers search engine speed with algorithmic virtuosity, you have to constantly work and invest to engine faster access.
- People Preparation – To be the fastest human on the planet, eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt trains with incredible ferocity. Recruiting teams also need to be trained for fierce talent and client engagement. Our team is deliberately trained to push for quicker responses to help clients increase their chances of making top hires. They are trained to simultaneously work among on-demand talent resources, internal databases and external sources to rapidly find candidates. There will always be a debate in sports on “whether you can learn speed,” but in recruiting you can and should teach your team to be the fastest.
- Tracking and Scorecards – Data analysis is a key cog in our recruitment machine to help us track our placement success with each client and as a company in total. Our data also helps us identify where slowdowns are occurring in the hiring lifecycle for our clients so that we can reduce or eliminate them. Just as innovative carmakers and leading search engines rely on data to understand what may be throttling their speed, it’s important to use data to optimize performance so that businesses are able to get the talent they need faster.
The journey to faster and better has no limits. Just as athletes and industry trendsetters know they can always improve, that commitment to getting better and faster is what drives us forward. How do you and your company harness speed to stand out from the competition? What technology hiring challenges do you currently face? I’d love to talk more, please connect with me on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.