Whether you’re an IT business looking to expand your current staff or a non-tech company in need of an IT professional, hiring the best talent can be a bumpy road.

IT is one of the fastest-growing industries, employing millions of people worldwide, so finding an expert with the right skills and experiences is like searching for a diamond in the rough.

Still, with the right recruiting approach, it’s possible to identify the best candidates for your business — without too much hassle or disruptive delays.

Below are the top strategies recruiters should implement when searching for that diamond in the IT rough. 

Work on the company image

Technically, this is not a hiring strategy. Still, business competition for in-demand IT jobs is fierce, and top professionals can afford to be picky with their choice of employers. In other words, to attract top talent, you need to nurture the right corporate culture that welcomes such professionals. This is an ongoing, multi-step process involving many things, including building a company presence on social networks and other online channels. 

You cannot fake it, of course; there is no point in promoting diversity, inclusion, or career opportunities if any of those are lacking. So, the first step is identifying your core company values to understand the professional mindsets that would be a good fit for your company culture. Later, you can build a positive brand image through: 

• Posting relevant content online;
• Taking part in events and initiatives that align with your company image;
• Encouraging current employees to share positive info about the company;
• And, of course, nurturing relationships with all prospective candidates — something we’ll discuss in more detail below.

Drop cliches in job ads 

Even if you target passive candidates, you still need to create an appealing job ad that speaks to your target audience. This is the chance at a first impression you cannot afford to miss if you want to attract the best talent. And while there are many ways to craft an effective job ad, the best advice goes down to: 

• Clearly enumerating job responsibilities and expectations from the right candidate; 
• Listing the main benefits, including compensation range, possibilities for career advancement, work flexibility, and anything else that applies;
• Adjusting the tone and voice of the advert to your target audience;
• Conveying, whenever possible, your company’s core values and beliefs. 

At the same time, it is important to keep the ad concise and to the point. So, it again goes down to identifying the right candidate for an opening and using the language that appeals to the right person. That’s tricky and more time-consuming than it seems at first glance, but totally worth the effort. 

Leverage the right technology 

When searching for IT experts, it makes even more sense to use the right tools — starting with contact databases that can connect you with relevant professionals and wrapping up with a quality ATS tailored to your business specifics and recruiting pipeline. Of course, there are multiple options in between these two, for example:

• Contact pulling plugins for LinkedIn and other professional networks that can give you access to a candidate’s email address to initiate the first conversation;
• Accounts on relevant job boards because even though passive candidates are a more valuable recruiting resource, it’s unwise to underestimate active applicants;
• Candidate assessment tools, aimed at qualifying all sorts of parameters, from coding skills to personality traits;
• Interviewing software for scheduling and conducting first conversations, including tools that allow submitting video applications for further assessment;
• Employee referral tools to leverage networks of your existing employees;
• Diversity recruiting software aimed at reducing bias and nourishing a more inclusive work culture;
• AI text analyzers to help craft more engaging job ads, pick up verbal cues in a candidate’s conversations, and much more.

Often, a quality Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) system will have a combination of these features, along with automated outreach, predictive analysis, and, of course, the possibility to customize your recruiting pipeline according to business specifics. There are plenty of quality software examples to consider depending on your recruiting goals and budget. So far, the top AI-powered CRM solutions include ZohoRecruit, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and Monday, with more tools like Yello, Lever, and HireEZ catching up. But the actual choice is far vaster, and you can pick any combination of tools that align with your recruiting goals. 

Prioritize soft and transferable skills 

Unless you are looking to fill a short-term job opening, it makes sense to focus on soft and transferable skills rather than on technical knowledge. The IT industry is a constantly evolving landscape, prone to quick changes. So, besides hard technical skills, IT professionals must possess stress resilience, as well as the desire for continuous growth and self-development. Without these qualities, it’s hard to build a successful IT career because purely hard skills, without constant upskilling and education, become quickly outdated.

For the same reason, it’s wise to analyze a candidate’s transferable skills — especially if you are an IT company looking to expand its existing staff. Often, it is cheaper to retrain a highly motivated professional than to search for a high-budget expert with all the right skills, so do some Math before jumping to any decisions. On this note, it also makes sense to consider your existing staff — often, upskilling your existing employees is a more affordable business decision than hiring new staff.

Keep an open mind 

Often, the idea of hiring the ‘perfect’ candidate becomes so stifling it disrupts the whole recruiting process. Do not fall into this trap, and always keep an open mind when communicating with prospective hires. You may even want to cast a wider net and search for remote candidates outside your city or country. In turn, this implies more workplace flexibility — something you should probably do anyway because major companies are already embracing remote and hybrid work models as a more productive way to cooperate with the best talent. 

Of course, a fully remote schedule may not be the best choice for all jobs. Still, businesses will be wise to offer their current staff and prospective hires more flexibility because that’s what most top professionals today expect already. Besides, emphasizing work flexibility is one of those strategies that appeal to self-motivated professionals who make the best hires in the long run. 

Engage with your past applicants

As you screen candidates, you come across multiple professionals who aren’t the best fit at the moment but could well become a valuable addition to your company somewhere along the road. But even if this does not happen, a positive candidate experience is worth the effort because tech communities talk. Simply put, past candidates may spread a good (or a bad) word about your company and recruiting style — something that will have a huge effect on your brand image and reputation. 

And now that we’ve made a full circle back to the company image, our final tip is to keep engaging with candidates who didn’t make it to the list of your employees. Maintaining relationships with previous applicants — over social networks or dedicated tech platforms — may help you shorten future recruiting cycles simply by leveraging their networks and constantly expanding your talent pool. And since time is an extremely valuable resource in today’s competitive environment, nurturing existing connections is another recruiting strategy that always pays off in the long run.