If you’re ready to boost your internal technology recruiter’s performance or you’re in the process of evaluating potential third-party partners, there are some specific qualities needed to ensure your recruiter will make an impact. Sourcing great tech folks in Denver or Boulder, Colorado is becoming increasingly difficult. That’s because more companies are expanding and tapping into the shrinking pool of potential employees. In fact, keeping a candidate pipeline full is frequently listed as one of the most difficult tasks for leadership at any tech company.
As an organization, you can work internally to align your compensation packages, company culture, and mission with the type of talent you’d like to recruit. Once your values are defined, you’ll need to focus on building your funnel with the help of a qualified technology recruiting team and/or third-party partner.
To help you amplify your talent and find the best solution, either internal or external, we’ve outlined the key traits you should look for in your recruitment team.
Three Must-Have Traits Shared By Every All-Star Technology Recruiter
1) Excellent Communicator With A Knack For Listening
Unfortunately, technology workers tend to be misunderstood or spoken over, based on the feedback we’ve received from those in the industry. Everyone, whether in tech or not, has been in a meeting and felt incompetent and in turn, holds back from sharing their ideas. These fears and social anxieties can kill morale and performance. That’s why psychological safety is one of the 5 tenants included in Google’s Project Aristotle, which monitors the effectiveness of a team and provides advice to help combat any overarching issues.
Psychological safety sounds intense, but it’s relatively simple to achieve in your organization. It all starts with effective communication and active listening. It can/should be a cornerstone to success and the technical recruiter is the first line of offense when it comes to representing how your company operates.
According to our founder, Dave Bacon, listening is one of the most powerful traits a recruiting professional can possess:
I say this as a person who is fully conscious that I am not always the best listener, certainly not as much as I intend to be. I found a hack for properly executing this skill in the moment. If I am ever unsure if I am listening properly, I ask myself: ‘Am I listening to understand or listening to respond?’
Candidates need to be heard and appreciated so ensure that your technology recruiter and your leadership team, has instilled excellent people skills into your organization. You want to work with someone who will make potential employees feel comfortable while exemplifying your brand’s attitude.
2) Company Culture Champion
A good recruiter understands that company culture is way more than beer on tap and ping pong tables. In a tech-heavy market, one would be hard-pressed not to find these office activities a staple in many offices. What matters most is the way team members are treated and if the company values align with the candidate.
Seasoned technology recruiters know how to investigate, feel and act on the connection between the candidate and the employer’s culture. You can read more about the importance of company culture, mission-impact alignment, and its relationship to technology recruiting in our article.
3) Retention Aficionado
Finding talent is one thing. Keeping them — that’s the challenge. A worthwhile technology recruiter understands the indicators that will keep your talent on board and thriving.
Retention is such a challenge in the tech world because less than 20% of IT employees are satisfied at work. As a result, developers have the highest turnover rate of any industry (13.2%). There are many factors to unhappiness but one additional point that increases turnover is the constant of new openings and new opportunities in the marketplace. The “grass is always greener” unless your recruiting team really knows how to align with the candidate.
Creating a culture that appreciates its employees and provides competitive benefits outperform those that don’t put a focus on these important factors. Research from the Hay Group finds that highly engaged employees are, on average, 50% more likely to exceed expectations than the least-engaged workers. And companies with highly engaged people outperform firms with the most disengaged folks—by 54% in employee retention, by 89% in customer satisfaction, and by fourfold in revenue growth.
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Whether you’re hiring outside help or finding an internal resource, your technology recruiter needs to possess soft skills and understand the critical connection between culture and retention. Finding recruiting professionals for internal use or a partner with these traits will help you hire talent and keep them.
Here at BWBacon Group, we know and live what you are experiencing as an employer or job seeker in Denver, Boulder, Dallas, San Francisco, New York City or any of the other cities we work in. We believe great recruiting starts and ends with understanding people.
If you have any questions about living, working or playing any of the areas we serve, please contact us. We are happy to help. Seize the day, every day, that’s what we say!
