Understanding How to Recruit and Impress IT Talent

Today’s job climate is a product of time and progress, and its timeline scatters with the bell curves of industries that have found prominence and just as quickly lost it. Whether information technology will eventually succumb to the slow slope of passing relevance is a question for another day, but for now, the industry is on a major upswing. With this popularity comes a more difficult process to recruit qualified IT candidates, especially with an extremely low unemployment rate for this industry.
 

Knowing the Market

The IT industry is growing and is expected to continue growing, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The Bureau reported that by 2020, employment of computer and information systems managers – including permanent positions and contract positions – is expected to jump by 15 percent, or over 383,000 jobs. Employment in some IT industries is expected to balloon. Take healthcare IT managers, over the next four years, the Bureau has anticipated a 42% employment growth.
 

Sending the Right Message

In CIO magazine’s “Guide for Recruiting Top Talent,” Mike Macrie, chief information officer for Land O’Lakes, emphasized the importance of crafting a vision for a company’s IT department that will be desirable to candidates, saying, “We articulate an exciting vision for the company and the IT organization.” The Land O’Lakes CIO admits that a focus on compensation may only be a “short-term motivator,” and explains that a long-term commitment is better achieved through an IT culture that professionals are excited to be a part of. Not only does it encourage more loyal employees, but it improves work performance, as well.
 

Don’t Say No to Telecommuters

IT is a unique industry in that its operations often don’t require a person to be in house. With the rise of cloud-based computing and ability of skilled IT professionals to work effectively remotely, allowing certain employees to telecommute is a way to widen the candidate search (because there’s no guarantee the right employee will live nearby).
 

Forge a Stronger HR-IT Partnership

For HR managers to adequately identify the appropriate candidate(s) for any particular role in information technology, it’s essential to develop a partnership between HR and the IT hiring managers. A secondary step to circumvent the HR-IT gap would be to hire a consulting service that specializes in IT staffing. It’s essentially a shortcut to qualified candidates.

EDI Staffing provides IT & EDI contract and permanent solutions, nationwide, across all industries, with companies of all sizes.