Despite hiring challenges in many industries, you hear the most about IT staffing challenges. With technology being so crucial to a business, finding the best IT talent is more competitive than ever before.

While more people are entering into IT-related education programs, the overabundance of available jobs means applicants have the option to be pickier in who they choose to work for.

Overcoming these challenges isn’t always as difficult as they seem at first. The most important thing is to cater your staffing practices to your talent’s needs.

1. Use Your Company’s Culture in Attracting Top Talent

When it comes to IT, you want and need the best talent.  After all, the right IT talent gives your business a competitive edge.

IT, in general, is a competitive industry.  72% of employees would consider a pay cut to work at their ideal job.

A few of the top things tech experts want most include:

  • Using current and cutting edge tech (shows room for growth)
  • Offer more flexible work options, such as remote work
  • Flat structure creates closer employee relationships
  • Foster individuality

Take the time to understand what the best talent are looking for in a work culture. The better work culture you create, the better your business looks, even if you’re a growing business that can’t possibly offer the salaries of giants like Facebook or Amazon.

2. Retaining Talent

Attracting talent is just half of the battle. Retaining talent is one of the top IT staffing challenges. Other businesses are eager to take away your best employees for a competitive edge.

The key is to focus on engagement, but not overwhelm employees. Employee burnout is all too common, especially in tech. One study found that over 57% of tech employees experienced burnout at their current jobs.

Employees want to feel needed, but don’t want to be so overloaded that it’s impossible to stay caught up.

Pay close attention to employee complaints and needs. Why did they leave a previous employer? What could be better at your business? Simply communicating aids in retention.

3. Covering All Needs

While attracting and retaining are common IT staffing challenges, another challenge is trying to cover all your business’s needs without destroying your budget. It is not feasible to staff all temporary projects with full-time employees.

This has led to the rise of the contingent workforce. For temporary IT staffing for specialized skills you don’t need all the time, this is the perfect compromise. Some of the top IT talent prefer this simply for variety and to feel more engaged. As of 2017, the contingent workforce accounted for nearly 4% of the US workforce.

Decide whether you need a full-time employee or just someone to augment your staff. If it’s the latter, work with an agency who already has the top talent ready and waiting to save you time and money.

4. Providing Competitive Benefits

While a large salary isn’t always the best way to be competitive in finding or keeping IT talent, your business should offer competitive benefits that at least meet industry minimums.

Even if you can’t offer the highest salary, you can offer enticing benefits such as:

  • The newest technology
  • Engaging and challenging work
  • Continuing education
  • Flexible work options
  • Retirement packages
  • Vacation/sick days

Do your research and know what top IT talent expect. If you can’t complete on the salary side, make everything else too good to resist.

5. Lack Of Skilled Talent

It’s expected there will be a shortage of up to 4.3 million workers by 2030. Simply finding skilled IT talent is going to continue to get harder. Augmenting with temporary workers does help, but one way to avoid this issue is to continuously train and educate your current IT staff.

Invest in continuing education for your employees (a great engagement strategy and benefit). You can even bring over non-IT staff who wish to train. Doing this creates a steady stream of skilled talent who appreciate all you’re doing for them.

IT staffing challenges may continue to grow, but placing the needs of your staff first helps create a work culture that naturally attracts, retains and helps grow talent to make you the envy of other industry businesses.

Need help augmenting your IT staff? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.

Image: Annie Spratt