Mrs. Vee Pee was excited to build a new team of talented engineers to expand and accelerate their agile transformation. Over the next several months her company was planning on adding several dev teams to her organization and had just started the recruiting process. Like most organizations they didn’t want to settle for anything but the most talented engineers on the market. However, as a medium size business they were still somewhat unknown in the market and had to compete with the likes of behemoths like Google and Amazon.
How could Mrs. Vee Pee separate herself in the market to ensure they hired motivated, talented and smart engineers? Her Talent department felt like they had a plan and started posting on Social Media all the fun they had at work. They shared pictures of team events, happy hours, the updated open environment office and touted what a great culture the organization had. Then they waited for the job applicants to apply, but they merely trickled in. When they did get an applicant they were unimpressed with the quality and weren’t able to make a hire.
With project deadlines fast approaching Mrs. Vee Pee and her team started to brainstorm how to attract the best talent in the market and hit the deadlines. While her team started to generate some great ideas one looming problem persisted that they weren’t going to be able to solve. In today’s competitive they were doing what everyone else was and were reacting to talent shortages rather than planning for it several months ahead of time. Reflecting back Mrs. Vee Pee realized there were several things they should have been doing earlier.
- Knowing that there is a negative employment rate for engineers (up to -11% in some areas) they should have been hiring and planning months before they needed the talent.
- Posting on Social Media only mimics what other companies are doing and didn’t differentiate her company in the market.
- With the talent shortage they wouldn’t ever be able to attract candidates to them, especially as a small or medium size business.
- Hiring engineers, who have tens of recruiters calling them every day for a job, takes a different skill set and relationship to attract them to your organization. They needed a partner that understood the market demand.