Everything you need to know to recruit IT professionals
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Everything you need to know to recruit IT professionals

What do recruiters need to know before selecting IT professionals? Should recruiters be aware of the different roles that mark the IT world? And what tactics can they adopt? Find out in the article.

How to select the IT figures your company needs? Which aspects to focus on? Can we talk about recruiting in the IT sector?
These – and many others – are the questions HR people ask themselves when they have to initiate a search and selection of IT people.
Highly sought-after figures that are not so present in the market. That is why certain strategies and caution must be adopted and, above all, the different roles must be better known.

SUMMARY:

Few IT professionals in Italy: how to find them

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Recruiting in the IT sector is not easy, for one reason among others: Italy is experiencing a shortage of IT specialists.
In fact, according to an article in Repubblica reporting data from Unioncamere, they are rare gems: there is a 63% mismatch between supply and demand, rising to 86% when looking for graduates with experience. Moreover, Italy ranks 17th in the European Union in terms of the number of graduates in STEM subjects, i.e. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

With these assumptions, it goes without saying that starting a recruiting process in this sense is rather arduous, so some caution and different strategies are required. It is in fact a particularly specialised world, constantly changing and with its own ‘rules’ and language.
To initiate a selection in this sense, it is a good idea for those involved in research and selection to know the IT sector in depth and to be able to make a distinction between the roles in order to understand, in its specificity, which is the figure that the company really needs.

Having said that, let’s try to understand which roles are most in demand in the market today and what they do.

IT professionals: Who are they?

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So who are the so-called IT professionals? Both more operational figures and those with essentially leadership roles belong to this world.
As far as the database area is concerned, figures involved in organising huge data stores include Data Quality Managers, Database Administrators and Data Centre Support Specialists. Professionals who help to store and organise the data of companies and/or customers.

To protect data and provide IT security, there are also Security Analysts, also known as Security Specialists.

In the IT world, there is no shortage of developers such as System Architects, Java Developers, Software Engineers and so on.

If we look at the web, among those involved in development there are Front-end and Back-end developers, Webmasters and Web Administrators. They are responsible for designing, creating and managing the websites of both the company itself and its customers.

Not forgetting the cloud world that requires increasingly specialised professionals such as Cloud Service Developers, Cloud Architects, Cloud System Administrators, etc.

In addition, the IT world is also increasingly demanding leadership figures who must coordinate the other profiles just listed. We speak of CTO, or Chief Technology Officer, of CIO, Chief Information Officer, or IT Manager. These figures are in charge of managing projects and have a more managerial and less operational role.

Internal IT Recruiter or external recruitment agency?

Is it better to rely on an internal (in-house) recruiter or to manage the selection through an agency or headhunter? Before giving an answer, it has to be said that for an HR, in view of the facets of this world, starting a search and selection in the IT sector is particularly challenging.

This is for several reasons: first of all, as we already mentioned, these are highly sought-after as well as contested figures, so the pressure is great. Moreover, a rather high degree of knowledge of the IT world is required. Yes, it is true that the first interview is often cognitive, but not speaking the same language as a front-end developer or a Cloud Architect is something that will certainly come up during the interview and could jeopardise its success.

To make a fair assessment, it is important to consider 3 variables.

1. Time. This is one of the most important ones: 54 per cent of recruiters say they regularly lose candidates before they have planned all the interviews – and for the IT sector this variable matters even more.

So you have to ask yourself whether you are organised in such a way as to keep your recruiting processes smooth, ideally under 2 weeks when the candidate’s interest level is at its highest. We are talking about less time than for other professions, where a process as long as 4-5 weeks is normal.

2. Industry knowledge. When selecting an IT professional, it is crucial to know their sector and speak their language. Therefore, it is a good idea to check beforehand whether your HR/recruiter in the company has the right skills and previous expertise in the sector. Otherwise, it would be better to rely on a specialist (perhaps specialising vertically on the technology or group of technologies sought by the company at that time).

3. Costs: It is often not easy to evaluate costs, comparing the internal cost (man time + technology and sponsorship budget) with the agency fee (explicit). It is a good idea to do the accounts carefully and quantify in detail the time required to manage the search 100% in-house, measuring previous selections so as to have an accurate figure.

There is an additional element to consider when considering outsourcing your search. If you outsource to an agency you have to be aware that you will not be their only client. If you negotiate the fee too hard, the agency will feel little incentive to work with you – rather than another client. If you have 2 clients looking for the same figure, and one pays 15% of the RAL and the other 25%, to whom will they present the most interesting candidates?

Evaluating these 3 variables together allows you to understand – on a case-by-case basis – whether it is better to manage a search in-house, or whether it is better to outsource it.

Good practices for recruiting in the IT field

In any case, in order to attract the right IT figures, there are strategies and practices that HR can put in place. Let us look at some of them.

Pay attention to where the candidates are

Where do IT people hang out? Which channels do they frequent, which platforms? Certainly LinkedIn is very popular, but Facebook groups and Telegram channels are also to be watched.
Acting in this way can help you create a relationship with people in the first place, make people aware of the company and better understand the advantages of working within it.

Consider hackathons

The IT world has its venues or, rather, specific events. These include hackathons, a word that comes from the crasis between hack, meaning to programme quickly, and thon, suffix of marathon.
It is in fact an event, usually lasting a day or a weekend, in which the participants – programmers, developers, software designers, etc. – all work together on a project that can be the creation of an app, software and so on, which must be finalised by the end of the event.

The hackathon, usually created by a tech company or an ad-hoc organisation, is a great opportunity to meet talent, network and understand not only the technical skills of these people, but also how they perform under pressure, if they fit well in a team, how they self-organise and so on.

Offer real opportunities for growth and focus on an attractive working environment

When looking for IT people, it is not only about recruiting those with particular experience, but also about nurturing younger talents who are interested in growing and at the same time in the place where they work and the values that a company upholds.
This is why it is important to make the job offer as convincing as possible by highlighting not only the advantages and benefits that the candidate will have in accepting it, but also what aspects the company is focusing on and how it differs from others. Insisting on the importance of continuous training and mentoring during onboarding is a great way to attract IT talent.

Use ATS software

Another key aspect is managing search and selection in the best possible way. And in this, ATS software such as In-recruiting can be a great support. In addition to being able to centrally manage CVs, facilitating screening, it allows you to send automatic feedback when an application or interview is received.

With In-recruiting, the search process is also facilitated: you can use specific filters, perform a Boolean or semantic search and save it for future selections.
By exploiting artificial intelligence, therefore, you can track down good people even if their CVs do not contain the exact terms used for the search. By working on synonyms and words semantically close to the keywords chosen by the recruiter, artificial intelligence expands the dictionary available to the recruiter and facilitates the search for talent.

Often, then, those who work in IT are particularly busy, so they do not have much time to travel and have an interview. Or they are in a distant city or abroad. Or they are passive candidates who may agree to attend an interview, but are not really looking for another job. In all these cases, thanks to an ATS such as In-recruiting and Meetin, the live video interview platform integrated in the software, you can organise interviews remotely and at a time most convenient for candidates.

Meetin also helps to make the candidate experience truly positive: you can communicate with the candidate via chat and share company presentations, documents or videos via a YouTube link.

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