Hiring The Best Talent In The Covid Era. What You Need To Know

The demand for technical talent is arguably higher than ever before. This is, at least partly and, likely, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As more companies were forced to adapt to remote work and consumers became more comfortable with completing purchases online, the need for fully functional websites, mobile apps, and supportive software reached all time highs.

Companies need high quality developers and engineers to help maintain their digital platforms. The customer experience has been completely transformed by the coronavirus pandemic, and brands need to provide a memorable online experience to earn the trust of consumers. Trust is absolutely essential for people to complete the buying journey and increase your revenue.

To provide those types of experiences, you need platforms that are able to live up to those expectations. Those platforms can only be built and maintained by hiring the best talent who have the skills, the experience, the determination, and the vision to meet or exceed customer expectations. These people will become the true rockstars of your team, providing a distinct competitive advantage that could make all the difference for the future of your company.

Understand why you need to hire the best talent

In order to hire the best talent, you first need to understand what the best talent looks like for your unique situation. PWC created a report entitled “COVID-19 and the technology industry.” The report highlights how most companies with contingency plans were forced to reevaluate their entire operations in response to ongoing lockdowns, quarantines and, eventually, supply chain disruptions.

Since COVID-19 turned the entire world upside down, reflect on what these ongoing impediments mean for your organization.

1 How are you operating today vs. pre-pandemic? 

2 Are there any noteworthy differences in how people engage with your website today?

3  In what way do those differences influence the type of employee you’ll need to continue growing your business?

PWC indicates that the demand for high quality software developers and engineers is going to continue rising in the post-pandemic world. Retaining that same talent, or having access to a network of ready-to-go independent professionals is critical to furthering the development of your business. Now, you need to find those niche professionals who can add the most value to your plans for growth.

Recognize how the pandemic has impacted developers

The other key thing to remember is that developers themselves are different in the post-pandemic world than they were prior to COVID-19. Their needs and intricate values that they expect from a workplace are different today. Ensuring that you have a culture and a corporate value system that aligns with those individual traits is paramount to hiring the best talent rather than losing them to the competition.

Statista put together a series of data points on how COVID-19 affected the ways software developers work and study as of 2021. Perhaps the most interesting finding is that one quarter of respondents said the pandemic had no impact on how they work; they’ve always been remote. However, nearly 20 percent of participants said the pandemic gave them the opportunity to work remotely, though they don’t expect it to last.

Believe it or not; within that data point, you just found your competitive opportunity. Demonstrate to willing candidates that you’ve adapted to the post-pandemic lifestyle by encouraging workers to choose how they spend their days. More companies are setting hybrid working models as the new norm, allowing workers to choose if and when they’ll be in the office vs. working from home.

Flexibility is key to hiring the best talent

That flexibility is one of the core values that developers, and employees as a whole are demanding from their companies. It’s part of what’s led to the Great Resignation, an ongoing trend where employees are leaving companies en masse in pursuit of more flexible opportunities that are aligned with their own core values.

For example, 4.3 million Americans walked out of their jobs in August 2021. Their specific reasons were unique to their individual situations. But one common theme was that people wanted more choice in how they spend their time; how they maintain a healthy work/life balance, and that they have some say over the type of work they’re required to do. If their company didn’t provide those options, they chose to go somewhere else that did.

Instead of losing great talent to the competition, be that company that provides those flexible options. Show developers what makes your company unique, what values you stand for as a business, and how you encourage all employees to manage their own time. This is how you hire the best talent on demand and offer them a rewarding position with your business.

Use a platform that takes the guesswork out of hiring

Once you have a profile of your ideal developer, and you understand how to attract that quality of talent to your brand, you’re ready to execute. And there is no better way to find and hire the best talent than through the use of a platform that can reduce the time you spend searching, vetting, and hiring talent by up to 70 percent.

With High5 Trusted Talent, all candidates you interview are vetted and qualified by our subject matter experts. These experts have worked in similar software engineering roles themselves so they know exactly what types of questions to ask of candidates in order to find the true rock stars among the bunch.

This allows your in-house hiring team to focus more on qualifying selected candidates instead of doing all of the work sourcing, vetting, and qualifying them. As a business, this means you get more value from your own team as they can dedicate more time and resources towards solving problems that address the big picture of how to scale growth for the company.

For a great example of how High5 can benefit your brand, look no further than the example of how Paul used High5’s direct sourcing program to:

• Fill jobs, on average, 35 days faster than without High5
• Lower the cost per hire as much as 20 percent
• Increase retention rates from 25 percent up to 73 percent

Are You Ready For The High5 Experience?

Our team of industry leaders are ready to help your talent management program become the best it can be. Register with High5, your transformative talent management tool and make your next new hire the best decision you ever made.

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