In our post-Covid world, having a strong talent pipeline is more crucial than ever.

And the skills shortage that was present in almost every industry pre-Covid is still threatening organisational growth.

When you’re recruiting, it’s not about the number of people you can attract to your organisation; it’s about the quality of these candidates.

Even with the perceived increase of candidates in the post-Covid job market, there are still skills shortages across most industries. In the U.K., the Prime Minister addressed how the pandemic has highlighted skills shortages in many sectors, emphasising an urgent need for a focus on improving skills to protect the economy.

Depending on the tech role you are trying to fill, recruitment can be a lengthy and involved process.

One of the most effective ways to ensure you can quickly fill the critical gaps in your team is to have people ready to step into your organisation at the earliest available opportunity; in other words your talent pipeline.

This blog explains the whys and hows of building a robust tech talent pipeline.

The Benefits of a Strong Tech Talent Pipeline

Despite the pandemic, skills gaps are widening across all sectors; in fact, the pandemic has brought to light just how crucial the skills gaps are in many industries.

A 2020 LinkedIn Workplace Learning report found that globally, 51% of companies plan to implement an upskilling programme, with 47% focusing on re-skilling, highlighting the need for increased talent in a post-Covid world.

In developing a strong talent pipeline, the aim is to avoid the scenario where you have critical skills gaps and no-one lined up to fill them.

Many organisations think of recruiting only when they actively have a vacant position. A talent pipeline is a way of thinking about your team, and recruitment, in a more holistic way. You will always have an active, engaged audience and the idea of working for your company is something that is always on their radar.

Let’s look at some of the main positives of building your talent pipeline now.

1. Identify More Candidates

When a vacancy arises in your team, wouldn’t it be ideal to already have someone in mind to take over the role?

This is where a talent pipeline comes in; it reduces the fear of having a critical vacancy open as you have a range of potential technical candidates set up to open a dialogue with.

Your talent pipeline will speak to the 70% of candidates who aren’t actively looking for a job, the ‘passive candidates’ market. Organisations without talent pipelines are missing out on this significant portion of the workforce.

You can start to bring candidates into your talent pipeline at different stages in their careers, starting with graduates up to exec level.

When you have a talent pipeline you can rely on, you have a range of candidates ready to be invited for an interview rather than starting the recruitment process from scratch.

The good news is here at Inspire People we provide this as part of our package of services. If you want to find out more call us on 0845 450 4000.

2. Reduce the Time to Hire

I’m sure you’ll agree that in our post-Covid world, the thought of having critical vacancies in your team is an unpleasant one.

This year, teams have been stretched to breaking point, with many taking on extra roles, having to adapt to working from home and generally being busier than ever before.

To keep your entire team working cohesively, you need to know that any critical vacancies will be quickly filled, instead of being left unfilled, damaging team output and reducing morale.

3. Increase Your Offer Acceptance Rates

One of the most frustrating things that can happen in the recruitment process is when you think you’ve found the ideal technical candidates, but then they turn down your job offer.

The more people you have in your talent pipeline, the more they will get to know your organisation, and this relationship is what pushes great candidates over the line to say yes to your job offer.

As you can see, there are many benefits to creating a talent pipeline to make your recruiting process much easier.

Next, let’s look at how to build and develop your talent pipeline.

How to Build Your Tech Talent Pipeline

Creating a talent pipeline means proactively forming long-lasting relationships with candidates who would be the right ‘fit’ with your organisation – both in their skill set and their culture and values.

So, how do you do this?

1. Defining What Your Organisation Needs

The following are questions to ask when thinking about what you want from your talent pipeline -

• Who are your key employees and in what roles?
• What skills are most critical to your organisation?
• Where do you want to take your business in the next 3-5 years?
• What type of people will you need in your business for it to grow?

Drawing on your experiences with Covid can help here too. When your business was in ‘critical survival mode’ like many were during the height of the pandemic, did this highlight any areas where you were missing in vital skills?

2. Attracting the ‘Right’ Talent

Attracting the right candidates to your organisation is the critical part of building your talent pipeline.

Building a talent pipeline focuses on attracting both passive and active candidates, rather than a recruitment process which focuses solely on filling a current vacancy.

Having an excellent employer brand will be essential in attracting the type of talent you want. Any prospective talent that comes into contact with you will be forming an opinion as to whether they would like to join your company, whether they’re an active or a passive candidate.

The following are the most direct ways to build your tech talent pipeline -

• Networking events – getting your name out in your industry is crucial in building a following.
• Working with a technical recruitment specialist.
• Your social media channels – are you regularly posting engaging content for your technical candidates?
• Existing contacts and referrals – do you have a robust referral scheme in place? How often do you review and reconnect with former colleagues or managers?
• Graduate campaigns – getting to know the new generation of talent coming through the ranks is an excellent way to build your talent pipeline.

3. Reviewing Your Application Process

A poor recruitment process is enough to put even the most interested candidates off.

Making your recruitment as seamless, engaging and professional as possible will leave even candidates who are not successful in applying for your roles, want to do so again in future.

Make sure your recruitment process is mobile-friendly; 58% of active job seekers use their smart device to search for jobs. But with many sites still not being mobile-friendly, mobile seekers complete 53% fewer applications and take 80% longer to complete each application than applicants using desktops.

A mobile-friendly application process increases the number of applicants to each role by 11.6%.

Write easy to read job descriptions with clear information; stay away from jargon.

Make sure you have the recruitment process planned out step by step so that applicants can be informed of the exact date by when they will be progressed to the next stage or not.

Important: Always stay in touch with candidates via email or phone throughout the entire recruitment process.

Start Building Your Tech Talent Pipeline

With a network of engaged potential candidates ready to join your business, you’ll ensure that you always have potential on-hand to fill essential roles.

So, now you have the premise of building your talent pipeline, it’s time to get started.

Remember that you don’t have to go it alone – working with a dedicated technical recruiter is a great way to work on building your talent pipeline.

About Inspire People

We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals.

Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.

Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.

Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email hello@inspirepeople.net

Running a successful business is all about recruiting the right people.

Your employees are the people who drive innovation, ensure customer satisfaction, and serve your industry. The costs of a bad hire are significant in terms of the money you waste on recruitment and onboarding. However, the repercussions don't stop there. Bringing the wrong person into your team can have an impact on workplace productivity too, by disrupting your company culture.

Once your specialist recruitment agency or in house recruitment team has delivered a selection of skilled professionals to your door, it's up to your hiring manager to get to know each applicant, before choosing the one that best fits.

The question is, how can you equip your hiring expert with the tools they need to make the right choice for your organisation?

1. Encourage Plenty of Research

Businesses expect their candidates to come to interviews prepared, and brimming with information about the role at hand. However, if your hiring manager hasn't done enough research to understand what they're looking for in a recruit, then it's impossible to make an informed decision.

A hiring manager's research begins with the job description, where they'll list the key skills and abilities required for the role in question. From there, they can also be thinking about the answers to the following questions:

• Which soft skills will work well in this role, and fit with company culture?
• Why does this position exist, and why is it essential to fill it?
• Who will be responsible for this new hire, and what kind of person would work well with them?
• Which talents are "essential", and which can be trained at a later stage?

2. Create a Standardised Process

Hiring managers don't always get a lot of opportunities to "practice" their interviewing techniques. Without a solid strategy in place, it's easy to get distracted by things like personal preference, or an increasing urgency to fill a gap in the company.

Your hiring manager can simplify the process of finding the right recruit, by working with a specialist agency to design a checklist for scoring and evaluating each possible employee. On the other hand, you can always give your hiring manager a list of questions to ask, and features to look for based on the essential elements of the job description.

For instance, if you're searching for a Linux expert, your onboarding expert might ask how many years of experience they have with the program, and what accomplishments they have achieved in previous roles.

3. Invest in Some Interview Training

Perhaps the easiest way to make sure that a hiring manager is prepared to make the most out of the interviewing experience is to invest in some specialist interview training. Specialist recruitment agencies and hiring experts spend years cultivating their skills, so it's easy to see why some professionals don't instantly get the hang of evaluating job applicants.

After some training sessions, you can encourage your hiring manager to write out a list of questions for the candidates you want to consider, and practice going through them in advance. Though the details of an interview might change according to the position in question, the main answers any hiring manager needs to get from an applicant include:

• How can you fit in with the company culture?
• How passionate are you about the role?
• How well can you do the job?

4. Make Every Question Count

An interview isn't just about finding the right staff member for your team. In today's competitive marketplace, it's also about selling your company and the opportunities it can offer to everyone who shows an interest in your available position.

With that in mind, every question your hiring manager asks must be tailored to both showcase your value, and unlock useful information about the individual they're talking to. For instance, instead of saying "So, tell me more about yourself", the first question in an interview might be: "You know we're one of the most innovative DevOps companies in the marketplace. From what you know about this role, tell us how you'd be a good investment."

5. Inspire Active Listening

Finally, make sure that your hiring manager goes into each conversation with the resources they need to actively take notes and absorb information about a candidate. While a template of pre-set questions can give hiring experts the guidance, they need to move through the interview experience, provide them with the freedom to respond to answers to their own pre-agreed questions too.

Remember, it's a good idea to finish each interview on a positive note too, as this can leave your potential hire feeling confident, respected, and excited to hear from you. The last thing you want is to choose the right employee, then lose them to a competing company.

About Inspire People

We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals.

Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.

Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.

Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email  hello@inspirepeople.net

In today's competitive job market, digital skills are in short supply, but high demand. Whether you're looking for the talent that will help you to transform your organisation, or you just need a group of individuals that will keep your IT infrastructure running smoothly as you push to get ahead of the competition, it's worth remembering that brand success often comes down to one thing: people.

In a world where technology is continually changing, evolving, and fluctuating to meet the diverse needs of virtual nomads, it's up to the average tech company to make sure that they have the right candidates working together in the ideal environments to cultivate success. Anything less than a perfect structure means that you'll be left struggling to keep up with the other businesses in your market.

The question is, how do you effectively find, and unite the perfect professionals for digital success?

Step 1: Recruit IT Innovators

Being a leader in the technology space means being able to evaluate your staff both as a complete unit and as a collection of diverse individuals. If you want your business team to be successful, then you need each person within that group to possess a specific set of characteristics and skills conducive to delivering great results.

That doesn't mean that everyone in your office needs to be able to do the same things. For instance, you might need a DevOps expert, a Linux expert, and an IT transformation analyst to work seamlessly together. However, what it does mean is that the people you hire with the help of your specialist recruitment agency might share a collection of essential features, such as:

• A passion for the industry
• An understanding of agile working
• The ability to work both independently and as part of a collective
• An in-depth knowledge of your company goals

Step 2: Create Unanimous Goals

For any employee to accomplish incredible things, they need to be motivated towards a single idea of what "success" looks like for your organisation. If you don't have a clear vision laid out for your brand, then you run the risk that each of the recruits you hire will end up working towards their own goals, instead of the overarching goals of the company.

Keeping the path clear and obvious for your industry experts from day one helps to stop them from wandering off route or getting distracted. It might seem simple, but you'd be surprised how often lack of clarity can lead to performance issues.

Step 3: Work on Your Company Culture

How does your business give your hires the support and resources they need to thrive? There's more to developing a high-performing tech team than making sure you're attracting and recruiting the best talent; you also need to ensure that you're placing those professionals in an environment that's conducive to success.

If you bring a new DevOps professional into the group, then they'll need access to the latest technology to enhance and transform your development project. But it's not just software and hardware you need to think about when supporting your employees. Remember to put guidelines in place for how people can respond if they find themselves facing common obstacles.

Ideally, you'll want to give your tech professionals as much space as possible to respond creatively to challenges, but that doesn't have to mean leaving them entirely to their own devices.

Step 4: Challenge Your Employees

Technology experts are often individuals who know how to respond well to pressure. They thrive in challenging situations where they're given the opportunity to tap into the resources around them and respond to difficult circumstances. With that in mind, take steps to keep your team interested, and engaged.

Give your engineers a chance to play with your tech stack and explore new strategies, provide cloud experts with the freedom they need to test out new platforms that might be beneficial to your digital transformation plan, and make sure that your unit knows how to organise and manage itself efficiently, so they don't need a supervisor's help to take the lead on high-profile projects.

Remember, you'll need to build a certain level of trust among your hires before they can work together at their best, but allowing them to overcome challenges as a unit may help them to discover their strengths and weaknesses more organically while encouraging natural bonds among colleagues too.

Step 5: Actively Encourage Collaboration

Finally, some technology experts struggle to thrive in social situations, but the growth and evolution of the digital world mean that businesses can help their teams work seamlessly together in several different ways. Collaboration doesn't have to mean sitting in the same room each day; it might mean teaching your recruits how to use the latest intranet software and communication tools to connect.

Give your unit the freedom to work without constant supervision, but make sure they know how they can reach out to other people in their group whenever they need extra support, guidance, or even knowledge that expands beyond their expertise.

Eventually, simple communication will become a natural part of what makes your organisation work.

About Inspire People

We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals

Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.

Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.

Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email  hello@inspirepeople.net

The modern workplace is changing. Today's technology professionals expect more than an excellent salary and benefits package; they want a professional environment that's challenging, nurturing, and engaging.

As the technology world grows increasingly complicated, the demand for specialists in everything from coding to networking has increased. This means that tech experts have their pick of employment opportunities while growing businesses must implement strategies to attract, maintain, and motivate their staff.

The problem is, as the workforce takes on more Millennial employees, traditional methods of motivation might not be enough to keep your team productive and satisfied. In fact,only just over 32% of people feel engaged at work. Since your tech talent is the key to happy customers, innovative products, and new ideas, it's important to think about how you can keep these unique individuals happy.

1. Listen and Adapt

Every recruit you bring into your company has different ambitions and skills, particularly in this multi-generational era. To motivate diverse people, you'll need to start by listening to their hopes, goals, and aspirations.

While some of your team might want endless opportunities to explore new technology, others might want to develop particular skills to an advanced level.

It’s critical to have one-to-one meetings with your technology hires as part of the onboarding process. There, you can create a 1-3 year plan for growth, where you focus on giving each employee the resources they need to thrive.

2. Embrace New Technology

Your tech specialists chose their career because they love the industry. One of the easiest ways to motivate people with a passion for all-things IT is to make sure that you always embrace new opportunities to explore technology that's relevant to your business.

Consider asking your tech team to get together once every few months and make suggestions on which new software or hardware you might benefit from. Alternatively, you can send individual IT experts to conferences and networking events where they can try out the latest gizmo’s, software or applications.

Remember, once you've decided to embrace something new, you'll need to put training strategies in place to ensure everyone from your engineers to your sales groups knows how to use your resources to their advantage.

3. Provide Opportunities for Growth

All employees, no matter their skills, appreciate opportunities for expansion and promotion. However, since the technology sector is continually evolving, IT professionals can be drawn more to business development opportunities in other organisations chances than most.

Managers must work alongside their staff to find out exactly what they want to achieve in the future. While some recruits will prefer to focus on technical work than embracing a managerial position, others will want to build their soft skills alongside their digital talents.

Providing your team with plenty of chances to grow and excel in their preferred areas can go a long way to keeping them motivated. Remember, you can provide opportunities outside of the workplace too, by helping professionals to sign up for classes or courses that interest them.

4. Offer Plenty of Recognition

No matter what technology role you're hoping to fill, you can expect that your candidate will be looking for a workplace that offers plenty of respect and recognition. IT experts, particularly those from the Gen Y and Gen X generation crave praise and feedback for their work.

The good news is that there are plenty of ways for your company to celebrate success. Depending on the preferences of your new hire, you can publish a monthly newsletter where you give staff a quick shout out. On the other hand, you might design a culture where executives frequently interact with the team to give them comments on their work.

Take the time to find out what kind of recognition your people respond best to, then make sure you keep on top of it.

5. Create a Flexible Environment

Technology-focused professionals are some of the most passionate people you'll ever meet. While they give 100% at work, they also spend their free time brushing up on their knowledge and keeping up with the latest trends.

However, if you want these specialists to really thrive in their new role, then you need to give them the freedom to build and expand their skills. Sometimes, this means merely delivering chances for in-house training, while in other cases, it will mean putting flexible work schedules in place.

Tech employees know better than most how to make the most of remote working software and applications. If your staff can do the same job at home that they would do from your office, consider allowing them to choose their own workplace every now and again. This option for mobile working may both motivate your team, and encourage them to innovate more on behalf of your business too!

About Inspire People

We believe that technology has the power to change the world for the better and we love working with businesses whose technology or purpose has a positive impact. We help businesses that share our vision access the people, resources and strategic advice they need to achieve their digital transformation goals

Our service is designed to accelerate your digital growth. We created our offer in response to emerging challenges in an uncertain business landscape: a blend of Advisory, Talent and Project led services that will help you achieve your strategic aims and deliver more for your employees and customers. We’ll connect you to rare specialist talent, experts and insight to help you navigate your biggest challenges and remain competitive in a changed world.

Get in touch today to discover how working with us could help you innovate and grow.

Speak to our expert team on +44(0)20 7871 8550 or email  hello@inspirepeople.net