Overcoming Talent Shortage of IT Professionals

Tech lead wants to see himself as a prime candidate. Tech leads make position summaries, which means that they take their experience, minus 5-6 years, plus their assortment of technologies, minus what became obsolete for these 5-6 years and voila, the new candidate specification is ready. As a result, an advanced junior is in demand with an experience no less than 10-12 years and knowledge of PHP, JavaScript, NET and Python and eager to learn GoLang.

In 3-4 months, when headhunting does not thrive, the project manager puts pressure on recruiters because they search badly. There were bonuses promised to recruitment companies, which exceed the average budget of a small country. Tech lead who were making a position summary says that back in his times, people were smarter, expectations were higher and all is bad in general. Furthermore, a client loses money, the quality of the product is bad and people are angry. A project manager is angry with recruiters, a team is angry with over time, recruiters’ morale is low, from a tech lead to candidates who do not fit every time due to come reason.

What shall we do?

We need to figure out what we are doing wrong. In this situation, everyone is at a loss: a promising candidate cannot find a job; we cannot satisfy all the needs of the customer, the team cannot function normally, since its members have absolutely no time. Of course, you can take the path of “strong” people and blame someone else for your misfortunes, and it is easy to blame everything on market conditions and the generation of degenerates, but we will not do that and see for ourselves what we continue to do wrong.

First, you need to focus on the duties that the candidate will perform rather than the person themselves. If we need a form-blind, then you should not write in the specification “a great advantage would be knowledge of the theory of neural networks”. The level of passage should be reduced to an acceptable value, and it does not make sense to bully it – you can lose very good promising candidates.

The second thing to do is have the project manager talk directly with the tech lead. The tech lead has to realize that if there is no person, he will have to do everything himself, and the most difficult thing is that he himself will not have time to do everything planned, because he has a family or a personal life, a hobby, plans for a vacation, etc.. The recruiter may be able to describe his “perfect candidate” and the recruiting team may be able to search for this candidate with low priority. However, one cannot rely on such a position in any case, since its closing is a matter of chance. And everything that is connected with accidents, and not a clear process, does not suit us in business. We can afford to rely on chance only when we have an unlimited resource of time, but this happens rarely.

The third thing to do is to talk to recruiters. Maybe we are looking for the wrong criteria. Maybe you should show a couple of LinkedIn pages for all parameters that fit the requirements. Maybe it is worth telling who else we can consider to expand the search field. Technical people need to realize that recruiters, no matter how intelligent they are, do not have the background that would allow them to set tolerances in finding a candidate.

And the fourth, the most difficult. We need to think for the future. Maybe we should take a candidate for growth. Maybe we should give a chance to someone. In some cases, you can take the minimum risk. If you see that a person is reasonable, your project is interesting to him and he is full of the ability to work, then why not. Did someone once give you a first chance? Try, at least, you always have a trial period. Do not overdo, but the devil is always in the details.

• Therefore, it is always necessary to proceed from the official duties of a person, and not from the desire for him, otherwise there will be a delay for an indefinite period.
• You should avoid laying down steep demands. Make them based on the job requirements applicable to a candidate.
• Do not be afraid to give a chance to reasonable people. Do your due diligence to take people with room to grow.
• Try to look at things the way they are and do not try to fight with the environmental conditions, because it sets up your being