The latest technological inventions have quickly taken over the digital world. This rapid advancement has worked in favor of the ever-in-demand IT talent pool. While the spots to fill are increasing daily, finding the brightest talent is challenging for every IT company.

These latest innovations require a dynamic set of skills, putting skilled candidates in power. Candidates have the upper hand in choosing the company they want to work with while still being approached by other IT companies.

Due to this war of recruiting the best talent, IT recruiters have to navigate new landscapes each year. With an all-time high demand for skilled IT personnel, here are the top seven challenges faced by every IT company:

1.  Too Many Job Openings - Less Technical Talent

We know that vacancies and unemployment rates for different markets continue to vary due to industrial and economic factors. But the same isn’t the case with the IT industry. Multiple recruiters in European countries have reported almost 3 to 4 job vacancies for every available developer.

And if you look at the unemployment rates, the IT industry has the lowest rate due to high technical talent demand. For an IT recruiter, filling these rising vacancies with candidates having the appropriate skill set and experience is one of the toughest challenges.

To solve this problem, recruiters may need to reconsider the job description or the skill set they put forward to attract talent. They should also focus on candidates who may only require training to make it to the team.

2.  Finding The Brightest IT Candidates Is Hard

Finding the fiercest, brightest candidates is as hard as finding a needle in a haystack. With IT recruiters relying solely on traditional recruitment ways (like whisking through resumes and social media platforms), the chances of finding the right talent get slimmer.

IT recruiters may find the required certifications, qualifications, and experience through these methods. But they must understand that certain factors, including judging soft skills, passion for tech, creativity, and working as a team player, can’t be assessed in these traditional ways.

It’s critical to remember that you’re not just hiring an employee but building a successful team. Your team won’t succeed if the candidate you hire isn’t a team player. Assessing a candidate’s passion and other skills will be fruitless by just considering their LinkedIn profile, portfolio, or formatted resume.

The best way to consider teamwork, creativity, and enthusiasm is through properly conducted interviews and by asking the right questions.

3.  The Hiring Process Is Too Slow

Remember when we said that the unemployment rate in the IT industry is the lowest? And there are multiple vacancies for a single candidate? Well, it’s time to consider these points.

It may be that IT recruiters and hiring managers aren’t attracting the right talent pool because of the slow hiring process. Unfortunately, IT recruiters must realize that the candidate they screened and called to pass their ‘numerous’ hiring tests may have found another opportunity.

Why? Keeping IT professionals engaged is hard when numerous hiring managers and recruiters are connected with them simultaneously. Extending the offer for several interviews hinders the candidate’s experience, resulting in companies losing the top talent.

Reduce the hiring time to an ideal period where you can critically evaluate the candidate’s skills (technical and others) to attract and retain the top talent.

4.  Hunting In The Wrong Places

IT recruiters may not know the right places to hunt the top talent. There is a whole world outside of prominent social media and recruitment platforms. These include discussion groups, special forums, and networking sites where the top talent engages the most.

These tech specialists share information related to their field, answer others’ problems, and talk about the latest inventions. So, the right candidate you must be looking for may be actively using these platforms.

Go ahead and consult your IT department. Ask them which platforms are the best ones and the ones they use. In fact, take their help to connect with the techies you require. You will get overwhelmed with the response you may receive when searching for top talent on the right platforms.

5.  Top Talent Demands High Salaries For Retention

Since we’ve already covered that the demand for IT top talent is at an all-time high, its supply is as scarce. This law of supply and demand creates one of the biggest challenges in recruiting skilled IT talent.

While hunting for highly coveted specialists, IT recruiters must remember that they come at a hefty price. Top talent demands proper compensation. However, employees don’t always look for high salaries. They also focus on the additional/side perks offered.

Even if your company can’t pay top dollar, they should devise other compensatory tactics (flexible schedules, additional time off, remote work, a position offered in an easily accessible location) to attract and retain employees.

6.  Not Using The Data Effectively

You may find every recruiter well-versed with the latest IT recruitment tools and tech, but not all use the data effectively.

It would be surprising to know that almost only 7% of HR professionals in the USA utilize proper analytics and optimize their recruitment process based on these analytics. IT recruiters need to optimize and better use the data to make the best hiring process and informed decisions.

They must analyze the company’s hiring ratio, the skills the organization demands, make more effective technical tests according to the job description, and more!

7.  Recruiters’ Biases During Hiring

IT recruiters want to hire only the best talent for their company while ensuring diversity in the team. Recruiting a diverse workforce improves company culture and overall reputation. It also helps attract IT job seekers while providing the company with a large talent pool.

Unfortunately, recruiters’ unconscious biases influence the hiring process. Unconscious biases are the hardest to uncover. Recruiters may assess IT professionals based on these biases, resulting in multiple rejections of the right talent.

This is a common practice among recruiters where unconscious biases aren’t dealt with, resulting in uniformity instead of diversity in the organization.