How to Build a Better Tech Talent Pipeline
In the tech industry, your brand is only as good as the talented people you have. That’s why you need to make sure you have a strong tech talent pipeline.
If you’re in the tech startup world, then you’re certainly quite aware that competition is growing fierce these days. It’s like there’s a new company cropping up each day. This increasingly crowded space simply emphasizes how you need to have the talent your business requires to get ahead of your competition. But how you can build a strong tech talent pipeline when there’s a lot of demand and the supply isn’t up to par?
A Smaller Talent Pool
This disparity between the great demand for talent and the scarcity of tech people is one of the main challenges to building a better tech talent pipeline. Recent studies indicate that the pool of tech talent from which the industry can draw may dry up by the year 2030.
Not that this is surprising news. Surveys reveal that almost two-thirds (65%) of CIOs foresee that this scarcity of talent will cripple the industry in the future.
It’s even happening now. Companies are increasingly becoming dependent on new technology to generate value for their products and services, but they have not invested in the needed human capital to keep the tech coming.
As a result, these companies reap what they sow. Up to 86% of companies are having difficulties finding and enlisting the tech talent they require. Almost as many companies feel that the tech talent they have is insufficient, leading to delayed development and missed revenues. The talents they have in turn are overly stressed and more of them feel burned out.
Overcoming the Challenges
So what can you do in light of these problems? Here are some suggestions:
- Make your company more attractive to potential hires. That means offering competitive salaries and benefits. You also need to customize your approach so that you can hire specific points about your company that will attract a particular potential employee. You have to consider what their goals are, and figure out how your company can help them achieve those goals.
- What’s more, you need a healthy company culture that actually entices people to stay. Some companies are so enjoyable for workers that they refuse higher bids for their services, knowing that other companies may have a worse working environment.
- Enhance the training for your current workforce. If you can’t find the trained talents for your needs, you may find them among your current employees. Or you can find the workers with the right potential and then offer to cover their training. You can then support them when they learn new technologies and new coding languages.
- Invest in high school students. Identify which students have the smarts and the character that best suit your needs, and then help them out. Perhaps you can offer to pay for some training, or even offer a partial scholarship. At the very least, the relationship you forge will then make your company first in line as prospective companies to work for when they graduate from college.
Admittedly, these measures don’t hide the fact that a dwindling talent pool is a serious problem for the tech industry. But by considering our suggestions, you can do better than your competition in dealing with this issue.
Founder, Editor-In-Chief // A native Angeleno. John studied engineering at UCLA; founded Schmoozd, an offline social tech networking event in LA with 30,000 subs; ran a startup accelerator (StartEngine). Worked for several major brands like Toyota, DIRECTV, Hitachi, ICANN, and Raytheon. A mentor at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) Entrepreneur School, Dr. David Choi. And advises a dozen local LA startups building amazing tech in various industries; and invested in some. // Let's Connect: john@lastartups.com
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