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    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Employer

      7 Ways to Source and Attract Diverse Tech Talent

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      While improving corporate diversity and inclusion has been an important topic for some time, widespread social injustice and civil unrest, coupled with the impact of the global pandemic, emphasized the importance of DEI. The headlines were seared into our collective consciousness.
      But just talking about diversity and inclusion won’t move the needle. Progress requires action. And the time for action is now. Particularly for the tech sector, one that, by most reports, has made few gains. We’re here to shine a light on the path forward, exploring actionable ways that you can source and attract tech talent.
      Ready to lead the change?
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    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in Employer

      5 Messaging Mistakes Tech Recruiters Cannot Afford to Make (+ How to Prevent Them)

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      Without strong communication skills, recruiters, especially those in tech, don’t stand a chance when it comes to capturing the attention of in-demand candidates. The tech industry remains highly competitive, making recruiters’ job of attracting top tech talent all the more complicated and communication all the more critical.
      When it comes to connecting with top tech talent, sometimes you only get one shot to shoot – and it better be a good one. To help it stick, we’ve put together a list of what you should – and shouldn’t do – when communicating with these candidates.
      Want to learn the top messaging mistakes tech recruiters make and how to prevent them?
      Download the guide. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Employer

      4 Ways to Attract and Retain Top Tech Talent Better Than Your Competition

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      One of the big lessons learned in 2020 was to be prepared for the unprepared. With so much uncertainty still in the market, employers should proceed the recruiting landscape in 2021 with caution. Doing so means learning how to enhance and improve relationships with tech talent – prospective candidates and current employees alike. Tech talent is always in-demand, and as such, attraction and retention will be more important than ever before.
      With that in mind, we’re here to offer strategies that will position you as the employer of choice for top tech talent, from your initial interaction through to the final offer.
      Want to find out how to source and attract top tech talent and edge out the competition?
      Download the guide  More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Employer

      Expanding your employer brand reach with remote

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      In light of COVID-19’s impact on the world, remote work will continue to be part of how we work moving forward. As such, insights from candidates in our 2020 Brand Health Report reveal that having a remote work policy or flexibility in how you manage your workforce will impact your employer brand and, further, how job seekers evaluate an opportunity with your company. 
      A company’s employer brand is a combination of a company’s reputation and the value it presents to prospective employees. Without a positive reputation and brand, a company can lose out on qualified top candidates to competitors despite working on innovative products and services that may have set them apart pre-pandemic.
      Given the circumstances, companies such as Twitter and Google have announced their version of remote policies and long-term work strategies for their employees. Both companies remain on our list of the top 20 global employer brands candidates around the world would like to work for. More companies around the world have followed knowing that remote work is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

      By removing the limitations that  city based hiring can bring for companies, remote work enables organizations to hire from a larger pool of quality talent and create a larger impact. Additionally, tech talent agrees that remote work has the potential to help companies build more diverse workplaces (45% said very strongly and another 33% said strongly) which is a consideration for them when joining a company. By incorporating and communicating remote-work policies into your company’s strategy, talent will find opportunities with your company more accessible and attractive.
      Prioritize work-life balance
      In the midst of a global pandemic, many employees may find themselves in difficult circumstances at home or in their personal life while committing to perform their job responsibilities. How your company is supporting employee work-life balance and mental health can impact your brand and of course employee morale which they share with friends and peers in the industry. A major concern for leaders while employees shelter-in-place and work remote is employee mental health, especially as it relates to isolation, anxiety, depression, productivity issues, Zoom fatigue, and burnout. By providing genuine support to employees, this care is recognized as part of the company’s values.
      And while remote work can help companies increase diversity in the workplace, employers should be conscious of how long they expect team members to spend on video calls. 70% of tech talent prefer to spend no more than 1-3 hours per day on Zoom. This provides enough time in the day for team members to perform asynchronous and collaborative work during working hours and still have time for things that matter to them in their personal life, as well. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Employer

      Transitioning to permanent remote work? 4 Cross-functional considerations to make beforehand

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      As more companies are going public with their long-term remote policies, permanent remote work appears to be more of a reality for the way we work moving forward. During our webinar focused on, “Managing the Cross-Functional Transition to Fully Remote,” panelists from GitLab, Shopify, and Workable joined us to discuss the major considerations their respective companies made to transition to permanent remote. 
      At this point, while we may not understand everything about the duration of this pandemic, we’ve come to understand that COVID-19 is not going to simply go away within weeks.In Workable’s recent “New World of Work” report, 71% of respondents said remote work and distributed teams will be a major paradigm shift moving forward. It would seem that companies are indeed entertaining the idea of transitioning to remote-first, if not permanently then for an extended period.
      Additionally, we found that 74% of recruiters and talent acquisition professionals said they were either exploring permanent remote work, in the process of going fully remote, or have already made the transition. As Hired recently announced our move to be fully remote, such a transition could not have been made by a single person or function but through the collaboration of leaders across the organization with employees in mind. Among the many considerations that are made when deciding whether to become a permanent remote company, everyone on the panel focused on four key areas. 
      Financial implications
      As far as financial considerations of being remote-first, the idea of relocation — especially to areas with lower costs of living — becomes more accessible and attractive to many employees. In our 2020 State of Salaries Report, we discovered that 53% of tech workers surveyed mentioned they would make the move if they were able to work remotely, with 64% who said they’d potentially relocate within the next 3 years. Despite having that insight, Craig Diforte, SVP of Finance at GitLab warns that if companies have employees who are working in various states or jurisdictions, there are payroll, corporate income tax, sales and use tax implications that should be considered. Depending on how long an employee is within a jurisdiction, it can trigger corporate income tax and sales/use tax for the company. The key is doing your homework and consulting with your tax advisor and your payroll provider to make sure you are appropriately managing your tax risk as you consider how employee mobility may impact your bottom line.
      In addition, there could be new costs that are incurred which are associated with team off-sites, group bonding activities or home office allowances/reimbursements that are worth accounting for — especially if you are a larger organization. Diforte (GitLab) provides these examples needed to keep infrastructure and company culture happy and productive.
      Infrastructure of work
      When it comes to the infrastructure of work, our panelists describe how the top three priorities for them included technology, physical space, and documentation. Employees need to be set up to work effectively. This is where companies may need to consider the costs of hardware or connection modifications needed. With respect to physical space, companies invest a lot into their office spaces that they may only need a portion of now. Of the people who could potentially need or want to return to the office, companies would most likely benefit from downsizing their space to account for the offset of employees who will be working remote. Diforte of GitLab recommends that companies do a cost analysis while also asking themselves if they need a physical space, if they could change the space they currently have, and if the costs of the current space could chang  to better meet their current and future needs. Lastly, David Sakamoto, VP of Customer Success at GitLab, includes that documentation of meeting agendas, minutes, business processes and decisions is key to ensuring all team members can be in sync regardless of not working alongside each other physically. No matter where employees physically work, this helps to prevent any lapse in communication and enables folks to work more effectively async if needed.
      Work-life balance
      In a recent Workable survey 45% of executives said productivity is a top concern when it comes to working remote. Conversely, Sakamoto shared that leaders should be more concerned with overproduction vs. under-productivity during this time. Employees may suffer from Zoom fatigue, employees isolating themselves, and burnout. Jen McInnis, Senior Lead of Talent Expansion Operations at Shopify, theorized that there is an impostor syndrome of working from home where employees can’t see what their peers and colleagues are working on so individuals may feel like they need to not only work harder but more hours in order to keep up. Fear of not doing enough can perpetuate feelings of isolation and burnout, both of which need proactive management.
      McInnis (Shopify) shares that Shopify offered a solution to this problem where it has placed more weight on impact over the hours they put into their work week. This helps confirm for employees that their impact is valued more than working late nights just to get a project done. She states how, considering COVID has presented the worst version of working remotely, companies shouldn’t lose sight of other circumstances employees are facing in the midst of maintaining their full-time job. How employees are contributing and making an impact to the company adds more value toward achieving goals and shipping products compared to expecting work outputs during traditional working hours. 
      Employee connection
      Last, but certainly not least, is the importance of the remote employee experience while working remote especially during a pandemic. When you transition from from in-person to digital first experiences, companies must reimagine and reinvent their culture. Sakamoto encourages companies to assess their company values and determine what values might help or hurt the organization when being fully remote. McInnis shared that a strategic move that the company made in their transition to remote was to move from cities and locations to timezone regions. Within each respective region there is at most a 4-5 hour time difference between them so there’s an opportunity for both synchronous and asynchronous work within the teams. As a rule of thumb, it’s critical for management to help instill a remote culture that is intentional with communication, staying connected and checking in colleagues and peers more often than not.  More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Talent Acquisition

      How to Hire a Data Engineer

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      Data Engineering is one of the fastest-growing job roles in the tech industry with LinkedIn Talent Insights categorizing demand for these roles as ‘very high’. This means that it’s harder than ever for firms to attract and retain talent in this pivotal role. Estimates on the number of unfilled positions last year range from as much as 33-50%.
      One of the reasons for the shortage is the rate at which the discipline is moving, with tools and technologies emerging and evolving rapidly. This leads to the absence of a standardized toolset and means that the definition of the role can be dramatically different across companies.
      Based on research with 50 Data Engineers, and in conversation with Dani Solà Lagares (Director of Data at Simply Business) research from technology recruiting firm Stott and May reveals what Data Engineers are looking for, and what potential employers can be doing to increase their chances of snagging top talent. Here are the four top tips to come out of the research.
      1. Give them a clearly defined role.
      When looking for a new role, Data Engineers need to see a detailed and realistic job description. 72% testified that this was the most important factor in whether or not they will apply. If an employer doesn’t have this nailed down, then Data Engineers will pass up the opportunity in favor of an employer who has a clear idea of what needs to be done. ‘Give candidates a sense of the projects they will be working on and the stakeholders they will be engaging with,’ says Dani Sola. ‘Even more importantly, provide some narrative on the type of impact you expect key initiatives to make.’
      2. Provide the right technology stack.
      48% of Data Engineers stated that the technology stack they will be working with is the most important consideration in accepting a role. Because the technology stack has so much to do with what their day-to-day work will look like, it’s important that the fit is right. ‘Technical skillsets could vary dramatically from Kafka, Kafka Streams, Scala, Kotlin knowledge, advanced SQL, data warehousing skills, Python, the list goes on,’ says Dani. ‘It is important, however, to paint a picture of your requirements without asking candidates to tick every skillset that’s ever existed in data engineering.’
      3. Benchmark to ensure you’re offering a competitive salary.
      According to the research, 42% of Data Engineers say they are most likely to jump ship because their salary and benefits are below market rate. It’s important to make sure you are benchmarking your salaries against your competitors, and offering a competitive compensation package if you want to retain in-demand talent. ‘In my view, one of the major reasons engineers move on is that the initial value proposition of the role in that organization has not lived up to expectations,’ says Dani. ‘Don’t sell a dream and deliver a nightmare. If you’re authentic and invest in your team’s personal development that can go a long way.’
      4. Don’t wear them out with excessive interview steps.
      Data Engineers’ time is very important, so if they are being asked to jump through too many hoops, they are liable to simply look elsewhere. If you’re looking to recruit a Data Engineer, try to streamline the recruitment process as much as possible so that you can make an assessment of their fit without losing momentum. ‘Keep talent engaged during the hiring process,’ says Dani. ‘Create a sense of your culture and values. Make great first impressions as a potential employer. Interviewing should be about making the candidate feel at ease and creating an environment where they can show themselves at their best.’
      David Struth is Head of Marketing at Stott and May.

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    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Employer

      “We’ve got work to do”: Overcoming the gap in diversity recruiting

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      As more candidates are open to remote roles, our 2020 State of Remote Work Report uncovered that employers believed the top benefit of hiring remote employees was having more diverse candidates. With a heightened focus on how companies are building diverse teams and inclusive workplaces, companies may be evaluating the work that still needs to be done in order for workplaces to be truly equitable, inclusive and diverse. 
      During an episode of our Talent Talent to Me podcast, Jennifer Tardy, career coach, diversity recruiting trainer, and CEO of Jennifer Tardy Consulting, joined us to discuss the gaps she found in training programs as a Head of Talent wanting to best prepare her team for their diversity recruiting initiative and how that experience led her to create her own program for recruiting teams wanting to close the existing gaps.
      Identifying the gap
      When companies begin the work of creating an inclusive workplace, unconscious bias training may be thought of as a smart place to start. While unconscious bias training is valuable and well-intentioned, it is a start not a well-rounded solution. As a Head of Talent in her former life, Tardy explained how she was disappointed to find that the trainers and program material for diversity recruiting training couldn’t speak to the depths of diversity and inclusion in hiring as she would have liked. Not only were the resources for recruiting teams insufficient, Tardy also identified a larger systemic issue within hiring that needed to be fixed for diversity recruiting to work effectively.
      Recommendations in the market primarily focused on boolean strings but didn’t discuss how companies might get in front of and attract diverse talent, how to interview for authenticity, and how to create an inclusive workplace for people of underrepresented groups, especially if the company didn’t have good representation to begin with. The hiring system today calls on recruiters to weed people out of the pipeline. In doing this, pipelines begin to look homogenous or are influenced by bias. Then interview questions end up not assessing a candidate’s skills fit or who they truly are but rather for who was able to produce a better answer. In the end recruiters may miss out on the aspects about the candidate that make them diverse in background, opinion, and experience and disproportionately weed them out. This may ultimately impact a recruiter’s ability to attract, interview, and hire diverse talent if they aren’t changing the system that weeds them out in the first place.
      Learning on common ground
      Tardy’s belief that diversity recruiting training must start on common ground and should go to the depths of why DE&I initiatives exists in the first place. Tardy’s clients pledge in her training sessions that they are not a place of guilt but an avenue for finding solutions to move forward. Typically when people don’t feel like they know enough or know what language to use when it comes to diversity, Tardy shares, they opt out of participating in discussions–recruiters don’t have the luxury of not participating so she wants to equip them to go into them confidently. By laying the foundation for DE&I and common language to use, she notes how teams are more encouraged to engage in meaningful dialogue to create an action plan for lasting change within their organizations. Beyond undergoing diversity recruiting training, she advises recruiting teams to do two things in their process:
      Interview for authenticity
      Tardy shares how current hiring is set up candidates know recruiters are looking for the best answer to interview questions. For people of underrepresented groups, learning how to best answer interview questions is even more critical to prevent getting weeded out and landing a paying job. Tardy challenges recruiters to reframe interview questions with the intention to get to know the candidate and how they can contribute to the team instead of seeing reasons to pass on their candidacy. Figure out how you can really get to know this person, through behavioral interview questions for instance, and determine if they’d be a good fit for the job based on how they think through problems.
      Audit for impact
      Companies have great intent when it comes to DE&I but can sometimes be fearful to look at what quantitative and qualitative data suggests is true. For example, Tardy mentions that by leveraging data through a self-identification campaign, data from exit interviews, or migration data (promotion, demotion, lateral moves, etc), recruiting and HR teams can see where people of color are falling out of their process and organization as a whole. Companies should dive into why people are leaving and identify who in the organization has promotional opportunities over others to see if there are disparities between groups. If companies have great intent, they should also audit for impact and outcomes to see what employees and candidates are trying to tell them about the equity and inclusion of their workplace.
      Once employers move past the guilt and understand how they can contribute to the larger conversation of diversity recruiting, they can know the weight of how to source for diverse talent, how to attract them to their companies, identify where bias is baked into their process, and how to make an effective and ethical selection decision. Recruiting practices can be more inclusive and, therefore, workforces can be more diverse and equitable.

      Listen to the full episode here: More

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      in Employer

      Building a Diverse & Inclusive Distributed Workforce

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      Companies across all industries have been disrupted in some way due to COVID-19. Talent and recruiting teams have had to navigate the challenges of remote hiring, HR teams have had to work through unique nuances of remote onboarding, and whether your company is hiring or not, this time made way for other strategic projects that […] More