Ruehie Jaiya Karri

In a mythical land far, far away…

Tech recruiters and talent acquisition specialists have been rumored to live in harmony with unicorns and purple squirrels. In this magical world of recruiting, a typical day looks something like this:

10.00 A.M. – Recruiters open their emails, check for job requirements and post one little job posting.

11.00 A.M. – Computers audibly shaking, you can hear the whir of thousands of applications pouring in!

Noon – You present the perfect candidate for the vacant role, gift-wrapped to your hiring manager.

Oh well, that was a good dream while it lasted! As seen above, there are plenty of misconceptions floating around about tech recruiters and how they should be able to rub a lamp, make a genie appear, and solve all the hiring problems in the world.

The actual reality looks something like a Taylor Swift song—sleepless nights, fear of not closing open roles under tight deadlines, and wistfully wishing for this magical land of recruiting to be a real one, with lyrics that go:

3 a.m. and I’m still awake, I’ll bet you’re just fine

Fast asleep in your city that’s better than mine

Recruiting teams have their work cut out for them and no two tech recruiters ever had the same journey in their career path. We’ve gone around and spoken to our internal recruiting team in depth to understand what their day looks like and what happens at each stage of the hiring lifecycle. Hop on, let us take you for an intriguing ride!

A special shoutout to our Talent Acquisition Manager, Preethi Saakre for all the insider information that shaped this blog and allowed us to go into great detail about the workings of a recruiting team!

Behind the scenes of a recruiting team in an organization

Although the overall structure of a hiring process remains the same, there can be slight changes when you are hiring at scale, conducting walk-in interviews, or looking to fill a small number of positions with 2 or 3 candidates. In this article, let’s take a look at hiring for a small number of roles.

Set the tone for the day

The first task on the agenda for the day is to check our email. Get an understanding of what roles are vacant from our hiring managers. And then set up meetings.

While we usually receive emails on open job roles, and top-level requirements to hire for these roles, we do have an in-depth discussion with our hiring manager. Such calibration meetings clarify important information like:

• A debrief of the job role we’re hiring for
• What does the ideal candidate look like for this role?
• What are the must-have skills and good-to-have skills?
• What tech stacks are we looking for?
• How many rounds of interviews do we conduct?

This will greatly help you to create accurate job descriptions and attract the right candidates for your open positions.

In a nutshell, coffee with a side of meetings!

Plan tasks and responsibilities

After our morning meeting, we spend some time answering emails, following up with candidates, and filling out paperwork. Now that we clearly understand for whom we’re hiring, we prioritize our tasks for the day, see which roles have tighter deadlines, and get to work!

Carry out market mapping for open roles

Armed with the requirements from the hiring manager, we begin to gauge the talent pool available in the market to see how many candidates would fit our industry-specific requirements. We do market mapping where we check for details that have been aggregated from several job boards like:

• Compensation range
• Years of experience
• The geographic location of the candidate pool
• Expected notice period
• Diversity of the candidate pool

While all this information is available on LinkedIn, filtering for diverse candidates is only possible on Naukri RMS. This is where you need to make the most of the Google search engine. Hiring for rather niche positions or specific skill sets calls for using boolean search strings and site-wide X-ray search capabilities for highly customized results.

Once you are aware of the kind of talent pool available for your particular open role, we need to go back to the hiring manager to let them know. Post receiving their approval to go ahead, start with sourcing and contacting qualified candidates.

Focus on inbound applications

Now that it’s settled resumes don’t fall out of the sky, let’s see how we go about getting candidates to send their resumes in.

The first thing to do is to distribute the job posting for the vacant position on all job boards. If you are using an applicant tracking system (ATS) like Trakstar, Zoho Recruit, and so on, most job boards would already be integrated with it, making it simple for you to market your job postings.

The candidates that apply through this outreach are tagged as inbound applications. Inbound recruiting relies heavily on your ability to attract candidates—meaning job postings need to be clear and concise, employer branding should be on point, and career sites have to be user-friendly. Prospective candidates need to be excited about working for your company!

Also read: 5-Step Guide To Gender-Fluid Tech Job Descriptions (+Free Checklist)

Source suitable candidates through outbound outreach

The second phase of sourcing for candidates is outbound hiring. This is where you search for and contact all active candidates (those currently looking for a job) on the available job boards like Indeed, Monster, and Glassdoor.

You can also use the InMail feature on LinkedIn or tap into Naukri RMS to source high-quality candidates.

Next, we focus on connecting with passive candidates. Especially when you are hiring for niche tech roles, passive talent would be a good bet. GitHub and StackOverflow are hotbeds of tech talent—you can see projects developers have worked on, languages and frameworks they are interested in, and so on.

This is a crucial step to getting closer to finding that elusive unicorn candidate, who you know will be just the right fit for the open role! A recent LinkedIn report shows that 62% of talent teams find more high-quality candidates through sourcing than inbound applications.

Also read: 21 Tech Recruiting Tools To Scale Your Hiring

Screen incoming resumes

All the inbound applications are captured on our ATS where every candidate’s data is parsed automatically from their resumes so it’s easy for you to go through it.

If we are hiring for generic tech roles, for instance, a software engineer with 0-1 years of experience, we directly send a screening test to the candidates. We check whether they have cleared the coding assessment or not and shortlist them accordingly. Then their profile is forwarded to the hiring manager.

For certain roles that can be tough to assess like front-end roles, even if the candidates have not entirely cleared the test, we forward the results to the hiring manager. They would further check for the candidate’s thought process and logic used while attempting to solve the problem before either shortlisting them or rejecting them.

Schedule interviews for shortlisted candidates

As discussed in the calibration meeting mentioned above, the number of interview rounds is already decided. All that remains is to set up interviews between the candidates and the hiring managers. If the candidates are mid-senior level developers or tech leads then their next round of interviews would be with the CTO and the CEO, accordingly.

For those who have been selected in these rounds, we next set up a meeting with our HR team to assess the candidates for culture fit.

This would be the last round of interviews. Post this, we begin discussing the compensation, perks, and benefits with the shortlisted candidates.

Sidebar:

Most recruiters would share a common journey up until this point in the hiring process. We carry out supporting tasks for all the above steps, in some capacity every single day.

Roll out the offer letter

Once the salary negotiation discussions are wrapped up, it is time to send the official offer letter to the candidates who made the cut. While this is an exciting part of the recruiting process, as we know, a recruiter cannot rest easy until— “Good hiring doesn’t end with finding the right person. It ends when the right person starts working for you!” – By anonymous

But not just yet. We have to do our due diligence first to ensure we’ve vetted the candidate thoroughly:

• Complete required background checks
• Call references and talk to the candidate’s previous managers

Getting verbal acceptance from your candidate before sending out the letter can increase the chances of them signing on the dotted line.

And then, **drum roll please!**

We roll out the offer letter to our candidate.

Nurture candidates to improve candidate engagement

Once the candidate accepts the offer letter and you are certain they will be joining the company, then proceed with your candidate engagement practices. We set up a buddy for them who will be able to familiarize them with the team after they join. We encourage the new hires to come to the office so they can meet different teams, understand how things work, and get a basic idea of their roles and responsibilities.

This helps make the “dreaded first day” easy for the candidate since they already know what to expect and whom to reach out to in case they are stuck.

Time for onboarding

A general practice for talent acquisition teams is to connect the selected candidates with the onboarding team, 10 days prior to their joining the company. This ensures the candidates have a smooth transition and have everything they need for the first day, including their laptop, email access, and other things.

To welcome your candidates and make them feel like they belong right from the start, send them company merchandise, goodies, and swag that they can use.

Also read: Streamline Your Recruitment Process With These 7 Tips

To understand a recruiter’s job in a nutshell, here are 7 things that the recruiting team at HackerEarth carries out on a daily basis!

No magic potion, just plain hard work

Well, we tried to bust as many myths as possible about recruiters and tech recruiting in general. The bottom line, our job is to match the best person to the role and hiring manager—we are the people who bring in the people!

If you think that sounds simple, we are here to tell you it’s anything but.

One of the major reasons for penning this article was to bring to light the amount of effort that goes into finding the perfect candidate. As you can see, it is a LOT. We do have some tricks up our sleeves but that’s the extent of it. No potions, genies, or wands are involved!

As always, happy hiring 🙂

An employer brand plays a crucial role in the employee value proposition. It essentially refers to what the organization has successfully communicated as its identity to its current and potential employees. According to Workable, 9 out of 10 candidates would apply for a job when it’s from an employer brand that’s actively maintained.

Intrigued about employer branding? Then, this blog is for you!

Here are some of the important questions that are often asked about employer branding. We have provided some detailed insights in place to help you with a clear understanding of technical recruitment and employer branding for your tech business.

What is employer branding?

Employer branding refers to the process a firm undertakes to promote itself as an employer of choice. It consists of core principles, employee experience, and communication with prospective employees. That being stated, why is employer branding vital to your company? Following the epidemic, the necessity to develop a strong brand became more important than ever. The IT talent market is becoming increasingly competitive as more organizations are embracing remote working and rapid technological adoption.

As others compete to fill in-demand positions, good employer branding will be vital in determining your success. Many renowned businesses use employer branding as an employer branding marketing strategy. It helps a firm portray itself as a top choice for competent applicants. On the other hand, building your brand is a persistent, long-term process that provides consistent dividends in the long run. So, it’s quite evident that starting earlier will help your organization build a reputation as a great workplace.

What is the purpose of an employer brand?

It is easier said than done to establish a strong employer brand. Identifying and presenting your organization as a desirable location to work for the most skilled applicants takes time. However, if you succeed, you will be able to achieve the goals that you are presently battling. Employer branding is crucial in technical recruitment because:

Helps attract and retain excellent employees

A positive employer brand will make your current employees proud to work for you. Becoming a part of a company with a strong work culture is important for job seekers. Thus, businesses must be mindful of how they portray that environment. Most job seekers will look at your company’s social media accounts before applying, so use them to portray an employee-centric culture and to take advantage of social media platforms and job portals.

Lowers Recruitment Costs

If you have a strong employer brand, candidates will rush to apply for your job postings, allowing you to spend less money on tech recruitment marketing. Why pay for a job board posting when people are already pouring to your careers page? Working for a well-known, reputable firm is vital to many individuals, and if you present your company like this, you will draw more prospects for open roles. This approach becomes even more effective when combined with consent based marketing, where potential candidates opt in to learn more about your company culture and values.

Increases Employee Engagement

When your company adheres to an employee-centric corporate brand, you conduct frequent employee engagement activities. There’s no second thought about the fact that an engaged workforce increases productivity and revenue. On the other hand, a lower employee turnover provides a solid foundation for your organization to attract more qualified candidates for new positions.

Communicate the Value of Your Brand

It’s no secret that top players in the market always dominate when it comes to recruiting top talents. Skilled workers will always prefer companies with strong brand recognition and beliefs. Ensure that your brand value is adequately conveyed to hire the best of the best. Modern job seekers are interested not just in your company’s services but also in intangible resources such as your mission, goal, ethics, and work environment.

Also Read: Building An Employer Brand: Everything You Need To Know

Effects of ignoring employer branding

Inability to win the Talent Competition

Businesses are in a constant war for recruiting talents to acquire highly motivated, experienced, and qualified employees. You’re always at the risk of hiring below-average personnel if your thinking isn’t geared toward attracting the top applicants. Consequently, you lose the fight and end up recruiting employees that lack the necessary talents to propel your business forward.

Attracting Unsuitable Talent

It is related to the previously described danger. Of course, you lose the talent war, but what’s more harmful is that by attracting poorly culturally fit individuals, your company has little chance of surviving in this cut-throat competition. . However, competitors that have effectively applied employer branding and recruited the best and most culturally suitable job prospects will achieve success and successfully build their firms both locally and worldwide.

Employee value proposition

The most common barrier for applicants choosing a new job is a lack of vision about what their day-to-day life may look like at a new company. A clear employee value proposition can assist them in doing so; it informs them of the type of team they will be dealing with and what sorts of activities, career trajectory, work-life balance, and everyday chores they will encounter at the company. These details can assist in building the foundation of a solid employer brand that catches the audience’s attention, piques their interest, and encourages them into your technical recruitment pipeline.

As you move closer to selecting your perfect employee, your EVP becomes more than simply a tool for attracting prospects; it also serves as a clear means of distinguishing yourself from the competition. When applicants are deciding to take a position, a strongly outlined employee value proposition allows them to evaluate different possibilities or job offers on a point-by-point basis.

Job seekers evaluate potential employment opportunities based on the employee value proposition and prefer the one that effectively matches up with their professional goals, has higher advantages, offers more valuable work, delivers the most enticing resources to its employees, and more.

Also Read: IT Recruiting: Strategy and Tips for Success

Which channels can my company use to promote the employer brand?

It’s no wonder that IT talent can be acquired online, and all applicants are nowadays spending time on digital platforms. As a result, social media and digital programmatic advertising are excellent places to begin.
LinkedIn is now the best platform for employer branding, content marketing and recruitment marketing business, but if you’re seeking to market yourself as an employer who wants to attract a younger population, you can consider Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

However, don’t overlook the value of personalizing the tech recruitment process by encouraging recruiters to contact prospects directly or using customized advertisement methods such as LinkedIn emails, GitHub, and AngelList to display openings, workshops, and definitely your employer brand.

Furthermore, you can always go beyond the boundaries to reach out to educational institutions such as colleges. Building a strong rapport with them will provide you with a community of ready-to-graduate people who will be familiar with you as an employer.

How can I measure the success of employer branding?

Some of the employer branding in recruitment metrics that can help you measure the success of employer branding:

Industry Awareness and Perception

The top-level measures of employer branding are:

1. Brand awareness
2. Social media engagement rates
3. Brand sentiment
4. Brand characteristics/associations
5. Branded search impressions

Measuring Candidate Experience

The mid-level employer branding metrics are:

• Hire quality
• Cost per candidate
• Source of hire
• Offer acceptance rate
• Tech hiring manager satisfaction

Measuring Employee Experience

The bottom-level employer branding measures are:

• Employee satisfaction scores
• Employee referral rate
• Employee retention
• Employer site review

Also Read: 4 Steps to Build your Talent Acquisition Strategy

Is it important to have a dedicated employer branding manager?

Obviously, your organization would have an employer branding manager, but this may not be realistic for everyone. The majority of businesses do not have the resources. However, this doesn’t imply that they can’t work on the brand and numerous tasks can be completed without a dedicated individual.

To begin with, any employee can serve as a branding expert when they are supported and encouraged. There are very small firms with fantastic employer branding in tech recruitment because the individuals who work there adore the company’s culture. Begin with small measures, and you will see a significant improvement over time.

How can I promote employer branding with a growing remote-working culture?

• Ensure you provide the dynamics and specifics of your remote work policy in every job posting and job description. Incorporating your remote work policy into each job advertising indicates you support remote employee tech hiring consultants.
• Posting job offers on job sites that resonate with remote employees is an excellent way to represent your organization as one that welcomes them. It indicates your experience with remote work, the perks of working remotely, and your understanding of the prerequisites for a successful remote business.
• Again, social media will indeed be your greatest friend, but you’ll need to be innovative outside the workplace. Instead of advertising your company’s physical presence, such as eccentric office spaces and the entire crew, you must develop ways to capture the emotional qualities of your employer brand. Share staff testimonials and creative content, and take advantage of video technology advancements by posting screenshots of meetings and get-togethers.
• One way to promote employer branding with a growing remote-working culture is to look at what past and current workers share on social media. Encourage employees to talk about their remote work experiences on their profiles so that people get a better idea of what it’s like to work in a remote environment.
• Virtual workplace excursions and executive interviews can also be conducted as part of your virtual orientation program. Just because we’re working remotely today doesn’t imply we’ll be doing so eternally, and new employees need to know what they can expect from the company when they join.

18% of hiring managers state that finding qualified entry-level technology talent has become even more complex over the last year (an 8% increase from 2021). Enter hackathons!

Hackathons have always brought out the best and the most innovative solutions for the most abstract problems. They are a great way to bridge the ever-increasing gap between developers, recruiters, and hiring managers.

Because we at HackerEarth have conducted countless hackathons in the past decade, two points stood out starkly:

• Developers LOVE fighting real-world challenges with hackathons
• Hackathons are immensely popular among companies as branding, engagement, crowdsourcing, and upskilling tools

Ten years of our journey of playing matchmaker for companies in finding the right tech talent, we know exactly how hard the sourcing-to-hire cycle is. The last two years have reiterated the fact that community engagement needs to be at the forefront of every company’s tech recruiting process. On that note, let’s take a look at some of the recent innovative hackathons that we are incredibly proud of 🙂

Also, read: The complete guide to organizing a successful hackathon

Let’s go down memory lane of our 7 most innovative hackathons!

hackCOVID 2.0

In 2020 when covid-19 was at its peak, HackerEarth in collaboration with IIMB launched the HackCOVID hackathon. We saw an amazing response from the community and consequently went on to conduct two more hackathons in this series – hackCOVID 2.0 and hackCOVID 3.0.

This hackathon in particular had two goals, to help industries mitigate the Coronavirus outbreak and to bring out the best developer talent around the world. We asked developers worldwide to come up with the most innovative and unique solutions to tackle COVID-19.

For the same reason, we had several relevant themes in place:

• Healthcare
  • Outbreak management
  • Covid-19 Patient Symptom Screening and Reporting
• Public Administration
  • Home-quarantine tracker
  • Tracing and monitoring
• Economy
• Virtual Learning
• Open Innovation for Covid-19

This hackathon was a massive success with over 700 teams taking part. This event brought out some of the most innovative applications such as “Using Anonymised Mobile Network for Identifying Hotspots and Covid-19 spread”, “Ventilator Monitoring”, etc.

Also, read:How Hackathons Can Help You Attract, Engage, Hire, And Train Top Talent

Pride Hackathon 2020

Yet another hackathon that is a part of our Inclusion and Diversity program. This was the very first hackathon of its kind in India, an LGBTQ+ exclusive hackathon to come up with tech, non-tech, and social solutions to secure internships, and jobs, and of course win other prizes as well.

This was done in collaboration with multiple organizations with multiple themes and sub-themes:

• Technical: Induction process – Streamline the candidate journey (candidate selection, interview process, and pre-onboarding process) to make it free from bias and more inclusive to the LGBT+ community, during the interview process for both the candidate as well as the interviewer.
• Non-Technical: Inclusion at Atlassian – Propose a framework to create a more LGBT+ inclusive environment at the workplace. Your idea might include current challenges, baselines on company practices and policies, and recommendations.
• Social Good: Employment Opportunities – Enable the transgender community to broaden the scope of employment opportunities (For example – by removing bias from the interview).

During the course of this hackathon participants came up with fun and amazing yet practical solutions in every area (tech, non-tech, and social). This was hands-down one of our most fun hackathons!

Missing Hackathon

In my opinion, this is one of the most unique and innovative hackathons held.

People go missing almost every minute around the world with women and children being the main victim, this, of course, is a great cause for concern. This hackathon was conducted to find innovative solutions to locate and rescue missing people.

There were themes included that helped in further breaking down different avenues for searching and rescuing missing people. They were:

• Facial Recognition System – to help global law enforcement agencies identify missing people via facial recognition
• Decentralized Directory of Missing Persons – the creation of a public missing person inventory to help identify missing people
• Search Mapping – this is to figure out and trace the pattern of offenders to locate and save victims of abductions/human trafficking
• Open Innovation – this theme has no boundaries, developers have the option of coming up with any solution they deem helpful.

This event was yet another massive success. In fact, one of the missing people hackathon solutions helped state police in locating and rescuing 2 missing people. How amazing is that?

Live Love Be: AR/VR Hackathon 2.0

Love knows no gender, freedom of rights knows no bounds, and the LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, +) community is the epitome of this thought. In honor of Pride Month, we conducted a hackathon to celebrate the impact and change that the LGBTQIA+ community has made globally.

The proposed themes were:

• Pride – Virtual Events: People all over the world are gearing up to attend the Pride Parade virtually. Participants were given the task of creating the tech infrastructure needed to host the event.
• Open Innovation: Participants were asked to ideate and create a prototype on anything in the domain of AR/VR to help businesses scale.

We created the Live. Love. Be.- AR/VR Hackathon 2.0. to find solutions that will pave the way towards a more inclusive future in tech and the incredible HackerEarth community did not disappoint!

Also, read:Virtual Hackathons: All You Need To Know

ICTs for Indigenous Languages

The gradual disappearance of languages, particularly indigenous ones gave us some food for thought. We had to think of an answer that was unique and innovative. Like always, we turned to our trusty hackathon model to throw up some valuable ideas for this problem.

As part of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2022 Special Track on ITCs and Indigenous Languages, WSIS, UNESCO, in collaboration with other stakeholders co-organized an online hackathon on our platform, inviting all interested stakeholders to ideate and create solutions that contribute to the preservation and promotion of indigenous languages.

Some of the interesting themes were:

• Knowledge: Creation of favorable conditions for knowledge-sharing and dissemination of good practices on indigenous languages.
• Empowerment: Proposing online training, chat rooms, educational games, and solutions to learn indigenous languages, especially for the young generation.
• Preservation: Developing online archiving tools and online dictionaries to access preserve, protect and revitalize indigenous languages

Read the complete case study here – How UNESCO and the WSIS Forum engaged developers from over 70 countries to help preserve indigenous languages

Hack To Enable

Shining the spotlight on the underrepresented sections of our society, it is imperative to talk about how hard people with disabilities have it in the world; and how hard they have it in the tech space.

This hackathon was specially conducted to find unique solutions to help disabled individuals get into any sector. In other words, the Hack To Enable hackathon is an initiative to help specially-abled folks get access to education, and work in any and every industry or come up with unique solutions that will help them lead much better lives.

Solutions can be created under the following themes:

• E-learning – build solutions to help specially-abled individuals learn
• Healthcare – to develop innovative tech solutions to help disabled people live much better lives.
• Wearables – smart watches and similar smart wearables with features to help disabled people
• Transformative transportation – propose innovative ideas or prototypes of travel tech
• Open innovation – here you can come up with your own ideas that you deem helpful toward specially-abled individuals.

The participants of course came up with some great ideas like a fall detection smart wearable, a human-machine interface, and similarly many others.

Also, read: Internal Hackathons: Drive Innovation And Increase Engagement In Tech Teams

Love is love

This 2020 hackathon is a part of our Inclusion and Diversity program in collaboration with Pride Circle. The goal of this hackathon was to create an ML (machine learning model) combined with NLP (Natural Language Processing) and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to assess the sentiments (positive, negative, or random) of quotes and statutes put up on social media.

This hackathon was a unique one and hell-bent on making the internet a safe space for everyone. Considering the unfortunate times that the entire world was facing due to the Coronavirus pandemic back in 2020, the prize money for this hackathon was distributed for the welfare of society.

See you at the next big HackerEarth hackathon!

As 2025 is almost upon us, we have an exciting line-up of innovative hackathons. If you’d like to organize one for your company or are interested in knowing more about this cost-effective way of engaging with developers that can benefit your business then book a demo right here.

We at HackerEarth are excited to announce that the first physical edition of Hire 10(1) held on August 25th, 2022 in Bangalore was a roaring success! We have been virtually hosting this tech conference of (and for) tech recruiters and engineering managers since 2020, and this was the first time we got to meet everyone in person.

For the uninitiated, Hire10(1) is a mini event that is designed to do one thing above all else: share actionable insights to help recruiters and hiring managers build great tech teams. So, if you are in HR or Tech, and are spending a significant amount of your time hiring tech talent, this is one event where you’d get your money’s worth. After all, to recruit the best, it makes sense to learn from the best.

The best thing about a tech recruiting event? The insights. The networking. The brain fodder. And that is exactly why we’ve packaged the biggest takeaways from the event in this article for those of you that have missed attending!

P.S. Live snippets from the event have been captured on this Twitter thread.

How to make your tech hiring process resilient with Hire10(1)

Our CTO, Vishwastam Shukla kicked off the event and spoke about the why, when, and how of tech recruiting. In his words, “When you’re growing, you needed to hire yesterday. Sourcing is not a switch you can flip on. That’s why the first step in recruitment is employer branding. This is also why our hackathon platform has been so crucial. It is a powerful driver of employer branding along with innovation.”

Next up on stage, we had our wonderful keynote speaker Mino Thomas, Senior Director of HR at Adobe. While there were a lot of stories, some philosophy, and several takeaways on the need to have difficult conversations in the post-pandemic world, what stood out to us was, “Build trust. Have focus. And have conversations that make you uncomfortable, or else it’s not a conversation worth having!”

Moving on to our stellar panel, expertly moderated by our VP of Marketing, Alfred Alexander. Kapil Vardhan from Teachmint, Sowmya Malliah from Tekion Corp, Savita Hortikar from ThoughtWorks, Pragya Joshi from Cleartax, and Mohana M D from Standard Chartered had a wealth of information to share.

The conversation centered around how each company and industry vertical has changed and adapted to the whiplash effect of 2020 and after.

Our audience was enraptured by the wealthy exchange of information and ideas going on in the room, as you can see here –

Here are the highlights of the event:

#1 Looking back in retrospect

The discussion addressed how recruiting teams need to go back and assess their tools, and systems, and introspect on their internal processes during the hiring freezes and the post-pandemic lull. It is a blessing in disguise for recruiters to identify gaps in their hiring processes and work on improving them.

#2 Changing your mindset for better hiring

Hiring the right talent, to align with your vision is important, while also trying to evolve with the changing market space, especially in 2022.

Sowmya Malliah of Tekion Corp said, “Tier 2 and 3 colleges are such an underrated source of talented developers. We’ve hired many developers from these colleges over the last year. We look purely at the skill, and it makes matters better.”

Also, read: Create The Perfect Virtual Recruiting Strategy For Universities With These Tips

#3 Creating people-centric HR systems

There is no right way to deal with situations such as recession that lead to layoffs or the Great resignation where people left their jobs in droves. The onus falls upon the HR teams to take care of their people, understand the strengths of existing talent, and help them grow either through upskilling or opportunities that create a sense of challenge. It also goes without saying that you need to ensure all employees leave on a positive note.

Mohana reiterates the fact that “As an HR leader, it pays to stay on track with what skills are relevant, and stay in touch with top talent at your company even after they move on. The common denominator between welcoming an employee and laying them off is the human aspect.”

Also, read: Corporate Compassion In The New ‘New Normal’: Where Do You Stand?

#4 Building resilient tech teams

The hiring space has seen immense change in the last 3 years—from going remote due to the complete shutdown of offices to settling into the sweet hybrid mode of work. Post-pandemic, hiring teams have had to adapt and innovate as a lot of people want the flexibility of working from home. Without this option, the talent pool seems to shrink multifold. People are willing to switch jobs rather than go back to the office full-time.

Pragya also stresses the idea that “Trust definitely needs building because job security is so important to the candidate. They need to trust that they will be needed a few months or years down the road.”

This is the right time to begin building confidence in your existing and new employees. Create a space for them to openly share their fears about their job in the current uncertain market scenario, which helps in strengthening trust in their employers. This in turn leads to robust tech teams that can handle any challenge that comes their way!

#5 Investing in employer branding and engagement

Companies need to define the kind of talent they require, be more present among the people, and create a strong community connection. It is important to nurture talent and build a strong relationship between the company’s values and the employee’s values to create better engagement of employees during this rapidly changing talent ecosystem.

Also, read: Building An Employer Brand: Everything You Need To Know

#6 Focusing on the mental well-being of recruiters

During the Q&A session, an audience member asked the panelists if they thought it was imperative for companies to focus on the mental health of recruiters to create resilience.

Savita Hortikar of Thoughtworks nailed it when she said, “Recruiters need a therapist on speed dial!”

Recruitment as a career can become stressful with or without a pandemic to make matters worse. Organizations need to prioritize work-life balance, now more than ever to help their recruiting teams get some much-needed downtime.

Another important thing to keep in mind is how hiring managers go about sending their requirements to the recruiting teams. Sitting down and discussing the open job role in detail will go a long way rather than simply expecting them to do everything on their own. Be present with them throughout the process instead of playing the number game of getting as many roles filled as possible.

This would help relieve recruiters of a lot of anxiety and stress that comes with the job.

For the whole experience, watch our recording of the event here! See you next year at Hire10(1), until then happy hiring 🙂

The skills gap is real. There’s no way around it and it has only been increasing exponentially. Nearly one-third of employers surveyed in the Future Of Work 2022 report by Monster agree that the IT skills gap has increased from a year ago. 87% of employers say they have trouble finding qualified talent as a result. Also, the acceleration of remote/hybrid work and the heavy dependence on technology has led to different and newer skills being required from employees and employers alike. A McKinsey study shows respondents leaning toward skill-building as the best way to close the skill gaps rampage in this industry. Social and emotional skills like empathy, compassion, and adaptability have been spotlighted. The need to address the skills gap is more urgent than ever. Building a future-ready workforce begins with skill transformations—providing opportunities for your employees to upskill continuously so they are better prepared to handle the rapid changes the tech industry is known for. Wondering where to start? You’re in the right place. In this article, we see what an IT skills gap means, how to identify skills gaps, how to perform a skills gap analysis, and strategies for upskilling your employees. Read on 🙂

What is technology skill gap?

It’s an exciting time to be a software developer. Changes are taking place not only in advanced technologies like net development machine learning, AI, and data science, but also in how we work, emphasizing soft skills like communication, understanding, and adaptability. But here’s the catch—for software development teams to remain in step with the rapid changes in the industry, they must place upskilling at the center of their strategic approach. Over 50% of employees say their employer doesn’t understand their current capabilities. This leads to employers offering the wrong kinds of training or worse, offering no training at all. Before you know it, there will be too big a gap between required and needed skills; productivity will take a hit and employees will feel demotivated. To put it simply, you have a skills gap problem on your hands. A technology skills gap is when your existing workforce’s skill set doesn’t align with the skills they need to do their jobs. How do we bridge this? By conducting a skills gap analysis on an individual, departmental, or company-wide level at periodic intervals. The results of this technology skills gap analysis will help inform training requirements, employee development plans, and hiring strategies.

Also, read: What Top Developers Are Looking For In Their Next Job: A Data-Backed Answer

IT skills gap analysis: A definition

Rapid digitization in the tech industry means that certain jobs will disappear due to automation, while others will change in terms of their core tasks and responsibilities. You should also factor in all the changes brought about by the remote/hybrid work models of today. This is where the IT skills gap widens and job descriptions evolve to better suit work requirements. Enter skills gap analysis—think of it as a planning tool to ensure that your tech team is equipped to meet the demands of your organization as well as adapt to the ever-changing needs of the tech industry. You, as a manager, can uncover gaps in your tech teams, organize employee training plans, and set career development goals. Assess the employee’s (in this case, the developer’s) ability to perform each task to a required level. Determine what skills and knowledge are currently missing in your development teams and which of those skills are essential for your organization’s performance. Then curate individual learning and upskilling paths for each developer on the team.

How to perform a skills gap analysis

Now that we’ve discussed what an IT skills gap analysis is, and why it’s important, let’s dive into how to conduct one:

Define the skills needed for a particular job description

Before you get started with upskilling and training programs for your teams, it’s crucial to decide the scope of your skills gap analysis. If it is at the individual level, then you need to evaluate each employee’s skills against the existing job description of their roles. If it is at a team/company level, focus on whether the team detail-oriented and has the required skills to complete an upcoming project. We are delving into the individual skill sets of in-house developers in this article so that would be the scope of the analysis here. In this case, team leads can help you with uncovering the skills gaps of the individual employees in their respective departments. Based on these findings, you can formulate a tentative plan of action that narrows down the skills gap at your company.

Also, read: Streamline Your Recruitment Process With These 7 Tips

Track market trends to identify key “future skills”

Keep an eye on key trends in the tech industry and what type of skills come to the forefront in 5 or 10 years. This will help you set your target range of skills needed accurately. Make use of skills identification software as a helpful starting point to map the relevant target skills. With the tech industry rapidly evolving, developers and companies alike need to stay abreast of the latest technologies, languages, and advancements in their fields to remain competitive. Evaluate and determine the skills you will need in the future by answering these questions:

• Which jobs could become automated?
• What skill sets are currently on the rise?
• Which currently (not yet defined roles) will your company need?
• What new skills would our employees need to do their jobs well in the future?
• Does the hiring process align with our new skills requirements?

Rank your target skill sets by the level of importance. Assign a numerical value between one and ten for each:

• Level of importance (1-10)
• Level of proficiency in skill required (1-10)

Use this rating as your baseline when measuring your employees’ current skills.

Also, read: Building Future-Ready Tech Teams

Review the current skills of your employees

Identifying your target set of skills will help you to determine your “distance” to those skills. Now that you have your ratings in place, the next step is to evaluate where the skills gaps lie. To measure individual skill levels, you could use:

• Employee surveys
• Skills assessments
• Interviews with employees
• Feedback from 360-degree performance reviews
• Analysis of KPIs for teams and individuals

HR technology for skills management like HRSG, 15Five, Kahuna, Skills DB Pro, and TrakStar can make a skills gap analysis much less time-consuming.

Use data to plan for and close the IT skills gap

By now, you will have a comprehensive list of skills gaps that need to be addressed. Generally, skills gaps are addressed by a combination of two methods: training and hiring. #1 Training to close the skills gap – Assess your employees and create individual learning paths for them that focus on the areas that you’re looking to upskill. Once you have a plan in place, provide the resources to train your employees. The right training can help you close gaps between current and desired skill levels. You can offer:

• Team-level workshops
• Employee mentorship programs
• External certification courses
• Employee skills assessments
• Internal hackathons

We’ve discussed them at length in the next section of this article. #2 Hiring to close the skills gap – If your skills gaps are too expansive to minimize with training, consider hiring contingent workers to bring new knowledge and skills into your company. Up your hiring game by:

• Incorporating rigorous screening of candidates for skills your company needs, into your hiring process. You can use pre-employment coding assessments to ensure your candidates are a good fit for the team.
• Sourcing passive candidates via social recruiting when hiring for niche skills. Use Boolean search strings for better results. Recruiters need to think outside the box if they want to hire the best talent out there.

Also read: The Ultimate Guide To Social Recruiting

Make the IT skills gap analysis an ongoing activity

Solving the skills gap will only work out when you act on the data from the skills gap analysis and insights and bake it into your team objectives. You have to run the analysis on an ongoing basis for it to have maximum impact. Effectively, that means ensuring you build these insights into your approach for talent acquisition, talent reviews, and succession planning, as well as, of course, reskilling, upskilling, and career planning.

What are the reasons for skill gaps within a tech team?

Rapid pace of technological advancements: The tech industry is ever-evolving, with new tools, languages, and methodologies emerging regularly. Training and education systems sometimes struggle to keep pace with these rapid changes, resulting in graduates who might not be equipped with the latest skills.

Mismatched expectations: Companies often seek “unicorns” – candidates who are experts in multiple domains. This unrealistic expectation can create perceived skill gaps when, in reality, specialists with deep knowledge in specific areas are available.

Education system limitations: Traditional education systems might not always align with industry needs. They sometimes emphasize theoretical knowledge over practical, hands-on experience, leading to graduates who understand concepts but lack practical application skills.

Lack of on-the-job training: Companies that don’t invest in continuous training for their employees risk widening the skills gap. As technologies advance, without regular upskilling, even experienced professionals can find their skills becoming obsolete.

Geographical disparities: Tech hubs like Silicon Valley might have a surplus of specific skills, while other regions may face shortages. Companies not open to remote work might find it challenging to bridge this geographical skills gap.

Addressing the tech hiring skills gap requires a multifaceted approach, combining revamped education strategies, realistic hiring expectations, and consistent on-the-job training.

Closing the gap: How to upskill your in-house development team

There is one answer that stands out when asked how to close the skills gap—upskilling. 67% of Indian respondents say their organizations are prioritizing skill-building as reported by McKinsey. Now on to the next question; what specific upskilling methods can you add to best equip your developers with the skills of the future? Here is a mix of internal and external training programs that you could rely on to do the job:

Team-level workshops

Organize internal workshops for all your tech teams at reasonable intervals during which someone from each team shares their knowledge, tips, and tricks for how they resolved some problems. You could also ask them to prepare a presentation and quiz the developers attending these sessions to increase their participation. Another option would be to bring in professional training firms that hold seminars and provide hands-on experience for your developers. Asking industry experts to come and conduct workshops at your company would be a highly engaging and informative experience for your tech teams.

Employee mentorship programs

Pair senior and more experienced developers with freshers so they can pass on their knowledge to them. They can guide and teach junior developers, which also increases teamwork and knowledge transfer. A smart workplace mentoring program improves culture, keeps new hires engaged, and provides a supportive environment for learning.

External certification courses

Set aside a budget for external training courses. Encourage your teams to do courses on Udemy or Coursera that also hand out certificates on completion of the course. There are a variety of courses available for developers to upskill in or learn new skills like Full-stack, DevOps, Blockchain, and so on.

Employee skills assessments

This is where HackerEarth steps in. To be ready for the future is to be intentional about the steps you take right now. As an organization focused on driving innovation continuously, you have to start with your employees. Nurture them, engage them, and provide them with ample opportunities to upskill or re-skill at every stage of their career. HackerEarth’s L&D platform helps employees to assess themselves and identify skills gaps. Once these are defined, you can then curate individual learning pathways that will help your team upskill, grow and be ready for future challenges in the ‘present’. Continuously run employee skills assessments across 41+ programming languages and 80+ skills, and analyze progress with insight-rich reports provided by our platform. You can effortlessly benchmark your tech team’s performance and track their growth.

Also, read: How To Create An Automated Assessment With HackerEarth

Internal hackathons

Keeping your team sufficiently engaged given that everybody is working remotely is crucial for productivity. Our internal hackathons bring different teams together to enhance cross-team collaboration and participate in real-world challenges to brush up on their skills. Doing this will help close the gaps between their current skill level and your desired skill level. Also, your employees are more likely to stick with you because you are investing in their career development and coming up with creative solutions to keep them engaged.

Also read: What Makes Us The Tech Behind Great Tech Teams