Hiring Strategies

Goodbyes are dreadful. Especially, when they come one after the other—from your employees who joined just 6 months back.

“They are just running after a competitive salary.”

“They are just underperformers who don’t have the skills to work with us.”

“They weren’t ready to work 12+ hours.”

Excuses are lame when your employee churn rate is high. Many times, employees don’t leave for a higher paycheck or because they prioritize a healthy work-life balance. They leave because of unorganized company culture, failed growth, and hampered emotional health.

If you picture yourself in this scenario, it’s time to look back at your processes and create strategies that help you retain your existing employees.

In this article, we talk about:

• 10 employee retention strategies
• 4 employee-first businesses to take inspiration from

Employee retention strategies for job satisfaction

Ready to learn the strategies that wow your employees and help you build an ecosystem for employees where work would be fun? Keep reading.

Strategy #1—Create an interactive onboarding process

The next step after the new hire accepts the offer letter—creating a seamless onboarding process.

With an engaging onboarding process in place, employees feel included by the company.

In a general onboarding scenario, companies introduce new hires to the reporting manager, assign them tasks, and share the resources. But the right way to onboard employees requires more education and effort.

For example,

At HackerEarth, new hires are introduced to each department and the work they handle through weekly onboarding video sessions.

To make the onboarding process interactive at your company:

• Set up a meeting where you can introduce the new hire to all the different departments of the meeting.
• Give new hires access to all the relevant resources they need to accomplish their tasks. For example, get them to set up their company email ID and invite them to the company’s Slack channel where all the major communication happens.
• Provide interactive training and immerse the new hires into your work environment. To do this, assign training to team leaders of each department where they talk about how their department functions.
• Encourage the buddy system. With a buddy on the side, the new hire has someone they can rely on and reach out to every time they have concerns.

Strategy #2—Recognize your employees’ hard work

How do you support your employees when they deliver the work—appreciate them or highlight their weaknesses?

Here’s the thing: you don’t always need big paychecks to appreciate your employees.

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For example, Dribble orders short cameos from celebrities to give a shoutout to employees for great work.

A few ways to show appreciation to your employees include:

• Check in with your employees regularly. Talk to them about non-work related things. A simple “how was your weekend” and listening to what they say is a great way to start.
• Celebrate their success with the entire team and highlight the things that you like about them and their work.
• Say thank you to make the employees feel happy and confident and to encourage them.
• Give them non-cash gifts. For example, sponsor a course they have wanted to take for a long time, take them to a fancy dinner, or gift them an exotic trip.

Strategy #3—Give your employees flexibility with their schedule

Along with the different work options, employees want flexibility in their schedules. They don’t want to continuously glare at their computer screen even in a remote job.

Ask yourself:

• Do they want to work remotely?
• Do they want to work from the office?
• Do they want to work from 9-5 or from 12 to 7?
• Do they want to take a break between work and drop their kid at daycare?

Sidenote: Offer your employees a flexible work schedule.

But how?

Here are three ways to introduce a flexible work schedule in your organization:

• Pick a 3-4 hour time slot when your employees are available—for meetings, messages, or time-sensitive tasks
• Offer employees the opportunity to swap one working weekday with a Saturday or Sunday
• Introduce the 4-day workweek policy

Strategy #4—Provide learning and upskilling opportunities

Companies with the motto to constantly empower learning for themselves and their employees grow effortlessly. But the sad truth? Only 40% of companies invest in upskilling their employees, according to a 2022 PwC survey.

By working with an organization, employees aspire for their financial and professional growth.

When you offer them upskilling opportunities, you strengthen their skills.

For example, Workday supports the development of its employees by leveraging its technology platform. In 2021, the company rolled out a skill-based HR strategy that allowed the employees to find their weak areas and work towards the specific skill by connecting them with opportunities within the organization—like gigs, new roles, or extracting skills from experts.

Just like Workday, you can offer upskilling opportunities to employees. Here’s how:

• Organize weekly or monthly training within your organization and invite experts from different departments to share their expertise
• Run educational workshops and invite external experts to share their expertise
• Sponsor a learning program for the employees based on their skills
• Buy an online course, watch it with your team and learn together

Strategy #5—Stick with remote work options

When Apple transitioned from working remotely to hybrid work, many employees started quitting their jobs. Why?

The hybrid policy of the company. In his letter to the employees, CEO Tim Cook shared that employees would be working from the office on set days—Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and can work remotely on the remaining days only if approved by their manager. He also mentioned that the employees will be permitted to work from anywhere for up to two weeks per year.

Because of this strict hybrid work policy, employees started quitting their job as they did not have a remote or location-flexible work option.

Employees love working remotely. According to Flexjobs’ employee engagement report, 48% of employers are maintaining some form of remote work for their workforce.

Bottom line? Remote work will continue to exist.

Even if your company is moving to a hybrid or in-office work model, give employees the option to work remotely.

When hiring for new roles, highlight the different work options in your job description and communication the new hires and employees can choose from.

Strategy #6—Be transparent with compensation packages

Who doesn’t love compensation? And competitive compensation packages play an important role in attracting and retaining employees. Here’s the proof: 55% of employees leave their job for higher compensation, according to Lattice’s SOPs report.

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Many times, it’s the compensation package that makes the employees feel undervalued—because they feel their efforts haven’t been rewarded with the compensation they *actually* deserve.

So make sure you study the salaries other organizations are offering for the same role, check your budget, and roll out the salaries.

Strategy #7—Empower moonlighting

Picture this: your employee works as a web developer during the day and runs a small business selling handmade soaps at night.

Would you be offended at them for making extra income or be happy for them?

Moonlighting has gained momentum in recent times—but in a negative light. Saurabh Deep Singla, HR Officer of UpGrad notes:

However, HackerEarth has a different take on this.

HR Director, Swetha Harikrishnan says,

Employees who moonlight are passionate people and bring in multiple skills making them high-value employees. When employers support their choices, they feel valued and likely to work with the organization for a longer period.

But, the big question for organizations is how to support them while making sure they focus on their primary job too.

The solution? Create permissive moonlighting policies.

Here’s how:

• Set expectations that the employee will consider their day job as the primary job and will not allow other jobs to interfere with the performance of their primary job
• Make sure the employee does not work with your competitor while they are working with you
• Make sure the employee does not reveal the techniques, strategies, and programs they learned in their company either to competitors or any other organization
• Make sure employees get approval from their employer to conduct their moonlighting work

Strategy #8—Provide job security by improving the turnover of the organization

Who enjoys being laid off? Literally, no one! Layoffs happen when the company is reducing business costs, or shutting down.

In both cases, one factor remains constant—company turnover. If a company’s turnover decreases, it impacts employees’ job security.

To make sure employees feel secure, focus on improving the organization’s turnover. For this, companies need their employees’ support. That’s why it’s crucial for companies to educate and be transparent with them.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Educate your employees on how their contribution can help in increasing the business turnover
• Implement open book management practice and share the organization’s financial information with the employees

Also read: 4 Images That Show What Developers Think of Layoffs in Tech

Strategy #9—Practice two-way feedback

Two-way feedback makes space for the employer and employee to improve and grow together. With constructive feedback, employers and employees achieve two things:

1. Employees: They know the weak areas they need to work on.
2. Employers: They know how to make their employees’ experience better at the organization.

At HackerEarth, we ask for feedback from the new hires once they have completed their 15 days of working in the organization. They receive an email from HR and a notification from the bot on Slack where they have to fill out the survey—which they can do anonymously too. These surveys are conducted every month to keep a constant check on employees.

Doing this helps the HR team understand the employee’s experience in their early days.

To make sure the feedback culture keeps moving, encourage each department to give and receive feedback internally.

Here are a few ways how the internal team can conduct feedback:

• Ask your employees the “hero” questions to help them reflect on important moments and understand what it took to reach that point
• Run employee pulse surveys and anonymous QnAs using a reliable pulse survey tool to get your employees to share their ideas and concerns
• Conduct virtual town halls where employees can ask questions, share feedback face-to-face and offer solutions.

Strategy #10—Maximize performance management programs

With a performance management program, you help the underperforming employees polish and improve their weak areas so that they can perform better at work. This is a great way to uplift these employees instead of analyzing them over a one-month period and announcing whether they are the right fit for the company or not.

To ensure yielding the best results with a performance management program, here are a few best practices:

• Set goals with the performance plan. For example, based on the employee’s role, set a goal of 3 months to help them polish their skill
• Monitor the progress of the employee regularly
• Coach them and help them identify the areas they lag on and what steps they can take to be better

4 employee-first companies to take inspiration from

Here are 4 businesses that share how they have been building an employee-first company and community for their employees.

Motivosity: Form employee resource groups (ERGs)

One of the employee retention strategies that Motivosity supports is forming employee resource groups (ERGs).

Logan Mallory, VP at Motivosity says,

Also read: What We Learnt From Target’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategy?

Hable: Be vulnerable with employees

When leaders become vulnerable with their employees and show how they feel, think and function, employees get to know them better—which strengthens their bond.

Rosie Hall, Communications Manager at Hable shares the core values of her organization—honesty, and bravery—which has led them to build a safe space for their employees.

Monterail: Supports emotional well-being

Supporting employees emotionally comes in different phases. You could check in with them by talking about non-work related things and their challenges.

According to the People’s team at Monterail, talking about employees’ challenges and things that may not be working well helps them build a safe space for their people. They further add.

Also read: 7 Ways to Reduce Burnout in Your Tech Teams

HackerEarth: Encourages diversity and inclusion

HackerEarth is an employee-first company that focuses on diversity and inclusion.

D&I is not just another number that our targets have to hit. It is baked into the DNA of our company. We believe inclusion should be placed at the heart of everything we do as a company. The culture here is inherently non-judgemental.

We fiercely champion the cause for LGBTQ+ inclusion from the front by giving our people the correct language to use, asking them to call out behaviors that are not ok, and educating and sensitizing others towards these behaviors. We have also partnered with an insurance company that provides coverage for same-sex partners. We believe in investing time, maintaining an open dialogue, educating people on ‘ally-ship’ and support – and not restricting their education to only the marginalized groups.

We also continuously modify our internal leave policies to better take care of our employees. We added 12 period leave days per year to our policy, which can be availed depending on how the employee feels. Our paternity leave policy has been extended from the usual 5 days to a month—our way of ensuring that our Hacksters and their families can experience the joys of parenthood without any hassles.

No more goodbyes…

You have all the employee retention strategies to build an employee-first ecosystem—focusing on giving back to their employees. Start small. Audit your ongoing processes and strategies and find the areas where you need to rework. Is it communication? Bonding with them? Giving work flexibility? Or, focusing on their emotional well-being? Once you find out the right answer, go back to the retention strategies you read above and start using them as a framework in your organization.

New year. New you. New recruitment trends.

And with this, you need to tweak your ongoing strategies to find the best tech talent. Some trends will continue to stay the same while others will want you to multiply your ongoing efforts with a new approach. But to ensure you do all of this the right way, you need to know the recruitment trends that are being forecasted to turn talent acquisition on its head in 2025!.

Let’s dive in.

Trend #1—Recruitment through social media

Social media has been the north star for recruiters and hiring managers. It’s not restricted to building a personal brand and influencer marketing anymore; also finding quality and targeted candidates. With more and more people joining the social squad, social recruiting will continue to be one of the primary channels for recruiters to source candidates.

Clearly: recruiting via social media is an effective recruiting strategy. Recruiters are seeing the results and this will become more effective with social channels like LinkedIn.

If you are a recruiter leveraging LinkedIn, here’s how you can amplify your efforts:

• Connect with candidates by scanning their LinkedIn profiles and understanding their interests, skills, experience level and so on
• Send them an Inmail asking if they are open to opportunities and sharing the job profile you are hiring for

💡Pro tip: To reach out to super-targeted candidates, make a list of ideal candidates. Engage with their content first or connect with them on LinkedIn and introduce yourself and your company first.

Trend #2—Automation: or ATS- Automated nurturing for resumes

An ATS or applicant tracking system remains to be a savior in the recruitment industry and takes off the load of the hefty manual hiring process. Whether you want to create stronger job descriptions or automate tedious workflows—an ATS can do it all for you; however, recruiters will rely on the ATS only to an extent. They’ll leverage automation and manual efforts to get the best results. When hiring for super-targeted and niche job profiles, recruiters will still have to do a deep dive into their target candidate personas by reaching out to select candidates and scanning their profiles.

Recruiters will need to carry out several recruiting tasks manually if they are hiring for a laser-focused senior or niche role. On the flip side, an ATS works in favor when hiring for junior-level roles.

A simple workflow for carrying out your recruitment process via ATS looks like this:

Created a job posting for a junior-level role → candidate applies for the role → an ATS emailer is sent to the candidate asking for the online assessment → candidate takes the test → invited for the interview process (if the test gets approved).

When this recruitment workflow is conducted by recruiters manually for senior roles, each task remains the same but the workload of screening every profile for different roles lessens which makes the ATS a winner.

Trend #3—Reskilling and upskilling to enhance internal mobility

After the layoffs by big tech giants like Twitter and Meta, it is obvious employees can be laid off at any time, at any stage of employment. However, before laying off the employees, companies follow a layoff plan and a multi-step approach on who to select for the layoff. They look at tenure, certifications, performance reviews, and promotability. Based on these factors, they create a scale and measure the employees on this scale, and then lay them off.

External hires are 61% more likely to be laid off or fired in their first year of service and 21% more likely to leave.

And the common point for these layoffs is performance. If the employees are not learning and upskilling, there will always be a lag in their performance. That’s why you need to regulate programs for your employees to help them upskill and reskill themselves to stay ahead of such situations.

And how, you may ask, do you encourage them to upskill? Offer stipends for certifications or conduct in-house training—from educational programs to personal development programs—all of them help in the growth of the employee.

The key is to keep the employees in the learning loop—which will help you to fill open job roles internally and prepare them for any adverse situations ahead.

Also read: How HackerEarth Made it Through 2 Recessions Without Relying on Layoffs?

Trend #4—Employee well-being and engagement

Employee well-being and engagement have been the highlight for better workplace functioning ever since the pandemic. Candidates are now selective about the companies they want to work with. They even create a checklist of the kind of companies they want to work with. Here’s how a candidate’s basic filter checklist looks like:

• Do I believe in their company’s purpose?
• Will I work with people who inspire me?
• Am I going to learn something I don’t already know?

Candidates are as laser-focused on their choice of companies as are the recruiters on finding the right tech talent. They have switched from *just* focusing on paychecks to companies that:

• Offer career growth, and learning
• Respect their after-work boundaries
• Offer them the flexibility to choose their work options
• Value their emotional and mental health

Here’s the thing: offering employees an annual comp off to give themselves a break from the mental exhaustion of burnout won’t help. It needs to be ingrained in the company’s culture on how to create an employee-first ecosystem.

Trend #5—Employer branding

Employer branding will continue to stay to be a crucial factor in attracting candidates and filling up the roles at your organization with quality candidates. With a solid employer brand, you will be able to showcase your company values and aspirations and drive candidates who don’t want to stay with you for the annual package but for what you are building. However, building such an employer brand needs effort and you need to stay authentic.

To demonstrate your company values to the candidates and attract the best talent, do this:

• Get your employees to talk about the company on social media. For example, ask them to share about a fun activity the company did recently and how it impacted them
• Get ample PR coverage for the initiatives you have contributed to
• Showcase interviews with the leadership team—helps the candidates pick the brains of leaders by watching their videos

Also watch: Creating an Employer Brand That Sticks

Trend #6—Workforce diversification

Work diversification doesn’t just mean what, where, and how people work but also the type of work. Simply put, organizations don’t just rely just on a geographically distributed team but a distributed team with different employment types—full-time employees and freelancers.

With workforce diversification, companies are successful in doing two things: bringing employees from different backgrounds and having employees with specialized skills together.

A good way to amplify workforce diversification is by having a mix of full-time and independent employees, ideally, by following Pareto’s principle of 70:30.

Trend #7—Predictive analysis

Companies will use predictive analysis to audit the skills of existing employees, shortlist them for difficult-to-fill roles, provide them with learning opportunities based on their skills and help them build personalized career pathways for their employees.

Some questions that predictive analysis provides insights to you on include:

• What are your most effective candidate sourcing channels (job boards, social media, referrals, and so on).
• How long does the screening process take and which screening techniques are effective?
• How long does it take to go from the application to the offer letter phase?
• What positions are likely to be needed or become vacant in the future and what will the hiring manager’s needs be?
• How likely is it for a new hire to perform well?
• How long will a new hire stay with the company?
• At what stage do the roadblocks regularly occur, what is their impact and how to fix them?
• Which roles and skills are needed urgently to meet the company’s needs?

Trend #8—AI in Talent Acquisition

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly significant role in modern Talent Acquisition strategies. This section explores the impact of AI on recruitment processes and its growing importance in staying competitive in the job market.

Leveraging AI for candidate sourcing

AI-powered tools can efficiently scan through a vast pool of resumes and job applications, swiftly identifying top talent. These tools analyze not only skills and qualifications but also consider factors like cultural fit, improving the accuracy of candidate sourcing.

Enhancing candidate assessment

AI enables objective and consistent candidate assessments. Through natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms, it evaluates resumes and even conducts initial interviews. This not only saves time but also helps reduce unconscious biases, ensuring fair evaluation.

AI in predictive hiring

AI-driven predictive analytics models can forecast a candidate’s potential success and tenure within an organization. This empowers recruiters to make informed decisions and optimize long-term hiring strategies.

Ethical considerations and transparency

While AI offers numerous advantages, it also raises ethical concerns. Transparency in AI decision-making processes and addressing algorithmic biases are crucial aspects of responsible AI adoption in Talent Acquisition.

Incorporating AI in Talent Acquisition is no longer an option but a necessity for businesses aiming to attract and retain the best talent efficiently and objectively.

Grab the spotlight in 2025 with these recruitment trends

So now you have been through all the 7 recruitment trends that you need to leverage in 2025. Some of these are the trends you have already been implementing while some will require you to analyze and reanalyze your ongoing strategy, see what the other organizations are doing, and take inspiration.

What are you waiting for? Ship your efforts the right way!

Some days ago, we polled our Twitter and LinkedIn community and asked them if they would ever take another job at the company that laid them off. This was the result.

The two years of the pandemic (2020-2022) saw 1100+ companies globally laying off employees. In the first 8 months of 2022, we reached half that number with 500+ companies announcing layoffs in tech in August. The number of employees who had lost their jobs globally stood at 72,900+ at the end of the month.

The massive wave of downsizing has hit every tech sector in the world. Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs have reduced their employee size, with BofA and JPMorgan saying they are being cautious. Meta, Twitter, Netflix, Noom, Wipro, and Oracle are just some of the tech names that have had to let go of their workforce. Nordstrom, Wells Fargo, Beyond Meat, Peloton – almost everyone has had to take these measures to preserve capital.

The question everyone is asking is – didn’t we learn anything during the pandemic?

COVID was a bonafide ‘black swan’ event that defied predictions. However, many economists have been talking about an impending recession for a while now. Despite the warning signals, most of the corporate world ended up repeating the hiring-and-firing pattern that has become the norm after macroeconomic events.

This is what normally happens during every downturn:

1. Companies go into ‘freeze’ mode. Hiring stops, budgets are cut, and perks are canceled.
2. If the company has not planned ahead, the hiring freeze very soon turns into a layoff.
3. When the market starts to rebuild, companies hire overzealously to make up for lost time and effort.
4. This overzealous hiring usually pays off in a V-shaped recession where the markets rebound sharply after a dip. Most recessions aren’t this forgiving, and companies that have hired in a rush may end up having to find ways to cut extra baggage.

Our post-COVID normal followed the same pattern as well. There is no denying that the use of technology boomed during the pandemic, causing every industry sector to adopt and focus on new tech tools.

The overwhelming consensus that ‘every company is now a tech company’ caused a sudden demand for developers. Even as we were all still coming to terms with the ‘new normal’, tech hiring (and hiring in general) burgeoned so much that top-tier talent was able to demand a 100% salary hike in an unprecedented candidate’s market.

All of which led us to this.

Tech hiring has undergone a sea change in the last two years. We have replaced outdated modes of assessment and interviews with new AI-based tools for efficiency. Remote work is the mantra we all live by. While the overall ‘work culture’ in many tech companies has become more empathetic and people-focused, this empathy has still not trickled into the way we handle layoffs in tech.

Also, read: Greeks to Geeks: What Plato Says About Bettering Your Team Culture

Airbnb garnered a lot of ‘awwws’ when CEO Brian Chesky wrote a heartfelt email to employees announcing, and apologizing, for the COVID-induced downsizing. The company even offered outplacement support, and its post-employment care strategy was among the most detailed and comprehensive that American companies were offering at that time.

Airbnb was an outlier. Most layoffs in tech that happened during COVID happened unexpectedly, without warning, and over a Zoom call or two. Reiterating what we stated in the beginning, trust issues are an undeniable outcome of such processes.

In the past decade, Nokia received a lot of praise among the developer community for its outplacement program ‘Bridge’, which was created in 2011 when the company was faced with the harsh choice of laying off employees. The program’s objective — and the metric that Nokia used to gauge success — was the percentage of employees who knew what their next step would be the day they left the company.

Nokia’s program showed the tech world that changes needn’t always be brutal and that employers have a responsibility to their employees and the communities they engage with. Using this philosophy of accountability to create processes for layoffs requires companies to be more transparent than they have ever been before, engage in constant communication with employees and local communities, and build a robust outplacement support system that does not just end with a severance package.

This need for outplacement support was called out loudly by our developer community, too.

So, what’s a better way for handling layoffs in tech?

Let’s begin by accepting that layoffs in tech are hard – for the employee who is losing their job, the recruiter or HR professional who is tasked with breaking the sad news to the team, and the company itself.

Layoffs hurt a company’s bottom line. Facts below:

• A 2012 University of Austin Texas review of 20 companies that had engaged in layoffs found that layoffs had a neutral to negative effect on stock prices in the days following the announcement.
• A related study says that the majority of companies that conducted layoffs were less profitable for up to three years after the layoff.
• A third study conducted by researchers from Auburn University, Baylor University, and the University of Texas shows that companies that conduct layoffs are twice as likely to file for bankruptcy in the next five years than companies that had found other ways to bolster profitability.

Also, read: Fear and Layoffs: How to Cope with Tech’s Uncertain Times

When we polled the recruiters in our community, they unequivocally said that hiring post a layoff is harder, as it affects the company’s branding and sourcing efforts.

So, if you are looking for alternative ways to handle layoffs in tech, or avoid getting to the point where you have to cut down your workforce, then we have some tips for you:

• Avoid reflex hiring: Most companies speed up hiring as soon as they see signs of market recovery. The term ‘hiring frenzy’ is real. Instead of going with the trend, make realistic projections for the team you want to build, and approach your hiring meticulously.
• Hire slightly below your projection: At any given time, the HackerEarth staff portfolio operates at about 90% of what we consider ‘full capacity’ or ‘ideal’. This isn’t understaffing. We have consciously decided to not hire a full house to give ourselves some breathing space and avoid a domino effect when the market changes rapidly, causing internal “accidents”.
• Invest in your team culture: If you’re not hiring specialists for every single role, then you need to staff your team with people who are willing to wear multiple hats and adapt quickly. Note, there is a thin line between hiring talent that is willing to diversify and handle multiple projects, versus overworking your team. If you tread this line carefully though, you can build a robust, multiskilled, and adaptive team that can weather market changes without breaking down.
• Invest in your team culture 2.0: Companies often refer to their workforce as a ‘valuable asset’ when things are going well. It’s ironic that you would let go of your most valuable possession in a heartbeat! Stay people-focused first and forever, so when you have to ask your teammates to step up during a crisis, they do not feel like they are being taken for granted.
• Explore all possible avenues: Job sharing (in which two people fill a single role and take home a 50% pay), furloughs, temporary pay cuts, salary rollbacks – there are many ways to budget and save money that do not involve mass layoffs.
• Plan for crisis: We all love the Google model of workplaces that offer every single amenity one can dream of (and maybe more), handsome bonuses, and whatnot. These are lovely add-ons to our work life, but they shouldn’t become addictions. When Better.com had to lay off about 900 people in 2021, the CEO admitted in an open call that the company could have done a better job of managing funds, which could have delayed – possibly prevented – the mass downsizing. The bottom line: manage your money Better.

It’s time to lay off the layoff!

My sorry attempt at wordplay aside, the way a company handles a moment of crisis says a lot about its overall culture. About 90% of the developers from HackerEarth’s community say that they would look at layoff measures as a reflection of the brand’s EQ. On the other hand, about 21% of the recruiters polled on our LinkedIn handle said that they think there’s ‘not much’ that can be done about layoffs. They are part and parcel of the job and should be treated as such.

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When Gartner surveyed more than 3,500 employees around the world in October 2021, about 65% said the pandemic had made them rethink the place that work should have in their life, and look for personal value and purpose at work. It stands to reason then that employees who think their bosses do not value them would want to look for opportunities elsewhere.

This is precisely the message you send to your employees – and the larger developer community – when you announce a mass layoff willy-nilly, and sans any support systems in place. That you don’t care. And that’s got to hurt your employer brand for sure.

Research shows that job cuts rarely help leaders achieve their goals. More often than not, layoffs are good only for short-term gain, and the cost savings are generally overshadowed by negative employer branding, loss of knowledge, reduced employee engagement, higher voluntary attrition, and reduced innovation. You might save in the short term, but most probably you will see a dip in profits, and your employee engagement, in the long run.

Here’s your chance to be a better employer and prove that the values of empathy and compassion we all talked about so much during COVID were not a ‘black swan’ event unto themselves. Here’s hoping you handle the storm differently than how everyone else is.

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