According to Cybersecurity Ventures in IT Professionals, unfilled cybersecurity jobs will grow by 350% from one million in 2013 to 3.5 million in 2021. What’s even worse is that less than one in four applying for those unfilled cybersecurity jobs are qualified. To top it all off, there has been a wave of resignation coming up and if your company has not already faced it, they might soon have to. This not only makes it difficult to retain existing IT talents but also makes it more daunting to hire fresh IT talent.
How can businesses overcome this challenge Hiring IT Professionals?
If you want to retain existing tech talent, you need to provide them with learning and growth opportunities Increasing conversions on Shopify, striking the best work-life balance, and offering them a career path that can help them climb up the corporate ladder.
On the flip side, if you want to attract new talent, you will have to make your organization more attractive for prospective candidates.
You can also offer them incentives to prospective candidates.
Create partnerships with universities to access a large pool of fresh graduates.
Despite all these hardships in hiring the right IT talent, businesses still end up falling for common hiring pitfalls when hiring IT talent.
The main reason for this is that they don’t know about these hiring traps.
In this article, we will educate you about six common hiring pitfalls you must avoid when hiring IT professionals.
6 Common IT Hiring Pitfalls To Avoid
Here are seven hiring traps to avoid when hiring IT professionals.
Too Many Interviewers
One of the common mistakes businesses make is they send inexperienced and untrained interviewers to interview the candidates.
As a result, they end up losing the candidate.
This is such a common issue that most IT professionals looking for jobs might have experienced sitting in an interview with half a dozen people with only a couple of them knowing how to interview job candidates and ask the right questions.
Sadly, that is not all. The lack of alignment in the organization about the different steps involved in the interview process adds insult to the injury for IT candidates looking for jobs.
Hiring managers must be crystal clear about the purpose of every interview.
All the participants involved in the interview process whether it is the candidate or interview panel should be clear about it too.
They are either overwhelmed by too many interviews or a large interview panel asking them irrelevant questions or lack of alignment.
All these things leave a bad taste in candidates’ minds, forcing them to look for alternative job offers.
Lack of Flexibility
Work-related stress and burnout are major concerns for cybersecurity professionals. They clock in more hours and have to be available for providing support all the time.
To change that, most employees have started applying for jobs that help them strike the perfect work-life balance.
We are also seeing many candidates drop out midway in the hiring process just because the company did not offer them the flexibility of location and timings.
No Role Clarity
Most hiring managers don’t even know which roles they are hiring for and what skills are necessary to fill in those roles.
Due to this, they end up shortlisting profiles that are not relevant and end up wasting their time and candidates’ time.
Organizations can easily overcome this issue by telling their hiring managers what roles they are hiring for and what skills and qualifications they need to look for in prospective candidates’ profiles.
This can help them shortlist highly relevant profiles, which would increase the chances of hiring the right candidate for the job.
Lengthy Decision Making Process
As mentioned above, there is a huge demand for IT professionals because there are millions of unfilled IT jobs. What’s more, the supply of talented individuals is limited.
That is why IT specialists usually get paid a handsome amount in salary and perks.
In such a situation, businesses can not afford to lose out on the best candidates due to the lengthy decision-making process.
Sadly, that is the case. Fast track your hiring and decision-making process instead of prolonging it.
Using One Size Fits All Formula
There are instances when businesses are hiring IT professionals in bulk. That is where they try to use the one size fits all approach. Sadly, that does not work because each job role has its requirements. Don’t try to generalize the process when you are hiring dozens of IT professionals at once.
Create a specific process for each job role so you can hire the best candidates for all the open positions.
For instance, if you are looking for a candidate for managing your buy dedicated server, the requirement might differ from cybersecurity professionals or database administrators.
Educate the HR teams on which skills and qualifications are necessary for which job role, so they can easily pick the right, resumes for consideration.
Prioritizing Timed Tests and Assessments
The growing demand for IT professionals has decreased their patience for companies.
This means that if your hiring process is lengthy and cumbersome with multiple interviews and tests, candidates will drop off and look for other alternatives.
Since there are millions of unfilled positions, finding another opportunity is not difficult for them. That is why you need to avoid timed tests and home assessments.
Keep the hiring process as short as possible and only ask for assessments or interview questions that you need to evaluate the candidates.
This will increase your chances of hiring more candidates in a shorter period.
Which of these hiring mistakes you are still making when hiring IT professionals. Share it with us in the comments section below.
