How to retain your in-house tech talent

If you're hiring, have hired, or are about to hire tech profiles, you're in the right place. Today, hiring a tech profile has become a real challenge for HR teams.

Developers are one of the professions with the lowest unemployment rate in the world (around 5%) and a high turnover rate. Hiring a strong profile isn't enough anymore — one of your biggest challenges is retaining them.

Here are a few strategies you can put in place to grow the tech culture in your company and keep your best talent on board.

The essentials in 3 points

• Career management for your developers is key to retention at your company.
• Working on your employer brand and the tech culture within your company is a great asset for retaining your in-house tech profiles.
• Regularly survey your tech employees to gather feedback, gauge their satisfaction, and identify what more you could bring to their working life to limit your turnover.

Knowing how to manage your developers' careers

Interest in the company

Retaining your developers starts with managing their careers well, and that begins with hiring profiles who are drawn to your company and who actively want to work for you.

Compensation and attractive perks

Developers also care a lot about the compensation the company offers. Factors and perks (like equipment allowances or retirement savings) are part of every role, with extra weight on salary, including stock and options in the company. Offering a competitive salary is an effective lever for retaining your in-house tech profiles.

Access to bootcamps and training

Beyond these "essentials", today's developer is looking for a number of factors to enrich their career. For example, they may be interested in certain in-house training programs and certifications, or in bootcamps.

The nature of the developer role means the learning is never finished — there's always a new approach, scenario, or technique that can round out their skills.

Strong working conditions

Finally, your employee may want a real sense of engagement at the company. That comes through taking on responsibility (notably access to management roles) but also optimal working conditions (such as remote work or flexible hours).

To retain your in-house tech profiles, take the time to anticipate their needs and expectations. To learn more, check out our article on managing your tech employee's career.

Having a strong employer brand

The employer brand is a very important factor for developers, and especially the tech employer brand.

For two job offers that are completely similar in terms of features and perks, a large share of employees points to company culture as the truly differentiating factor.

Establishing a strong company culture as part of the recruiting strategy is key to retaining your in-house tech profiles. Here are a few measures you can implement with your tech employees to strengthen your employer brand.


Showcase your perks

Defining your employer brand is one thing — showcasing it is another.

To really prove your employer brand to potential employees, you can, starting at the recruiting stage, illustrate it. That happens through photos of your team or your office, but also through video testimonials from your team (developers preferred!).

Communicating about your day-to-day office life and your employees' work environment can be a real game changer for your future developer hires.

That happens on your website, your social media, your careers site, and the other communication channels you use.

Take the time to understand your in-house tech profiles

More specifically, in the communication you build around your company culture, you should lean into the tech culture.

Developers are profiles initially driven by passion for technology and the idea of innovating. That comes through engaging open conversations and sharing experiences and ideas.

You need to set up a work environment that allows this kind of exchange and gives employees broad freedom of expression and creativity in their daily work. So you need to create a flexible, open, and participative environment for the developer, so they can be as comfortable as possible.

Also feel free to look at the networks developers most use, to truly understand their expectations and needs. Going to meetups or listening to podcasts can also be a good way to learn about the tech ecosystem.

That way you can establish a culture conducive to fulfillment and innovation to retain your in-house tech profiles.

Understand the developer role

The developer, by definition, is an employee who will learn throughout their craft, their role, and their career. It's important for you, as a recruiter or employer, to understand the basics, the stakes, and the ways of working in this craft.

Understanding the limits of the developer role upfront will help you identify opportunities to grow that role.

For example, you'll be able to offer them training programs or new tools complementary to their initial training, which will help them grow their skills — to their benefit and yours.

Train yourself to boost your employer brand

Many recruiters report difficulty understanding the technical depth of the developer role. Each profile has its own technical skills and requires different supports or coaching, which means you have to adapt to each one.

To better support your in-house tech employees and assert your employer brand with them, there are training programs of a few hours or days designed for HR teams.

These will give you a primer on the broad strokes of the various developer languages, as well as on the tech project development process.

Bluecoders Academy, for example, offers 5-day bootcamp programs to learn how to attract, evaluate, hire, and retain the best tech profiles. Registrations for the fall 2022 session are open!

These bootcamps are also meeting grounds, designed as sharing communities among different recruiter profiles from various startups and scale-ups. You'll also benefit from the expertise of founders, CTOs, CHROs, and senior tech recruiters during evening masterclasses to extend the learning.

We also offer custom programs tailored to your team's needs.

Company DNA: from implicit to explicit

Making your company culture real doesn't happen overnight. It can take some time, especially if you're after the pure authenticity of your employer brand.

Take the time to align all your employees and, above all, to truly know your company's DNA as an employer.

Concretely, highlight the efforts you make to retain your in-house tech profiles. Stay close to your employees, listen to them, ask them for feedback, and look out for their well-being at the company.

A local culture in a non-tech company

If your company isn't tech-driven, you'll have all the more work to do not to isolate your developer employees. Show your employees that you're ready to invest in their well-being and integration by including them across the company's development processes.

Your goal should be to create an atmosphere where employees want to talk and express what they want. They'll then more easily project themselves over the long term, since they'll feel more involved in the company.

Of course, look out for a strong quality of life at work. Diversify your usual training formats based on what your tech employees are asking for, and equip them so they can do their work in the best possible conditions.

Finally, the sense of belonging comes from your tech employees' shared, collective engagement with the rest of your workforce, around meaningful projects and shared values.

All of this will let you engage and motivate all your talent as effectively as possible.

Talking about your employer brand

Once your employer brand and your tech culture are established, make them resonate! Convey a great image to future candidates and to current employees by being transparent about your team's day-to-day, as well as the standout events at your company.

Take advantage of this digital era to give visibility to your company culture. Be innovative in what you offer profiles, going to meet them on the networks they use, without overwhelming them like they already are.

Offer tech meetups or run a podcast on tech roles. All of these initiatives will support a engineer-first culture and can pull talent toward your company.