Securing tech talent: the heart of the matter?

With digital stakes at the heart of every company, demand for tech profiles has never been so high. In that context, a simple question has come up for every recruiter: how do you secure a tech hire?

If the recruiting process is already an art in itself (on this topic, we can only recommend reading our tech recruiting guide), securing those hires is a problem with its own stakes and best practices.

So how do you keep your tech profiles in such a competitive landscape? What are the best practices to put in place? In this article, discover the stakes and our practical advice for securing your tech hires.

Why securing tech profiles is a real challenge

It won't have escaped you: in a context of growing demand, tech profiles are now a rare and highly coveted resource. Hiring them feels like a real transfer window, where HR teams scramble to offer them working conditions that beat the competition.

Salaries, remote-work options, company culture, growth prospects, work environment… so many parameters companies lean on to attract new talent.

Tech profiles, then, are deeply sought after. As a result, they have great confidence in their ability to easily find a new role if their situation doesn't suit them.

So more than in any other field, keeping a tech profile turns out to be a real challenge.

This question of securing and retaining tech profiles has significant repercussions on the development of your business. Many managers say that the difficulty of keeping their best profiles leads to regular delays on ongoing projects.

The Global Impact Report notes that in France, more than 63% of executives consider the shortage of qualified people on these tech questions has major or moderate consequences on their business and their innovation goals.

In this context, it's essential that you understand what these particular profiles expect and put in place good practices that ensure you can keep them.

That's what we propose to explore in the rest of this article.

What advantages should you offer tech profiles?

As we mentioned, in a hyper-competitive ecosystem, it's on you to offer your tech team members working conditions that maximize your chances of keeping them.

Here's an overview of the main benefits that will help you retain tech profiles.

Remote work

The ability to work remotely is very important to tech profiles. Strongly attached to their freedom, they appreciate the option of getting away from the office and focusing on their projects in an environment that's familiar to them.

The pandemic also democratized the practice, which is now adopted by a large number of companies. Today it's a criterion required by many young tech professionals, one you can't afford to neglect if you want to keep your best profiles.

A degree of schedule flexibility can complement remote-work measures, maximizing the well-being of your tech team members by allowing them to balance their personal and professional lives.

Growth prospects

The desires and interests of tech profiles evolve quickly. It's essential that you understand how each of your talents wants to grow professionally.

Each role having its own subtleties, you have a responsibility to understand the specifics of each one.

You'll need to align the skills and expectations of your tech team with the company's strategy to land on a career development plan attractive to your talent.

Attractive compensation

The most qualified profiles are flooded with offers, each more enticing than the last from a salary standpoint. That trend is on the rise: since March 2020, some candidates have managed to negotiate raises of up to +61%.

Compensation therefore plays a leading role in any strategy to retain your team members. Benefits, like retirement savings, company stock options, or other in-kind benefits, reinforce your appeal.

Make sure you understand your team's expectations by regularly collecting feedback. It's the best way to ensure their satisfaction and adjust certain elements as needed.

Your team will also have the feeling of being heard and that their opinion counts in the company's evolution. A detail that can make all the difference.

Company culture: a central element in keeping your talent

For some, company culture seems like a very abstract concept. And yet it's an important element that occupies more and more space among the requirements of young tech talent.

It's worth pointing out that an attractive company culture rests on simple principles.

First, tech profiles are looking for human relationships built around two cardinal values: honesty and intellectual stimulation.

Honesty means engaging in human relationships based on information sharing and simplicity. In that respect, IT profiles appreciate things being clearly explained.

The work environment in which your team operates also has to be stimulating. That requires regular work from managers to maintain a spirit of exchange, sharing, and team cohesion.

Tech profiles particularly love learning from their peers — sharing best practices is even at the heart of how developers and other IT profiles learn.

So creating an atmosphere built on sharing and exchanging information won't only benefit your team, but also your company's performance.

Beyond these two elements, it's essential that your team members feel valued. Their work environment should give them the freedom to experiment, to take initiative with the trust — and even support — of their leadership.

Despite the very Cartesian nature of these profiles, many tech roles include a creative dimension. You shouldn't neglect that aspect, and you need to give them room to satisfy that creativity.

Finally, employees expect to be directly involved in the company's strategic direction.

Bringing them into the discussion about the company's evolution lets you kill two birds with one stone: value your team and gather constructive input for the development of your business.

To learn more about this, see our guide to understanding how to build a tech culture within the company.

Continuous training: stimulate and retain your tech talent

The vast majority of tech profiles are driven by a strong appetite to learn, sharpened by the constant evolution of technology tools — they always have to stay up to date to keep performing.

Eager to be effective and optimize their productivity, tech profiles are constantly looking for new knowledge and know-how. In that respect, it's indispensable to give them an environment conducive to growing their skills.

Many employees, especially the younger ones, consider that the continuous training offered by their company isn't enough, and that employers should invest more in this area.

Building a continuous training offer adapted to the realities and needs of tech talent can give you a significant comparative advantage.

Especially since opportunities and formats abound to satisfy your team. Courses, conferences, bootcamps, hackathons — the diversity of training possibilities is such that you'll necessarily find a format that matches what your talent expects.

Tech profiles are also particularly attached to certified training that officially recognizes a body of knowledge or mastery of a tool.

Speak the same language as tech profiles

The tech world is a special one with its own codes, vocabulary, and values.

To attract and keep tech talent, it's essential that your teams speak the same language as these coveted profiles. Without that, you're guaranteeing mutual misunderstanding that can only end in separation.

Conversely, by adopting their language, you gain credibility and appeal with these talents. It will also help you better understand the specifics of their roles and what they expect. In the end, it's the entire company that benefits.

At Bluecoders we've designed a "tech recruiter specialist" training specifically dedicated to these challenges. Beyond the goals of hiring and retaining tech profiles, it's the perfect opportunity to exchange with your peers and meet experts on the subject.

Today, it's already more than 152 recruiters trained for a satisfaction rate of 96%. Many ambitious companies have been won over — would you be next?