What is IT recruitment, how does it work, what do you need to know about it? How to effectively find an IT professional? Learn more, we will help you!
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In our article, we will show you what IT recruitment is, and how to do it efficiently. Why do some IT companies have a harder time than others when recruiting IT experts? Should recruitment be done internally or with the help of a specialized agency? - Bluebird answers.
IT recruitment is a part of HR that focuses on choosing the IT expert. As such it requires technical knowledge. You have to understand the job positions and the tasks in every field, but there are few areas as volatile and as developing as information technology.
Information technology contains everything from management to development, testing, operations, through simple and extremely complex positions. To find an adequate IT expert, a serious IT recruitment performance is needed. There are positions and technologies for which it is easy to find a good person, and there are others for which it is nearly impossible.
How to find available and competent experts? Have an efficient IT recruitment process.
For efficient IT recruitment, in our opinion, you will need the following:
Firstly, Knowing the IT positions: What does each position mean?
Knowing the IT tasks: What kind of IT tasks are there, what position they belong to (fundamentally), where else can they belong to, what do they mean exactly?
Knowing the IT technologies: What are the major technologies (platforms, technologies, programming languages, tools, etc.)
Sourcing knowledge: Where and how to find IT prospects efficiently, how and where to reach out to them
Recruitment knowledge: How does a recruitment process build-up, what are the main tasks and at what point do you have to perform them?
And finally, serious experience in all the above
What is the Solution? Internal Recruiting Team or IT Headhunter Agency?
Around 2018 a process peaked in Europe: Bigger companies started to build internal recruitment teams. There were companies where it was a success, for some others it worked for a short amount of time, and there were quite a few companies where it was a failure. Based on what principles do we decide if we should work with an internal team or an IT headhunter?
Aspect 1: IT Recruitment Knowledge
Whereas at headhunter companies the IT recruiters continuously discover new technologies and expectations, it is not necessarily the case on the customer’s side. On the customers' side, they might recruit for the same position over and over again. Here at Bluebird we constantly fill more than 100 different IT positions; as a result of working with these, permanent improvement in the field of IT is unavoidable. According to our experience, the aforementioned perpetual improvement coupled with regular internal IT training provides high-level knowledge in the IT field.
IT knowledge is paramount in IT recruitment. Hence, in our opinion learn-learn-learn. That is the most important.
Aspect 2: Recruitment Fee vs IT Recruiter Wages
In reality, the main reason -amongst others- for companies to build an IT recruitment team is cost-efficiency. It might seem cheaper to employ an IT recruiter internally than to work with a recruiter company. In some cases, it might as well be true. What we are comparing here: full, yearly wages and the sum of all success fees paid to recruiter companies.
According to our experience, many of our customers who stepped on the path of internalization came back to us later. On one hand because of our stable expertise and accountability. On the other hand, because in the case of a good customer-agency relationship, mutually favorable contracting conditions can be drawn up such as lower expenses for the customer and a steady quantity of work for the recruiter agency.
Aspect 3: Reaching IT Experts
IT recruitment has not been about reaching out to active candidates for a long time. The point is not only to find a new job for those who are looking for a new job or to present to our customers' candidates who are looking for a job or a project. No. IT recruitment consists mostly of finding active and passive experts possessing important knowledge in the given area. On the candidate side, to present good companies and projects. On our customers' side to present excellent IT experts.
Every IT expert who does not work at a company where worker protection measures would prevent the Headhunters from reaching them is available in recruitment agencies. Every other IT expert at every other company could be a potential prospect.
Here at Bluebird, we can reach out to almost 40.000 IT experts.
In the case of internal recruitment, there might be much bigger obstacles. Most of the time it is impossible to bring in an IT expert from the competition. Most of our partners would not even want to risk such a conflict. At a recruitment agency, this problem does not exist.
There may be differences in the tool sets used for research. A good IT recruitment company is expected to reach out to a great many candidates using numerous sources. These sources are cost-efficient to use in case of 100 orders, whereas they certainly are not when we need to fill in 5-10 positions. This is why, for a given research, a specialized agency finds more candidates than the customer. Of course! - we could say. That is why we use IT Headhunter companies!
Aspect 4: Trust
Today, in 2021, there will be a more serious struggle for IT professionals than ever before. Many projects do not begin in a normal setting because there is a lack of senior IT professionals who can ensure the project's success.
In this situation, IT companies or businesses in need of an IT professional frequently take it upon themselves to shape their future and build their recruitment team. But, does putting together a quick internal IT recruitment team really solve the IT staff shortage that arises, or is it better to entrust an IT recruitment company, figure out a way to work together, and find the guarantees of common success? We believe in the latter.
