Want to hire? Inspire!

When it comes to hiring the best talents in IT business, salary and typically understood benefits are not enough. There are plenty of good offers on the market, but only as many great developers. The competition among employers is tough and although it’s difficult to say for sure what motivates the highest number of potential workers, one might try to guess.

So here we are, talking about stuff that differentiate a nicely looking potential boss from the best catch you can find.

INVESTING IN GROWTH

The widely understood IT sector is constantly changing, which means that lifelong learning is not just a nice phrase – it’s a necessity. For companies interested in hiring the best of the best, it goes beyond empty promises of some kind of development; the point is in offering challenging projects, mentoring sessions, or learning new skills that happen to be desired on the market.

Standing still in a rapidly evolving environment equals being left behind. There was a moment in history when being good at one thing and one thing only was perfectly enough to get a dream job, but since then the meaning of “keeping up” has drastically changed. When thinking about being employable in the future one needs to keep in mind that expectations will change over time and while being good at one thing is a nice thing, at some point it might become difficult finding a project where that one, precious skill will be really valuable.

That said, growing doesn’t necessarily mean being promoted every other month or getting some kind of soft-skills training (nothing wrong with that though), but it’s closer to obtaining new knowledge, or being taught by respectable specialists in their area, possibly participating in conferences organized around the idea of learning from one another.

People who are already acknowledged in the industry and at the same time talented in their field of expertise, might not be interested in just using their existing skills or performing similar tasks faster – even if it sounds really comfortable and safe, it doesn’t erase the need to grow as engineers and improve in general.

AUTONOMY AND WORK/LIFE BALANCE ARE BASICALLY TRUST

When thinking about the C-19 pandemics the one thing that really pops out is how employees became really good and at the same time comfortable with the idea of working remotely. Which brings us to the conclusion, that there might really be very little point in spending time on one’s way to/from work, waking up earlier or just working in a traditionally understood office in general.

We found out that, in many cases, work can be easily performed from home and some of many undeniable benefits of this are the comfort of working autonomously and being able to navigate between work and life better. Basically – it’s all about the nice feeling of being trusted, that one can and will perform their tasks, because they work for the company and not somehow against it.

Moreover, having autonomy is just better for morale. It allows one to take breaks when they are needed, plan one’s own work and use time more effectively. Another thing is that trusting your employee is a really nice and decent thing to do, that will probably lead to both sides having a relationship full of mutual respect. Micro-managing might be a deal-breaker for many of your potential top talents.

THE INTERVIEW IS NOT ABOUT THE RECRUITER BEING SMART

A funny thing that comes up quite often in discussions about interviews is the scenario when the recruiter shows off a little too much and for no actual reason. For instance instead of talking about projects and code they focus a lot on things like definitions or soft skills or dealing with clients even if there is literally nothing about customer service in the job description in question.

It looks like the recruiter doesn’t care about the work and the whole point of the meeting is to pin out the candidate and find things that they don’t know even though for whatever weird reason they should.

The thing is, if you can’t respect your candidate and you become famous for having really weird interviews, don’t expect having top quality programmers banging on your door.

SUMMARY

If you find yourself in desperate need for top talents, be a good partner for them. Inspire them to learn and give them plenty of possibilities to become even better at their job. Trust them and let them operate without unnecessary supervision that brings no value to their performance. And finally – make some effort and try to make a good impression during the interview, it’s not just their job to present themselves nicely.

Author: Cezary Dmowski, CTO, Co-owner at ITSG Global