How Do You Attract Good People?

You create a buzz!

We set about trying to create an enviable workplace culture. I want everyone who comes into our office to either want to work for us or take our practices and approaches and apply them to their own organisations.

We created this by strengthening our digital culture through a collaborative, supportive, mentoring and learning environment that is different to anything they have seen before.  One of our partners, just this week said we have the best environment and facility they have seen in the North East.  

When people come for an interview we need to tell our story and bring alive the experience of working with us.

What attracts Digital Talent?

During our recent hiring activities it’s been interesting to talk to the different candidates about what attracts them to accept a digital job offer including …

• Opportunity to participate in a wide variety of projects for a world class client base
• Upskill through training and hands on experience
• Mentoring from technicians and engineers who can share their knowledge, skills and experience
• Good personal development opportunities
• Access to uptodate relevant technologies, tooling and technology
• Exciting, positive digital culture and environment
• Market rate salary and benefits (usually last on the last of criteria from feedback during this process).

Finding Workers Is Hard Work

It takes a lot of effort and commitment from the team involved in sifting CVs, interviewing, going through the hiring process security clearance and then when they arrive positive on boarding. 

 

As well as the local chapter leads, who were amazing at finding the right candidates, we also had the benefit of our wider talent acquisition team who gave us some great insight and worked tirelessly to identify some amazingly talented people.

We also built some good relationships with a small number of partner companies who helped us identify some talent including Dev Academy, ECR Global, Tek Systems, Hainton and Zenith People and others. 

We played to the strengths of the different partners and allowed them to focus on their areas of speciality e.g. Dev Academy with our entry level, ECR Global with our more senior roles, Zenith People and Hainton with Analytics and specific programming roles and Tek Systems with the more typical Dev Ops and Engineering roles.  

It’s Ok To Show Off (a little bit)

We hosted a number of events during this period to showcase the company, our environment and culture as well as  our work and the opportunities that we could give people including…

• Speed Hiring
• Hackathons
• Stemette events
• Local Industry Interest Groups
• Local Industry Leadership Events 

These events are a great way for us to show the art of the possible for the candidates regarding the client base, the type of work we can offer them and a first hand experience of our culture. 

All of our competitors and industry partners are going through some of the same challenges with filling the digital skills gap.  We hosted a joint event with Zenith People and local industry leaders and technology and community influencers around how we can introduce a digital mindset and opening up people’s interest and appeal towards digital roles.  We hope to be able to join with these digital companies in the region for more events as it was clear there is a lot of collaboration and co-operation we can do as a regional industry to promote tech roles.

Recommend and Return

One of the best recruitment techniques is recommendation and referral. In the last 6 months we have hired over 175 new people and a good number of  those came through referrals from the existing team and new team members.

It is a fact that we will lose people along the way, but in some cases we have managed to bring back some of those who have been here before and left to work for competitors (the grass isn’t always greener).  It has been a great confirmation of how we have developed as an enviable place to work when we have people coming back to join us who had previously left.  To hear how different and much improved things are has been very surprising  as we forget just how much we have developed when you are living it every day. 

It’s Not Too Late

Despite hiring over 175 people, we still have some excellent vacancies.  If you’re looking for a digital role in the North East of England or at some of our other key Digital Transformation locations in the country (North West and London or Hook/Aldershot area) feel free to get in touch and send me a message through this page or Linkedin.