You may not have a Starbucks in the lobby, provide childcare on site, or offer luxury retreats, but you do have something attractive to offer top job candidates. And it’s your responsibility to make sure they know that. The ability to woo and retain ‘A’ players is one of the toughest jobs for any manager today.

The competition for top talent is fierce. So when you find a potential employee whom you know will be a huge asset to your team, you want to do everything in your power to ensure their answer to your job offer is a resounding “yes.” Below are four steps you should follow to make sure you get your superstar on board.

Step 1: Start with an Effective, Appealing Job Description
Sure, you could hurry and jot down the basic position facts off the top of your head. Or, you can take the time to craft a well-written, thorough description. Get the input of a group or assemble your team to find out what attributes are most important, what behavioral attributes are necessary and what the job really entails.  Does this sound like a lot of effort? It is. But a boring, commonplace description will likely attract mediocre candidates. Taking the time to create a well-written, appealing job description will be a worthy time investment.

Step 2: Pay Attention to How You Talk Up the Company
Instead of reciting the dry historical background of your company, focus instead on what makes your organization interesting and likeable. What sets it apart from others in the industry? While you know to never fabricate stories or stretch the truth, by communicating your company’s value proposition and knowing how to play up its best attributes, you’ll leave no doubt in the candidate’s mind that “this organization is for me.”

Step 3: Keep in Constant Communication with Your Candidate(s)
Sometimes the hiring process can drag out longer than you anticipated due to elements outside your control. That happens. But do not let a great length of time lapse, or the best talent will lose interest and walk away. Create and set a method of regular communication to keep up the momentum and keep your candidate involved and invested.

Ideally, you should make an offer as soon as you’re sure you have a star candidate. If you don’t hear yes right away, stay persistent and proactive until you close the deal.

Step 4: Mind Your Manners
Although this step may seem self-explanatory, it’s worth a reminder to mind your manners: put your candidate at ease, return calls promptly, make calls personally instead of depending on an assistant, be frank and avoid playing games. Don’t forget to thank the candidate for their time. Remember, you’re wooing here, so put forth the extra effort.

Step 5: Get Beyond Compensation
While compensation is of course a significant consideration of the job offer, both parties know there’s more to it than that. What else can you bring to the table that sweetens the deal? Does the company have an excellent recognition and advancement program? Great health plan perks? A first-rate sabbatical or time off program? It’s critical you find out from the candidate what matters most to them during the interviewing process and reinforce what impressed and interested them.

As the Adler Group, a performance-based hiring organization so aptly states, “Don’t use Wal-Mart advertising techniques to attract Tiffany customers.” The same concept goes for Tiffany caliber candidates.

Top candidates are special. Treat them that way. By focusing on this goal and following the steps above, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an employer of choice for the best talent around.

Be Flexible to Find the “Perfect” Candidate

In a perfect world, recruiting a candidate to fit a technical job opening goes something like this: You write the job description with a perfect balance of the job’s “needs” in addition to “nice-to-have’s.” You hand off the opening to your favorite IT recruiting company, sit back, and are soon presented with several pre-qualified candidates with impressive resumes.
After interviewing your top 3 picks, you bring back the most qualified candidate and make an offer which is eagerly accepted. Then you pat yourself on the back for another great hire.

Today, the process of finding top candidates rarely goes that smoothly. This seems to especially be the case when you have a job to fill that requires a rare, competitive set of technical skills.

So what exactly do you do when you’re presented with a list of solid candidates who frankly, just don’t look perfect on paper? To answer that question we have to look further into the age old debate: what’s more important—hard skills or soft skills?

Soft Skills or Hard Skills? What Sets Superior Performers Apart

The first thing you have to do (aside from reigning in your disappointment), is define the hard skills and soft skills required to do the job well.

Soft skills are known as a set of skills relating to a collection of personal, positive attributes and competencies that enhance relationships, job performance, and value to the market. Hard skills are a specific set of trainable abilities needed to carry out the technical requirements of a job.

When it becomes a challenge to find a candidate with the right hard skills, it becomes your job to assess and identify candidates who may not be the most “experienced,” but who have the potential to be the best overall fit with the right technical foundation.

The truth is, hard skills can be learned in school and from books. So if you’re unable to find a very specific technical skillet, find a candidate who is enthusiastic, trainable, and eager to learn. If the skills can be developed with a little training and mentorship, then hiring a solid, intelligent candidate is a smart move.

If You Can’t Find an Exact DNA Match, What Key Skills Should You Look For?

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Why Companies Aren’t Getting the Employees They Need, writer and Professor Peter Cappelli states that companies “need to drop the idea of finding perfect candidates and look for people who could do the job with a bit of training and practice.”

If a candidate is truly talented but doesn’t ideally fit the bill, take a look at their soft skills and think twice before writing them off. According to an article by MSN Career, the most impressive soft skills job candidates can possess are:

1. Preparation
2. Initiative
3. Sense of humor
4. Passion
5. Confidence
6. Professionalism
7. Body language
8. Longevity
9. Communication
10. Attitude

In addition to the traits featured in the MSN article, we’d like to go one step further and contribute the soft skills and characteristics that we’ve seen in superior performers:

• Intelligence: Does the candidate have the ability to apply themselves and what they’ve learned? Can he or she acquire and utilize knowledge and skills?
• Sense of ownership: Great candidates have a good idea of what they’re capable of and how that fits into an organization. He or she should be able to communicate this trait through stories and examples.
• Analytical: Can the candidate grasp and process information quickly? Understanding and applying information in a tactical and strategic manner is an extremely important attribute.

In the end, if you have found a good fit (not a perfect fit) with a candidate who is eager to learn, possesses intelligence and is teachable, then make the hire. Odds are you won’t be disappointed.

The new year feels like a breath of fresh air as IT trends reflect growing economic optimism. While challenges remain, the IT job market is seeing signs of life with increased hiring and slight growth in salaries for IT positions across the board.

Keep reading for recent data on IT hiring trends, and watch for our upcoming Market Pulse newsletter with more in-depth analysis of the IT job market.

IT Trends to Watch in 2012

Janco Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that conducts semi-annual salary surveys reports additional trends to watch in 2012. As competition for top talent grows and compensation begins to increase, IT professionals will see:

• Growing demand for IT executives in mid-sized companies as the recession comes to an end.
• Accelerating hiring of CIOs, with slight increases in  large enterprises and significant demand in mid-sized firms.
• More opportunity for flexible hours and work schedules, viewed as a low cost /  high value benefit.
• In the last 12 months mean compensation across all IT professions has increased by 0.81% (from $77,604 to $78,229), with an increase from  $73,934 to $74,435 in for mid-sized firms and from $81,273 to $81,644 in large enterprises.

Competition for Top IT talent is on the Upswing in 2012.

According to a Computerworld’s annual Forecast survey, (as reported in TechRepulbic), the top  IT skills for 2012 are:

1. Programming and Application Development, including website development, mobile applications and internal systems. 61% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, up from 44% in the 2010 survey.
2. Proactive Project Managers who can anticipate users needs and translate demands for IT staff.
3. Help Desk/Technical Support staff who can help end users with the proliferation of mobile devices and applications.
4. Networking from VMWare and Citrix to virtualization and cloud computing. Diverse projects and emerging trends drive the need to networking expertise.
5. Business Intelligence to capture new opportunities as employers shirt their focus from recessional cost-cutting to strategic investments in technology.
6. Data Center - The move to the cloud has not slowed the need for IT professionals with expertise in data center operations and systems integration.
7. Web 2.0 and end-to-end social media skills will continue to be in demand, from .Net, AJAX and PHP to  HTML, XML, CSS, Flash and Javascript.
8. Security - While demand is down from  the 2010 survey, security remains stays perennial concern of IT executives to protect business investments and customers’ information.
9. Telecommunications - Demand for IP telephony skill continues, and  those familiar with Cisco IPCC call center systems is strong.

Read the full post here: Top IT Skills Wanted to 2012.

Learn More

To stay current on IT staffing trends, read Agile’s quarterly Market Pulse report. Subscribe to this blog for regular news and updates from Agile. Choose an RSS subscription, or get the weekly email using the “Subscribe” box on the top left side of this page.

Are you an experienced, highly-skillled IT professional looking for  a new and exciting career opportunity?  If so, you need to consider partnering with Agile during your job search.  We understand there are many IT staffing agencies to choose from, but none offer the advantages that Agile provides.

Below are 10 reasons why top IT talent should work with Agile as they explore new career opportunities.

1. We are a one of the fastest growing IT staffing companies based in Atlanta, and we have exclusive relationships with many of the leading IT companies in the Southeast – relationships that start at the C-Level.
2. Our recruiters are the best in the business.  Our recruiters average 12 years of industry experience and have established networks with many of the region’s top IT professionals.
3. We only do IT.  We have five core areas that we concentrate and excel in: Project Management, Application Architecture & Delivery, Enterprise Operations, Information Lifecycle Management and CIO Advisory Services.
4. We understand our candidates.  Since we form personal relationships with the talent we work with, we know what they want and we match them with the right client/opportunity.
5. We are a trusted advisor to job seekers. Over 60% of our candidates are people we have worked with in the past or come from trusted sources!
6. Candidates never feel like a number. Our personalized service will make you feel like you are our only candidate for the job.
7. Our recruiters serve as career consultants. We find out your needs; gauge your interest; and only then will we discuss an opportunity that may be right for you.
8. We work well with “passive” candidates. We have a knack for working with top IT professionals who are not actively searching, but have an interest in exploring new career opportunities.
9. You control your job search. We never present your resume without permission. We’ll only submit you to a client after we’ve personally discussed an opportunity, and you agree that it’s a good fit.
10. We know communication is key to your success. That’s why we communicate with you during the entire process. We’ll keep you informed so you know what’s going on each step of the way.

Whether you’re looking for a new IT job now or later on, we hope you choose Agile as your career partner.  Check out our current job opportunities or feel free to submit your resume for future consideration.

Last month, Agile published its Q2 Market Pulse which focused on the increase in IT employment throughout Metro Atlanta and continued confidence in future IT jobs.  Our findings appear to be in-line with IT employment nationally.

Robert Half Technology recently polled 1,400 CIOs and found that 12 percent of companies are planning to increase the number of full-time IT personnel, and half as many are planning cutbacks.  The survey projects a net increase of six percent in IT hiring activity – up two percentage points from last quarter. Agile’s data found IT employment in the Atlanta area had increased 1.4 percent over Q1, and three percent higher from a year ago.

In addition, the survey shows that corporate confidence appears to be on the rise: 92% of CIOs said they are confident of business growth in the next three months. This level of confidence is up five percentage points from last quarter. Our findings on IT job growth only strengthen this level of confidence. Agile found that growth is most dramatic in contract assignments with the number of open assignments growing 75 percent in just three months – up 290 percent since Q1 2010. Contract-to-hire assignments are up almost 10 percent while searches for permanent, full-time IT professionals incrementally increased in Q2 2011. However, compared to Q1 2010 contract-to-hire searches are up almost 110 percent and searches for permanent IT professionals are up almost 42 percent.

The CIOs polled in the Robert Half Technology survey revealed that the most challenging areas to find talent are IT security (18%), networking (17%), data/database management (11%) and help desk/technical support (11%).  In Agile’s Q1 Market Pulse, we identified the skill sets in greatest demand as: network administration (63%), desktop management (50%) and desktop support (43%).   In that issue, many IT enterprises reported they had trouble recruiting information security analysts, database administrators, and computer and information systems analysts last year and anticipate needing more of them in 2011. In addition, the need for web developers, software developers/systems software, computer programmers, and computer systems analysts for the remainder of 2011 was anticipated by the technology leaders polled in our survey.
Regionally, CIOs in the mid-Atlantic plan to do the most IT hiring in the fourth quarter, with 16% of executives anticipating adding staff. From an industry perspective, transportation is the hottest sector for IT hiring.

“CIOs are optimistic but are being careful not to overload their teams with too many projects, given the challenging recruiting environment,” stated John Reed, executive director of Robert Half Technology.  “Right now, companies are focused on the ‘need-to-have’ projects that can enhance security, streamline processes or generate revenue.”

We’re optimistic that the remainer of 2011 will be positive.  Agile’s Q3 Market Pulse will be published later in October.