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

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“How can we speed our hiring process so that we don’t lose out to top talent?”  This is a question Agile is asked about quite a lot – especially in the last few months.  We blog about this subject frequently and we even wrote a white paper recently that provides four winning talent strategies for hiring in the New IT.  Not to sound like a broken record, but in today’s environment recruiting top IT talent with high demand skills is challenging – for both technical recruiters and IT organizations.

But Agile knows how to speed your time to talent – it’s our tag line for goodness sake!  We’d like to share some tips on how your company can speed time to top talent by speeding your hiring process.

1. Improve/update job descriptions. As recruiters, we find that inaccurate, incomplete job descriptions can be a major obstacle in identifying and recruiting the most qualified candidates. Based on the job description, we’ll submit seemingly qualified candidates to the client, only to find out later (days or even weeks) that the skills/responsibilities outlined in the job description aren’t really what the position entails. It’s during this time that we could have found the perfect candidate if the job description had been more accurate. It’s also during this time that top talent is lost to other companies. Before recruitment of a position begins, make sure the job description reflects EXACTLY what kind of candidate is required to fill the role.
2. Conduct a review of your hiring process. The IT employment market is NOT what it was a year ago. Changes in your hiring process are most likely necessary.  For example, a major computer firm found this out when it examined the number of superstar candidates it was hiring. When they found the number of star hires to be unacceptably low they identified an astonishing fact. Superstars are only on the market for a brief time (usually less than two weeks and sometimes as little as a day). The firms hiring process was so slow that by the time a decision could be made the star candidates were lost to the faster moving competitors and only above average candidates were left to choose from. There are many strategies and methodologies that can be implemented such as Six Sigma that will help establish a clear understanding of your hiring process. This includes reviewing how long it takes to go from step one to step two and so on. After reviewing how much time it takes to get things done, compare it to some benchmarks. At this point, you will probably uncover some significant bottlenecks in the process. The next step is to establish clear goals for how long each step in the process should take, and if possible, tie the process to performance (i.e. performance reviews and bonuses).
3. Make sure the right people are involved in the hiring decision. Although this should be included as part of the hiring process (see above), we think it’s important to call this out separately because the people involved in the decision-making can greatly impact the speed of hiring.  Our experience shows that when the right person/people is involved during the hiring process (i.e. the hiring manager has the authority to make the decision and offer), the process moves forward much more quickly. When too many people are involved (especially when the position is not high-profile), the process can become stifled – and that’s when candidates decide to move on. There is also the problem with who owns the recruiting process. Ultimately, the hiring manager should be accountable for the hire, and this has to be one of his/her top priorities. Most managers have full schedules and struggle to find time to interview/hire new team members. It’s important for them to make time and treat interviews the same as a critical client meeting. If the accountability is not there, then recruiting/staffing does not become a priority, and the time frame for decisions is pushed back further.
4. Speed time of offer.  Studies have found that job offer timing can impact overall job acceptance. Research has concluded that job seekers are more likely to accept employment offers made earlier in the company’s hiring process than later – the highest quality job candidates are available for less than five days!  Therefore, when you find the right person for the job, extend the offer as soon as possible versus waiting to see if a better candidate comes along.  IT organizations that lack flexible and speedy hiring processes risk losing job candidates to those organizations that are able to identify top talent quickly and have the agility to present the offer early in the process. Jeff Furst’s article “Are You Fast and Accurate? Quality of Hire and Recruiting Speed — How can you have both?” provides a practical model on how organizations can automate the candidate selection process. 

The number of hires that are lost due to dinosaur hiring practices is becoming an increasingly critical problem for IT organizations. Increasing your speed of hire will get you higher quality hires.  Remember, most great candidates are on the market for days not weeks. If your company can’t make a speed hire, the likelihood of finding top talent will continue to diminish.

It happened again. One of your top candidates for a job you’re desperately trying to fill just called to inform you that he has decided to accept another offer.  You knew three offers were already on the table, but your clunky hiring process prevented you from making an offer sooner. Now, this highly qualified, highly skilled IT professional is going to work for a competitor.

This scenario is not unusual. In fact, it’s becoming the norm within the technology industry. Industry reports and professional polls like Computerworld’s annual employment survey forecast strong competition for IT workers in 2011. Finding candidates with high-demand skills is challenging indeed. These workers are hard to find since many of them are passive job seekers. But once you do find the right person for the job, too often it’s too late. By the time you’re ready to make an offer, the candidate has moved on.

If your company hasn’t begun to at least define strategies for acquiring top talent in today’s market, you need to start immediately! Agile’s new whitepaper “Four Winning Talent Strategies for the New IT” offers CIOs, hiring managers and HR four strategies (just like the title says) to develop and implement in 2011. These strategies will help IT organizations identify superior performers and speed the hiring process so that you’re in a position to make an offer before the competition does.

Agile invites you to download our free whitepaper, read it and let us know what you think.  Are there other winning strategies your company has in place? Agile hopes you find the information useful, and we welcome your feedback.