The current digital talent shortage is the worst the industry has ever experienced. The engineering talent shortage is just as severe, if not more so. The lack of these in-demand professionals has left companies scrambling to find talent to remain competitive in the marketplace.
If you have had a top candidate slip through your fingers, you know how important it is to move quickly and make an appealing employment offer. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. However, there are some steps you can take to address the digital and engineering talent shortage.
Refine Your Screening Practices
In this ultra-competitive market, your screening practices must be efficient, agile, and effective. Using antiquated hiring practices makes it impossible to increase efficiency without increasing your risk of making bad hiring decisions.
You must modernize your candidate screening process by implementing skills testing. Skills tests take the guesswork out of hiring by providing quantifiable data about each applicant’s abilities and talents. You can leverage this data to quickly identify top candidates who have the knowledge and skills you need, instead of relying on unreliable subjective methods such as resumes and interviews.
Many skills tests are available to help you address the engineering and digital talent shortages. You can leverage industry-specific assessments like Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering Skills Tests or choose more generalized options like Logical Thinking, Numerical Reasoning, and Spatial Reasoning.
Improving your screening practices will help you make smarter hiring decisions and avoid bad hires, which is critical because bad hires result in lost productivity and damage staff morale.
Skills tests are most effective when used early in the screening process. Your hiring team sends a skills test link to candidates after reviewing their applications. Recruiters can also opt to send skills test links to all applicants automatically and simultaneously review applications and test scores.
Offer Remote Work
During the pandemic, companies were forced to enable their staff to work remotely. Although things have mostly returned to normal, many employees want to continue working remotely. This is no surprise since remote work offers many benefits.
Remote workers do not have to spend an hour or more of their day commuting to work. This not only saves time but is a de facto pay raise as well. They have fewer fuel-related expenses and vehicle maintenance costs.
Offering remote work can help your company attract a broader range of candidates. You can widen your talent pool to include candidates outside your area since location and proximity to your office are irrelevant.
Invest in quality collaboration technologies such as video conferencing software and text-based communication platforms if you plan to offer remote work options or already do so. This will maximize the productivity of your in-office staff and your remote workforce.
Explore Non-Pay-Related Benefits
When facing an engineering or digital talent shortage, it can be tempting to solve the problem by increasing salaries. This approach can be effective if your company’s current pay scale is well below the industry standard. However, boosting your starting salaries can undermine your long-term growth aspirations if you already offer competitive pay.
This is why we recommend offering benefits that are not pay-related. For instance, you can offer flexible work hours or 4-day work weeks. Modern employees still want to be compensated fairly for their talents. However, they are equally concerned with work/life balance. Many job seekers, especially younger ones, seek positions that offer non-traditional hours and flexibility.
Offering flexible benefits such as these will cost your company very little, but it can positively impact staff morale, attract top talent, and improve retention rates.
Upskill
Our final tip for dealing with the digital and engineering talent shortage is to upskill your current staff. If you find the existing candidate pool lacking, create an internal talent pool by offering training and development opportunities.
This is a win-win proposition and pays big dividends because you can fill critical job roles more efficiently, and employees can learn skills that will help them meet their career goals. It also enables you to reduce employee turnover because your staff has an incentive to stay if they know they have the opportunity to grow.
When you provide employees with development opportunities, they will be more loyal to the company. They will realize that you care about their success, not just the company’s bottom line. According to a recent Indeed study, training and development opportunities are among the most desired employee benefits. Almost one-third (32%) of tech workers said training and career development opportunities were the aspects of their job they valued most.
Upskilling offers many benefits. Your first step is to determine future needs. Then you need to assess your staff to identify the knowledge “gaps” they need to address so they can be promoted. This may sound daunting but is far easier than you might expect. You simply partner with a premiere online skills testing provider like eSkill. Then you can administer skills tests to measure your staff’s abilities and design training and upskilling programs based on the results.
Do you want to learn how skills tests can help you tackle your engineering and digital talent shortage problems? Contact us to request a demo.