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Are You Doing Enough to Retain Your Top IT Talent?

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Retaining the best talent is one of the most important parts of the recruiting and hiring process. It’s important to be able to attract qualified talent; however, you want to make sure they’ll stay and support your business. This is particularly true for quality IT employees – advancing technology often means there are more job openings than there are qualified applicants. Here are the most important things to consider when working on your retainment strategy.

  1. Salary: What you pay matters. It’s important to make sure that your salary ranges are competitive within the industry and they are regularly reviewed to adjust for cost of living and performance raises.
  2. Employee Engagement: Employees want to stay with businesses who they think are invested in them and care about them as people. Engaged employees are productive, committed employees. What works for engaging employees will vary, but some company initiatives might include a company-wide monthly lunch that updates everyone on the business, paid time off for team volunteering or after-work happy hours. Anything that shows your company is committed to communication and employee well-being in and out of the workplace.
  3. Culture and Environment: It’s important to cultivate the kind of culture and physical environment you know employees want to work in. This doesn’t necessarily mean having a ping-pong room and a zen cave, but getting creative with ways to make work a more engaging place to be can be a good retention strategy. Not every company can afford a slick facility with a gym and spa, but what about a stipend for group exercise classes or monthly on-site yoga? What about offering standing desks for employees to stretch their legs and break up the day in a cubicle? Small changes and perks can make a big difference.

Your talent makes up the foundation of your business and is critical to your success. It pays off to have a retention strategy that will keep your people with you as your business grows and changes.

If you need help attracting and recruiting the best talent – and want some time back to focus on your retention strategy – give us a call today.

What to Do When A Qualified Candidate Interviews Poorly

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Just like incredibly intelligent people can test poorly, sometimes a great candidate gives a bad interview. When a qualified candidate you’re excited to interview doesn’t give a stellar interview performance, it can feel like a major red flag. Here’s how to know whether it should worry you or if you should continue the process.

  1. Consider the Position: Certain people gravitate to certain careers, and some of these personality types can interview better than others. Customer service, marketing or sales professionals, for instance, are often gregarious and outgoing, which serves them in their career path. IT professionals, programmers, and developers – who often spend hours working solo on detailed projects – can be more reserved. This might be a factor in an interview and less of an issue in a day-to-day job.
  2. Check References: If the candidate struggles with conversation under pressure, reach out to former bosses and co-workers. Hearing the perspective of someone else who’s worked with the candidate can help you understand if they’d be a good fit. It’s also a way to help verify an applicant’s resume and experience.
  3. Try Again: If you’re not sure, you can bring the candidate back in for another interview – but this time, change the format or consider having another person conduct the interview. Maybe a video conference is a less-stressful way for a candidate to share their experience or maybe another interviewer with different questions can help you get a better response.

Everyone has bad days, and a bad interview shouldn’t spoil a qualified applicant’s chances of contributing their strengths to your organization – or ruin your chances of connecting with a potentially great employee who can make an impact in your business. Considering other ways to learn about or interact with a candidate can help you make sure you’re not shortchanging yourself.

We can put you in touch with top talent in your field. Get in touch today to start your candidate search.

How to Properly Prepare for the Departure of a Key IT Staff Member

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Without proper preparation, an employee leaving your team can leave your business in a lurch. Planning for the departure of an employee can keep your business running smoothly. Without the right IT staff members in place, it can be particularly challenging for a business to transition without disruption. Here’s how to plan for an exiting employee and how to prepare for their replacements.

  1. Crosstrain: You can’t plan for every employee departure. Some get fired, some leave without notice, some need to take long leaves to care for personal or family matters. One of the best ways you can preplan is to make sure your teams are trained well. Tasking managers with ensuring that their teams are cross-trained on tasks or having your HR team develop training is a great first step in preparing for employee loss and preventing it from affecting your whole business.
  2. Create manuals: Having documented processes in place keeps the engine of your business running even if someone is missing. You shouldn’t find yourself in a position where only one person is trained for a specific task, and having an updated processes manual that covers the important details means that someone can step in during the event of an emergency or unplanned absence.
  3. Ask for notice: If you value your employees, most of them will respect your business enough to give proper notice when leaving. Have a conversation with them to ask if there’s any flexibility in their plans that would allow them to stay on until their replacement is hired and trained.
  4. Ask for input: If your team member was effective, productive and had a positive impact on the business, asking how they feel may help you find another equally qualified and talented candidate.

Find Top Talent

If you’re looking to fill IT roles, RightStone can help. Our industry knowledge and years of experience let us help businesses connect with the best tech talent and build a team that can help them grow and succeed.

Work/Life Balance: How to Help Your Staff Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle

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If you’ve ever heard the expression “work hard, play hard”, then you already know something about the desire for work-life balance. Many employees are more likely to put in greater effort and energy into projects and daily tasks when they have good boundaries between their work and home life, or when their employer gives them the flexibility to manage their personal life. Work-life balance also helps increase employee productivity and ensure better health, as it can lower stress and allow employees better focus.

Here are some ways to encourage a good work-life balance in your office.

  1. Encourage PTO Use:

    Make sure you are cultivating an environment where people know it’s ok to take time off. This might mean leading by example, where managers regularly take days off or vacation time, or it might mean making sure your teams are cross-trained so people don’t worry about their absence impacting the business.

  2. Provide Some Privacy:

    Set up areas that can be used to make private phone calls or where someone can step away from their desk and just take a mental break. Life happens between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. and employees may need to field phone calls from doctor’s offices or their kid’s school. By having space for your team members to take care of personal life details, you can turn down some of their stress and give them a better focus for the rest of the day.

  3. Opt For Flexible Schedules:

    More and more businesses are embracing technology as a tool that lets employees work without being in the office and offering partial remote work. Other organizations offer people flexible start times or hours so they can take care of things outside of work without worrying about punching a clock. Implementing policies like this is an effective way to show employees you care about work-life balance.

Prioritizing your employees is one of the best ways to attract and retain talent. Work-life balance continues to be a top priority among people looking for a job and you can compete for top talent by making sure your applicants know this part of your culture.

Find Top Talent Today!

Are you looking to hire candidates who align with your company values and bring a strong set of skills to the table? We can help you connect with the best IT candidates. Get in touch today to find your next great hire.