If you’re a hiring manager recruiting for specialist IT talent, you’ll know that it’s a tough market globally in Malaysia specifically to find the right candidates for your organisation.
This is a problem for organisations of all sizes, but affects large firms in APAC the most, with organisations of 250+ across the globe facing more than twice as much difficulty filling roles as micro organisations.
The reasons behind this struggle are varied, but 31% highlight a lack of applicants as one of the biggest challenges, and 13% say candidates are expecting more than what businesses are prepared to pay.
So for you to attract the right talent, you should start to remove barriers and plan for a different approaches to the talent pipeline:
Remove Unnecessary Qualification Barriers
We noticed that a high percentage of organisations in Malaysia have traditionally required a university degree or diploma as a basic requirement for all roles. But as the "common" view of what a good education looks like changes, so too must the requirements for new hires.
With that in mind, now is a good time to reassess your qualification criteria. For example, does it really matter whether your Cyber Security specialist went to University if they have all the necessary IT and Cyber Security training?
This isn’t about recruiting less qualified talent – it’s about opening up your talent pool to avoid missing an often overlooked set of candidates.
Look At Alternative Talent Pools
Review your existing team demographics, age range and diversity. Are there any groups which are missing?
29% of organisations in APAC, are looking to target different talent pools to those they have traditionally recruited from, focusing on widening the breadth and depth of individuals they’re pulled from.
As well as giving you access to previously untapped talent pools, increasing the range of backgrounds your talent comes from can help improve employee performance, encourage creativity and drive innovation.
To help avoid subconscious bias when looking to increase the diversity of your team, it’s worth considering a blind CV approach – removing a range of details where appropriate to the role; from the candidate’s name, to academic and education details, to their criminal record.
Upskill Your Existing Talent
For many of the roles you’re looking to recruit for, it’s possible that you may already have the talent you need sitting right under your nose.
With skills development being one of the highest ranked drivers for employees in the workforce, assessing individuals for existing capabilities and transferable skills could be a winning combination – helping to retrain your existing talent and upskill them to plug skills gaps and retain them in your business for longer.
Over half of businesses globally are investing in learning platforms and development tools to build their talent pipeline, up from just 20% in 2014.
It’s clear that businesses in APAC are already taking this approach as 4 out of 10 employers in APAC are investing in learning platforms and development tools to build their talent pipeline, only 1% lower than in 2016.
This approach can also apply to looking externally for talent. Whilst it will require some investment in time and training, looking for transferable skills and learnability in a candidate can help you to access otherwise untapped talent.
For example, training programmes or cources in coding bootcamps from academies such as The Next Academy helps individuals with the relevant coding based foundation training and allowing them to show their potential to learn and progress in the space.
Improve Pay and/or Benefits
It is no secret, pay and benefits continue to be one of the key motivators for talent, particularly for specialist roles in areas such as IT.
If your organisation is competing with other businesses with strong employer brands for the same talent, then a relatively quick fix is to compare your salaries with those offered by the competition.
It’s also worth looking at whether the benefits that you’re offering appeal to alternative talent pools. Which incentives could you offer to target specific groups of individuals that you’re not currently reaching?
With 22% of organisations in APAC looking to improve benefits like increased holiday and new joiner and well-being incentives, this is certainly becoming a popular option.
Hiring a new starter can be a long and expensive process, so it pays to get the right person on-board first time.
From psychometric tests, 360 interviews, to new generation tools like big data scraping, social network analysis and gamification, organisations need to move away from biased intuition, to data based decision making.
If you need help in attracting the right IT talent to your organisation, get in touch today.
