Overcoming the Digital Skills Shortage: How Can IT Leaders Keep Bringing in Talent?

The recent pandemic exacerbated this gap, due to accelerating digitalisation, the adoption of new technologies, organisations pausing training budgets and a reduction in university applicants. All of this contributed to both an increasing demand for skills and a decreasing supply of talent available.

Many sectors are currently being affected by the skills gap, with an estimated 12 million UK professionals lacking essential digital skills. However, the tech industry in particular is feeling the strain, and the digital skills gap threatens to stifle innovation and growth across the sector. In fact, it was estimated that there were over two million job vacancies in the tech industry last year.

Of course, it’s not just the pandemic that’s inflating this skills gap. Brexit also played a role in reducing the number of qualified candidates available for hire. Furthermore, there’s a worrying lack of diversity within the industry and vast pay disparities in terms of gender, location and more.

Couple this with the fact that there appears to be a lack of understanding and awareness about what a career in tech might entail, and it’s easy to see why the gap is widening.

What does this mean for tech leaders?

The above has left hiring managers, CTOs and IT directors scrambling to find the right candidates for their team amidst ongoing talent shortages. Their issues are only intensified as they face pressure from the board or from more senior colleagues to not only fill these positions but to do it in the most budget-friendly way possible.

Trying to toe the line between filling roles as quickly as possible and keeping costs down can lead to talent churn.

This rush to find candidates in the most affordable way sees the appointment of too many underqualified employees that require too much training. If not nurtured and supported, this can result in higher staff turnover rates and roles that still need filling. 

Traditional recruitment methods are no longer enough

The reason that so many tech companies are struggling to find the right candidates and bridge the digital skills gap is that traditional recruitment techniques are no longer enough.

You might have moved on from printing ads in the local paper or relying on temp agencies, but if you still think job boards are the cutting edge of recruitment, then you’re in trouble.

These traditional methods might seem like a cost-effective solution, but if they don’t yield results, then your ROI will be disappointingly low, meaning they can actually end up being more expensive in the long run.

Not only this, but you might find that your business is receiving applications from underqualified candidates, leading to underqualified employees needing to be trained in common software and languages. 

However, one of the biggest problems with traditional credential-based hiring is that it doesn’t tell you much about the individual’s qualities or workplace skills. There’s also far more room for unconscious bias in these traditional strategies, only furthering the lack of diversity within the industry.

What is the solution?

As a hiring manager, CTO, IT director or anyone else looking for talented tech professionals, you’re up against what can feel like a series of impossible challenges. But if traditional recruitment methods are no longer enough, then what’s the solution?

The rapid evolution of new technology has led to innovative and modern recruitment tools and techniques. But it needs to be more than just finding elegant new tools to play with. Businesses must re-think their recruitment strategies if they hope to find more efficient and effective hiring solutions.

QA Talent is one of those solutions. 

The QA Talent model

QA Talent’s model focuses on recruiting, training and deploying the right tech professionals for the businesses that need them. 

The QA team take on the hard work by thoroughly assessing candidates using an expertly designed digital assessment from the psychologists at Cappfinity. All successful recruits then undergo an intensive training programme before specialising in a particular skill set, such as DevOps or software development.

After the final assessment and graduation, they are ready to be deployed to businesses that are looking for skilled, qualified professionals to work on tech-based projects.

The benefits of the QA Talent solution

The QA Talent model is unique and adopting this hiring approach and making it part of your recruitment strategy can have a number of key benefits. These include:

• Letting QA Talent handle the recruitment, training and administration processes. This, in turn, can reduce typical hiring risks and costs, making it a more cost-effective solution
• Gaining access to a pool of professionals ready to be deployed as and when they’re needed. This offers more flexible resourcing options and scalability
• Only candidates with the right strengths and potential will make it through the assessment, so there are no time wasters
• Tech specialists are given continued mentorship and their CPD is agreed between QA and the client in order to understand what qualifications or skills they want their talent to work towards. QA then handle all of the training throughout deployment
• Companies can avoid the typical IR35 risks associated with conventional contractors
• Organizations that work with QA take on no risks associated with onboarding the wrong talent, allowing you to try before you buy

How this can complement your existing recruitment strategies

Having access to a pool of trained tech specialists can be a huge weight off the minds of CTOs and IT directors who might need fast deployment for a project.

Plus, QA Talent offers tailored teams, flexible deployment lengths, early termination and the ability to swap out free of charge. It has everything an innovative tech company could need – plus flexibility.

However, this doesn’t mean you can’t continue with your current recruitment strategies alongside the use of unique talent solutions like QA Talent.

Having access to tech specialists can save you time and effort in training and hiring further down the line. Plus, internal recruitment becomes much easier once you have talented, skilled professionals in the workforce.

Make this dream a reality

So, if your company is hoping to overcome the digital skills crisis this year and continue to bring in talented tech professionals, QA Talent could be the ideal hiring solution.

If you’d like to know more about the recruit-train-deploy method or how this model could be beneficial to your company, visit the QA website.