The competition for talent among tech enterprises is heating up and going global. One need only look at Meta’s massive $14.8 billion deal for Scale AI to understand how the industry’s most ambitious executives see the playing field — as one increasingly dominated by the rules of a zero-sum game.
You already know how important it is to attract and retain top talent, of course. You’ve seen up close how valuable rock-star employees can be. You understand that one person can carry many times their own weight.
“It may not be true in a technical sense that 20% of employees add 80% of value for the typical company, but it is the case that some contribute more than the rest,” says Shmuel Chafets, cofounder of Target Global.
Chafets and his Target Global cofounder Yaron Valler have advised dozens of tech leaders on talent attraction and retention. On the attraction side, they encourage them to do these four things at once.
- Boost Your Starting Pay and Benefits
If your top employees’ pay packets aren’t competitive, you simply won’t have a chance to attract excellent employees.
In this context, “competitive” applies on a global pitch. Software engineer salaries are far higher in the United States than the United Kingdom, on average: about 130% higher than the median salary in the US against just 52% higher in the UK. Increasing pay to such a degree may feel foolish if your competitors aren’t following suit, but they may not know (or care) that doing so is vital to attract international talent.
- Appeal to Overlooked Demographics
Another early step you must take is to expand your labor pool by targeting what AIHR calls the “hidden workforce.” This is the approximately 14% to 17% of workers who often fall through the cracks of ordinary recruiting processes. They are retirees who wish to continue working, people who also serve as caregivers to loved ones, neurodiverse individuals, and others.
The “hidden workforce” harbors an incredible amount of talent if you know how to tap it. Consider hiring HR pros who can help, as finding and speaking to “hidden workers” requires different tactics and even skills than interfacing with more typical tech careerists.
- Leverage Friends-and-Family Referrals
With the promise of bonus payments, if you must. As in any other line of business, managing recruiting and hiring costs is important, especially in challenging times. Every successful referral is a costly lead-generation exercise avoided.
- Practice Skill-Based Recruiting
If you have not already dispensed with a traditional hiring process characterized by nitpicked references, elite alma maters and interpersonal connections, do so at once. The world built by (and benefiting from) those standards is dead and buried; it will not return.
Instead, turn to skill-based recruiting, a more meritorious and efficient approach that levels the playing field for capable candidates.
“Skill-based hiring is an approach to recruitment that prioritizes a candidate’s capabilities over their education history,” Workday explains.
Importantly, skill-based hiring may insulate your business against claims of unfair or discriminatory practices. Even if these have no merit, the fact that they’re raised at all can cause reputational problems for your firm.
Hire Slow, Fail Fast
You may be familiar with the saying, “Be slow to hire and quick to fire.” This is good advice for leaders in industries where labor is plentiful and fungible, but less relevant for competitive, all-or-nothing sectors like tech, where speed is vital for successful recruiting.
In fact, a better saying for the new tech normal might be “hire slow and fail fast.” In other words, if you follow the same plodding recruiting process of yesteryear, your company might not be around long enough to judge its results.
