IT Recruitment Insights from a QA Outsource Company

In the IT industry, the recruitment process is particularly difficult. Due to the frequent lack of needed experts, deficiency in the recruiter’s IT knowledge, and the overall complexity of the hiring processes, enriching your team can be a challenge.

As a QA outsource company, we have done our fair share of filling IT positions for our own business. Hence, we are on personal terms with the hardships IT recruitment can offer. However, we are just as well aware of the solutions and their best implementations that allow companies to find reputable candidates for their needs.

In the present IT market, we feel it is important to share our insights obtained over the years to help you as a decision-maker to accelerate your recruiting efforts.

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What Is RPO and Why It Is Worth Exploring

The IT sector is ever-changing, thus, businesses have to consistently adapt to its realities, and 2022 is bound to present new hurdles. Due to the current IT market trends, where employee attrition is on the rise, remote work preference is up by 56%, and around 200.000 IT positions are not filled, companies are actively looking to implement outsourced recruitment to stay competitive.

RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) involves the transfer (partial or complete) of an employer’s recruitment processes to a third-party professional. Delegating recruitment duties to outsourced specialists presents a range of benefits for your business.

Scalability and Adaptability

RPO service providers focus solely on your company and its requirements. They are able to predict hiring volume alterations and accommodate your needs with no disruptions to the in-house team’s operations.

Increased Internal Team’s Morale

While your IT RPO partner takes care of all the staffing procedures, the in-house team can spend their time on core tasks, e.g. specialized searches, monitoring RPO’s processes and impacts, etc. Easing the pressure of education, expertise obtainment, and administrative work on your HR department allows them to focus on other business aspects and stick to their designated duties.

Enhanced Company Reputation

The hiring process is the first attribute of your business a potential talent will notice, which adds to or subtracts from your company’s reputation. To create positive candidate experiences, high-quality IT recruitment agencies ensure each candidate receives respectable and quality treatment. They pay attention to the IT sector nuances and tailor the hiring techniques to every specialty.

Diversified Talent Base

IT staffing agencies have a diverse professional network, thus can use as many resources as possible to find the best match for you. Additionally, possessing a range of partnerships with different organizations, institutions, and communities lets RPO providers assess all potential options, including finding hidden gems.

Advanced Search

Related to the above, IT recruitment firms follow current trends and recognize what results each platform/method produces. They can direct their attention to most suitable variants right away, thus saving time and offering more balanced hiring decisions. Further, first-class IT RPOs make sure that talent scouts possess tech knowledge to properly evaluate a candidate.

Insight Acquisition

Your RPO team uses metrics to identify what works well and addresses inefficiencies in the recruitment process. Obtaining and distributing such data is important for further work and its facilitation. Moreover, this will help adjust the procedures to attain maximum benefits while hiring.

Leveraging outsource recruitment can increase your organization’s value and efficiency.

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Challenges in IT Recruitment and Their Solutions

Being aware of potential RPO services bottlenecks keeps you informed of what to watch out for. You could also consider our solutions to common issues that can help you arrange your partnership.

Cultural Collision

• Your in-house team and hiring partner not working together on a daily basis can cause them to be out of sync. Business culture and values are unique to each company, and fully grasping all subtleties may present a difficult task.

• A good RPO provider should be able to understand your core vision and mission by spending time getting to know your team, organization, and goals. To learn all your requirements for an employee, your IT recruitment firm should utilize everything that can help them immerse themselves into your business ecosystem.

Paucity of Specific Expertise

• Industry insights are crucial for the selection of reputable candidates. For example, some legal and finance industries possess specific needs that could be missed by a common RPO team. And in IT specifically, such expertise absence is often detrimental. From your side, providing the RPO partner with the means to obtain necessary knowledge on all nuances can be time- and resource-consuming.

• Contrarily, high-class RPOs ensure that they have refined expertise that allows them to effectively search and offer most suitable professionals. Niche and brand understanding must be among the top priorities for outsource recruitment providers to achieve optimal results for your business.

Long-Term Commitment

• In case your RPO partner is well-versed in the industry, still, the onboarding phase can be relatively time demanding. To deliver best services, recruitment agencies need to learn all they can about your business history. Investigating your values, mission and vision, company culture, past triumphs, and even failures is a tedious task that takes time.

• However, RPO’s assessment of your business should not be disregarded as, in the long run, it is highly advantageous for your company. Being rigorously involved during onboarding allows outsource recruitment agencies to find prime talents that could become a permanent addition to your team. In our experience, the duration of the process can be mitigated by RPOs fully dedicating their experts and resources to your needs.

Surrendering Full Involvement

• If you prefer monitoring and engaging in the process of hiring, delegating recruitment duties to an RPO agency may appear stressful. Knowing how complex and important acquiring new experts can be and entrusting this procedure to another party requires confidence in your partner.

• Nevertheless, you should note that staffing companies are poised to assure best results for your business, as this is their main responsibility. And respectable RPOs use trusted talent acquisition strategies that enable locating professionals in the industry. Once you realize the amount of time and resources recruitment firms can save, cooperation will get easier as it continues. Plus, you are free to supervise the process as much as you want via convenient communication platforms.

Need for Communication

• Conversation can prevent and resolve many issues. From conveying your needs to RPOs to determining the frequency of updates on the hiring process – communication is crucial for great cooperation. And your worries regarding the recruitment procedures going on behind another company’s doors are reasonable.

• Yet, working with outsource recruitment firms a priori means giving up some duties to another team. Trust plays an important role in this partnership. We are not talking about blind faith, but being confident in an RPO provider requires preciseness from you and assurance from them. To achieve both, the tell-and-listen approach is one of the top methods for open and fruitful communication. Clearly express your needs, candidate expectations, involvement level, update provision, etc., and observe the RPO’s responses.

You can learn a lot about your RPO partner in such a way. A virtuous recruitment agency will present you with useful information, share their working procedures, and will not give empty promises.

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IT Recruitment Options & Process

Depending on your objective, we can offer several options of IT recruitment services. For example, if your goal is to find a specialist with particular skillset and expertise, the recruiters will work to complete the request. But if you want to build the HR division from scratch or advance in-house processes, we can assist with this task as well. Now, let’s view each option in detail.

RECRUITMENT

Working with us is carried out on a turnkey basis, i.e. without your close control. We take care of each hiring step and report to you the outcomes of each stage. Yet, you are free to be as involved as you like.

Phase 1

Identifying Your Hiring Needs

Familiarizing our team with your candidate expectations and clarifying your needs is pivotal. A meeting with our Head of Recruitment where we learn what person is the best talent for your business is the priority for this step.

Preliminary Assessment

Taking a bit of time to consider IT market/regional realities and determine potential risks lets us inform you of the nuances of the hiring process we see fit. For instance, how many people are available for the position, how long the scouting will take, what expectations the candidates might have, etc.

Contract Development

After both sides have exchanged information, if the data presented is fitting for you, e.g. timelines, budgets, hiring steps, we can start our cooperation.

Phase 2

Recruitment Team Building

Selecting recruitment team experts for you involves smart role distribution to people with the necessary professional and sector knowledge. Sourcer carries out potential candidates’ locating process, recruiter communicates with them, coordinator adds applicants to the database and controls administrative functions. We make sure that each member possesses all data regarding your business and the expertise needed to find your best match.

Presenting Talent Selection

When the recruitment trio completes their search, you will be provided with a list of leading candidates. All applicant information found for each person will be included, e.g. professional history, domain expertise, portfolio, social media, as necessary, etc. Thus, you can be fully acquainted with your options.

Phase 3

This step can be completed by our experts or you can work further with your internal team. Your business interviewing procedures will be applied from our side or we can implement our trusted methods for top talent acquisition.

Shortlisting and Interviewing

A set of candidates found to best match your offer is presented. Further, technical interviews are held to better evaluate a person’s professional knowledge. During our communication, we assess the applicant’s soft skills and conformity with your brand culture.

Expertise Analysis

The candidates are offered a test task (provided by you or compiled by us) that would best demonstrate their skills. Upon request, our tech specialist will be involved in the results’ examination as well in order to gain more insight.

Keeping in Touch

You are delivered the interviews’ synopses and any extra information we gathered to consider the options. We keep the applicants posted on what is happening at the moment and when they should expect a response. This keeps the candidate engaged and prevents sudden decision changes on their part.

Reporting Back

Positive candidate experiences are significant for brand reputation building and sustainability. We provide the applicants with detailed feedback after each interview stage, helping them improve themselves and keeping your company’s credibility intact.

Phase 4

Sealing the Deal

When you have decided on the candidate and established contract terms with them, we will be ready to offer recommendations on how to retain your acquired talent. Suggestions on how to avoid counter-offers and keep the employee satisfied and efficient to ensure long-term cooperation will be available for your review.

RECRUITMENT CONSULTING

Our recruitment team will help you set up the hiring process instead of taking over staffing procedures. In case you want to analyze the effectiveness of your current recruitment practices or implement certain enhancements at any stage, we will advise you on how to best accomplish your goals.

Phase 1

Understanding Where You Stand

Getting to know your present recruitment processes allows us to identify potential pitfalls, aspects that could benefit from improvement, or procedures that should be reorganized.

Phase 2

Assessing Recruitment Department’s State

To better define your needs, we will explore ins and outs of your recruitment division. Holding meetings with each member of the department and compiling their profiles explains to us how efficient they are and how efficient they can be.

Evaluating Current Recruitment Processes

Going over the hiring steps, agents involved, communication modes, etc. demonstrates the overall effectiveness of your recruitment department. We will outline a plan of stages and procedures that should be implemented to achieve maximum potential.

Phase 3

Introducing the Change

Offering candidates for hire (e.g. recruiters/team leads) that allow enhancing the division’s functioning will be up for your consideration. We will identify recruitment tools (ATSs, job boards, CRMs, etc.) that should work best for your company to improve the hiring processes and facilitate the team’s duties.

Increasing Productivity

Ensuring both your team’s satisfaction and high performance is not always easy. We will help you with forming KPI and bonus systems, which ensure optimal outcomes and proactiveness. Designing clear and logical remuneration models will solidify your recruitment department’s dedication.

Structuring Recruitment Approaches

Efficacious development of recruitment processes, from preparing job description to onboarding, aids in smart duties delegation. Our experts will coach your team on first-rate approaches to every hiring step and share relevant IT industry insights.

Establishing Candidate Communication Frameworks

First impressions matter, but they rarely last. Our team will assist your recruiters in designing job descriptions that will make potential hires interested, well-informed, and encouraged. Further, we will help you determine best communication techniques to keep the candidate in good spirit, even if it comes to a rejection letter.

Phase 4

Team Training

We will assist in the process of your hiring team’s education during the new system integration period. Combining each of the above phases into a knowledge acquisition program will be coordinated by us and, if desired, overseen by you.

Combining each described stage ensures full recruitment process coverage. However, you are at liberty to single out the one you think would be most useful for your business needs.

To Conclude

A successful recruiting strategy is one of the pillars of a successful business. When choosing an RPO provider to collaborate with, a thorough evaluation of your options is in order. The aptness of your IT recruitment agency rests on their openness, industry experience, and expertise.

An important aspect that distinguishes our hiring procedures is that each phase involves professionals with ample IT industry knowledge. We have successfully filled 150+ IT positions for our QA outsource business. From QA juniors to department heads, our team is brimming with talented experts, so when it comes to IT recruitment – we know what we are doing.

Whether you are a startup looking to build your brand or an established business seeking out new opportunities, our team will smoothly integrate with yours to realize your vision.