Software developers and other IT experts aren't easy to find, as demand far exceeds the supply of skilled workers. Especially in Munich, startups face competition from a large number of medium-sized companies and corporations when it comes to recruiting. Our guest author Kaya Taner has reviewed the recruiting platform Honeypot and reveals how startups find and attract IT specialists.
The job market is intensifying — the war for talent is in full swing. The market for good IT specialists, in particular, seems to be completely empty. The digital association Bitkom speaks of 82,000 unfilled IT positions in German companies. The situation is often particularly precarious for startups, as they cannot compete with the sometimes very high salary offers for IT specialists. However, with good positioning and knowledge of the IT industry, you can gain an advantage in the race for skilled workers. The most important tips at a glance:
Wait for the right moment
Companies can no longer rely on 50 suitable applicants responding to a job posting, leaving HR to simply filter out the best candidate. Active outreach is essential—most people know this. Therefore, IT professionals receive countless job offers, most of which are wasted effort. The offers simply arrive at the wrong time. But you can also be in the right place at the right time: Honeypot analyses show that IT professionals change employers on average every 21.7 months. So, if you see a suitable candidate on Xing or LinkedIn who's been with the same company for almost two years, you should definitely write to them!
Transparency & genuine interest
In addition to the timing, the content of the cover letter to a suitable candidate is crucial—sounds banal, but is done incorrectly far too often. Most messages about job offers aren't even read to the end. This is often due to clearly recognizable mass mailings in which the recipient's name has simply been changed. This doesn't demonstrate a great deal of interest in the candidate. If you want to stand out from the mass of messages, you should include all the important information about the position—keyword: transparency—as well as personal details. This includes details about salary, location, technologies used, home office options, and the team structure. "Personal details" refers to information about the candidate. HR should look into what the respective IT talents have done so far. What technologies have they already worked with? Are there any clues about the position offered? Are there open source projects that can be viewed and discussed? This allows cover letters to be designed transparently and individually. Such points, which highlight the openness of your company and address the personal preferences of the desired candidate, show genuine interest in the person.
Speed & Overview
One-third of candidates who are offered a position at the end of an application process decline in favor of another offer. Speed plays a key role in this. Long processes, tests, and long wait times for feedback are off-putting and reduce recruitment chances. If there is a coding test, for example, it is important to provide prompt feedback. IT candidates invest their time in this; if they then receive no feedback on such tasks for two months, it is frustrating. The same applies to multi-stage application processes. If the recruitment process includes multiple stages, interviews, and tasks, these should be communicated after the first round at the latest. Applicants should always know where they stand in the application process.
Attract with the right means
Our analyses show that salary is often not the top priority for developers when it comes to job satisfaction. A good team, a good work-life balance, and development opportunities come first. So there's no need to play the salary game when competing with other companies. A fair salary is important, but employees care about much more than just being paid a few percent more than the competition. This can be easily addressed. Home office options are easy to implement and can even mean just a few days a week. Development opportunities also include budgets for conferences and continuing education. Equally important: Offer IT specialists the opportunity to work with new technologies such as new programming languages, or to use and learn the technologies of their choice. If such things are feasible within the company, they should be included in the cover letter, as they are sure to be a promising approach.
About the author
Kaya Taner is an experienced founder. After his successful startup AppLift, he has Honeypot tasked with bringing IT specialists and companies together. The recruiting process is reversed here—companies apply to the top 10 percent of IT professionals. Over 1,000 IT professionals register on Honeypot every week. 100,000 programmers are already in the talent pool. 1,500 customers, such as ProSiebenSat.1, Xing, and even startups, are already expanding their technical teams through Honeypot.
