The secret to sourcing ICT skills in a shrinking pool

The increasing globalisation of the marketplace combined with an ever increasing shortage of skilled ICT professionals resulted in large scale changes to recruitment practices throughout the world.

Professionalism, technical competence and the development of world best practice are the hallmarks of successful recruitment consultancies. Organisations hiring staff continue to undergo massive change in striving to be competitive and profitable.

The recruitment industry is gearing up for these changes by developing strategic alliances and global partnering to ensure access to the best candidates worldwide.

But, are South African organisations doing enough to gear up for these changes, asks Abe Gabier, the Business Development Manager at SMC Enterprise.

"The most common complaints I hear from frustrated hiring managers are:

1. There are not enough good skills in the market place;
2. I received hundreds of CVs from ads and agencies with no success;
3. There's not enough money in the budget to hire a top performer;
4. I was desperate to fill the position so I compromised on my standards; and
5. I saw some great candidates in the interview process but lost them to competitor offers."

By partnering with private recruitment agencies, savvy hiring managers can:

* Leverage specialised industry knowledge to streamline their hiring processes from a headhunting perspective (reducing and simplifying the steps in attracting and hiring top talent); the process should treat a candidate like a client.

* Getting creative, thinking out of the box and trying new sourcing techniques and strategies (tapping into the passive candidate pool). Most ads written today are geared towards people looking for work, they are not written to attract people who are currently happy but willing to explore other situations that seem to be better.
* Knowing the job: Use performance profiles to focus on what people need to do, not what they need to have, reducing the amount of good candidates excluded for weak interviewing skills or not meeting a false set of conditions.
* Use of panel interviews to reduce the amount of hoops a candidate has to jump through before joining your organisation.
* Beat the competition by consistently hiring top performers in the same marketplace, with the same time constraints and the same budgets as every other manager.

Certain hiring managers consistently hire top performers and always have their positions filled within a few weeks. Their sourcing methods and hiring processes are structured and systematic, leading to consistent results.

The serious ICT skills shortage on our shores has highlighted several outdated practices in South African organisations. It is only through adoption of global best practices that we will be able to compete globally in attracting, hiring and retaining top South African and international talent.