Solving Your Tech Hiring Challenges with Continuous Development Teams

It’s no secret that the UK is currently in the middle of a recruitment crisis across practically every industry, with job vacancies outpacing unemployment for the very first time. In fact, we recently commissioned the Midas Touch of Talent Report, which takes a deep dive into the reasons behind the current shortage of tech talent in the UK.

In this blog, though, we’ll provide an overview of the biggest recruitment challenges in the tech industry, before investigating how Continuous Development Teams can solve tech hiring problems.

What are the challenges in IT/developer recruitment?

In what has become a candidate’s market, tech teams are encountering significant challenges; some unique to the tech industry, and some being found more broadly in the general working world.

A shortage of available talent vs a wealth of open roles

Too many vacancies; not enough skilled staff. It’s certainly not a problem that’s particular to just the tech and development sector. But given how specialised the skills required are, it’s being felt even more acutely in the tech sector than almost anywhere else. That’s also not helped by…

A lack of specialist recruitment knowledge

So specialised are the roles and skills in the tech world that they’re tricky to recruit for at the best of times – and these are certainly not the best of times. In general, recruiting firms lack the specialist knowledge of what’s being asked for in a developer role, while companies often lack access to the kind of active network of candidates needed to find available tech talent in the first place.

Passive candidates

As if the talent shortage and lack of access to available talent wasn’t enough, the vast majority of potential candidates are sitting on the fence about making a move. Those that are considering it know they’re in the driving seat, and therefore are demanding higher pay with better benefits, while plenty also want hybrid – or even entirely remote – working patterns. If they can’t get those needs met, they’re often content to stay where they are, which only adds to the hiring challenges.

Long recruitment times

Often in the tech world, when you need a new hire you need to bring them in as soon as possible. If you don’t, you can risk falling behind on your development roadmap. So even if you do find the right person and offer them an attractive enough benefits package, they might need to work a lengthy notice period, or your company’s policies might mean you need to put them through a rigorous multi-stage recruitment process. That’s simply not going to help you speed up your development process when you need it most.

Difficulty forecasting recruitment needs

For all of the challenges with finding talent and the time taken for them to move, as many as 85% of talent acquisition leaders say they aren’t actually able to predict their hiring needs with any accuracy. And even with the pandemic easing up and normality returning, that volatility is expected to stick around for at least another 12-18 months.

How Continuous Development Teams can solve the tech talent shortage

Thankfully, there is a short-to-medium term solution to these significant hiring challenges: Continuous Development Teams. But what exactly is it?

What are Continuous Development Teams?

In the tech world, Continuous Development Teams means a company adding to its team with skilled developers on a temporary basis, so that you can flex up on specialist skills within your team in order to meet challenges and deliver a project on time; or simply support your business the way it needs to be.

At One Beyond, we offer a comprehensive Continuous Development Teams service designed to give your team an injection of new talent with the skills you need, at the time you need them.

Isn’t that the same as outsourcing?

Not quite. While both outsourcing and Continuous Development Teams involve looking outside your business for much-needed talent, outsourcing hands the work wholesale to an outside interest. Augmentation, on the other hand, brings the talent to you, literally augmenting your existing team. With outsourcing, you pay for the outcome and the work is done outside of your company. With staff augmentation, the additional team members work with your existing dev team in-house, giving you full control over the entire process.

What are the benefits of Continuous Development Teams?

There are several strong benefits to solving your tech hiring challenges with Continuous Development Teams:

Get tech talent when and where you need it

One great example of how Continuous Development Teams can solve tech hiring problems is when you find you need to add extra headcount in a hurry – and the newcomer needs to have a very specific set of skills and knowledge. While we mentioned long recruitment processes as a possible problem above, that’s never an issue with staff augmentation. When you work with the right dev partner, you can get the right person, working in the right place, to a tight turnaround.

Scale up or down depending on your project needs

Another strong benefit to solving your tech hiring challenges with Continuous Development Teams is you can not only add people quickly, but also scale down again if you find work is completed ahead of schedule, or the needs of the project change unexpectedly. Continuous Development Teams are all about flexibility, and helps mitigate the risk you might otherwise take on hiring extra developers to work in-house yourself.

Maintain full control in-house

As mentioned above, if you outsource work, it gets addressed and managed off-site – away from your sphere of influence. However, with Continuous Development Teams, you not only get the staff you need, when you need them, and get to flex up or down depending on your needs – you also get to feel fully in control and manage the entire process, just like you would if every worker was employed directly by your company. Yet another example of how Continuous Development Teams can solve tech hiring problems.

Save time and money associated with recruiting and interviewing

The last major strength of solving your tech hiring challenges with Continuous Development Teams is that you save all of the time, energy and expense you would usually spend on finding extra staff or even hiring contractors yourself. When you work with a trusted provider, they’ll do all of that for you, meaning you can get back to managing what’s most important: the day-to-day needs of your staff, business, and the project that you’re need those staff to complete in the first place.

Can we help solve your tech staff shortages?

To learn more about how our Continuous Development Teams services can work for you, take a look at our Continuous Development Teams page or get in touch for an in-depth discussion on your business’ or project’s tech talent needs. You can also uncover a more detailed view of the current talent crisis by downloading the Midas Touch of Talent Report.