The IT Worker Apocalypse Is Coming

How Will You Find Qualified AND Self-Motivated Employees?

You’ve got the plan. You know the technology. And your customers are desperate for it. Sounds like the perfect place for a business, right?

Many Information Technology companies are sitting right there – at the nexus of booming profits, a service people need, and the expertise to deliver it.

The problem? Not enough workers.

And the workers they do have are too often disengaged, unmotivated, distracted, or disillusioned for various reasons.

If the IT industry were sitting on a gold mine, the growing IT employee shortage would represent a horde of broken mining equipment. The gold is there, but we can’t get to it.

Report: IT Employees Disengaged

According to Gallup’s 2017 Workplace Assessment report, 67% of employees are not fully engaged with their jobs. They’re not being as productive as they could be. They’re looking for other jobs they think will be better. They’re wasting time on social media.

Disengagement can stem from many causes. But one of them is a toxic or broken workplace culture. There are two solutions to fix this.

First, replace outdated management processes with methods that have proven to re-motivate employees. Two of the most effective methods are mentoring and coaching. People are tired of being placed in jobs and getting no feedback and little direction. They’re expected to just jump in and hit the ground running.

But with the unprecedented pace of change in the IT sector, being able to just ‘hit the ground running’ is becoming a mythical fantasy for most people. If you work for an IT company for any good length of time (as in, a few years), and then switch to a new job, you’ll have new stuff to learn.

Mentoring and coaching of new staff works because it empowers them for success, rather than blaming them for not having mastery of systems that are a little different from their previous experience.

Second, hire better IT employees – especially ones in your management and leadership positions.
Easier said than done, perhaps? Some people just don’t care. They want a paycheck without the work. Or they have bad attitudes. Some people just aren’t teachable, regardless of what degree they earned. And it’s hard to spot these people from a resume or even in an interview. But to operate your business the way you want, you must find a way to avoid letting them in your door. You don’t even want to waste time and energy interviewing them.

How do you keep them out?

If you use a next generation hiring consultant like PainLess Hire, you can screen out toxic and unmotivated employees through pre-testing methods that assess applicants on all the things you wish you could learn in an interview but never can. Things like aptitude for learning (cognitive skills), attitude, and specific job-related skills.

Again, this is especially crucial for people in leadership positions. You need leaders with culture-strengthening attitudes and habits, continuous motivation to learn, and the right skills. Recruiters just focus on the skills, and even with those, they do you a disservice by relying only on resumes and keywords.

IT Worker Shortage – It’s Getting Worse

Disengagement is one thing. But even worse is an empty desk.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that by 2020, there will be more than 1.4 million software development jobs than applicants who can fill them. 1.4 million. Just in the U.S.

What does that mean for your company?

Even if you have a great team of IT employees, other companies will be trying to poach them from you all the time with better offers, irresistible perks, and incentives. Since effective leaders are always the hardest to find, your best leaders will be the first to get offers from other companies.

The Path to a Fully Staffed, Fully Engaged IT Company

With so many options for IT workers, you will need a positive and empowering workplace culture. You’ll need to pay well and give good benefits.

But you’ll need more than that.

You’ll also need a new hiring process. Trusting a recruiter’s computer to sift through resumes and then trying to crack the perfect interview questions isn’t going to get you the staff you want.

Cognitive skills pre-testing is the secret to hiring well and retaining an actively engaged IT workforce.

Why? Because high cognitive skills means that employee will always be learning. You won’t have to drag them to trainings, because they have a natural desire to learn.

Also, they self-manage their productivity and hold themselves to high standards, so you don’t have to babysit them and look over their shoulder all the time.

Fine-tuned testing that focuses on math, reading, and writing skills will reveal which potential employees have the ability to think outside the box and on their feet.

Hiring IT workers with high cognitive ability will lead to a measurable increase in efficiency and will reduce employee turnover. You’ll have a better culture, because you’ll have smarter, self-motivated employees, and more effective mid-level and upper-management leaders.

PainLess Hire Uses Cognitive Testing to Deliver You Top IT Candidates

If you choose to rely on recruiters and networking to staff your empty and underperforming IT positions, you’ll be missing out on the best candidates.

When you use the hiring consultants at PainLess Hire, you’ll be accessing talent at a scope far greater than those outdated methods can deliver.

Here’s a simplified list of how we find the employees you need, while saving you time and reducing your costs (we charge less than computer-sifting recruiters):

Talk about the position so we fully understand what it requires
Do a broad search for candidates (including those working at other firms who aren’t actively looking)
Use cognitive testing to assess attitude and aptitude
Take the top performers
Do one round of interviews, check references, etc
Send a final batch of highly qualified, motivated candidates to you for the final interviewing

The positions you need to use pre-testing for the most are your management and leadership positions. But your other IT specialists should be found using this approach as well.

With PainLess Hire, we guarantee you’ll be thrilled with the employee you choose. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll find you another one at no extra charge.Again, we charge less than recruiters who don’t do pre-testing and who do little more than pull names out of an expensive hat. We have no hidden fees and no ongoing contracts that lock you in to long term agreements.

We just want to find you the best IT employees available, who will stay engaged and become major assets to your business.