Onboarding and keeping the best techies
Keren Halperin, VP People, Swimm, shares her take on hiring hi-tech talent, building a solid onboarding process and enhancing the overall employee experience. She previously worked at the startup Namogoo in the Israeli tech space, doubling the team size to 150 employees and reducing attrition by 50%.
Key challenges to growing hi-tech teams
There are many challenges relevant to the companies’ life cycles, the most significant being during growth stages. One example is when people move from being individual contributors to becoming a Team Leader or assuming a management role; in these cases, a common challenge is to change the old perception they have of their role, from being the best professional performer to a manager. Likewise, the transition from being someone’s colleague to now becoming their mentor, guide or having to provide feedback can be a considerable challenge for some, and it is often common for people to struggle with these tensions involved with becoming part of the management team.
The most critical stage in the growth of a team is when a startup scales from the initial few founders and pioneers to a larger group. Managers who were initially doing everything end-to-end are suddenly in the position of a leader, having to build their own teams and find the best people to fulfil the tasks they were doing previously. These managers can sometimes struggle to delegate and let their team make their own decisions. In addition, as more people join their team, managers are suddenly facing new restrictions, like not being able to make decisions on the fly, as more people are involved and being influenced by their decisions, and from that point forward, each change they want to make requires synchronisation and communication.
Halperin noted, “This is such a critical stage similar to ‘sliding doors’ if the manager successfully transitions and embraces the coach role: delegating tasks, communicating well and giving feedback, they will eventually overcome the transition. These managers will contribute to the creation of an environment that is powerful and can attract strong talent. However, if they are not empowering and keep most decisions in their hands, they will struggle to hire strong talent or retain them. Additionally, they will become a bottleneck and eventually will halt progress.”
Why sourcing hi-tech talent is so difficult
For several years now, the primary challenge for managers has been talent shortage. Halperin said, “In the Israeli tech ecosystem, for example, we already have 60 unicorns stretched across a small talent pool. To top that, during June this year, the number of capital investments surpassed the entire amount invested during all of 2020. This means that there is a lot of money, but the talent pool is not growing at the same speed. This is an inherent issue of ‘demand and supply’. In addition, with the gig economy, people can earn money in different ways, so people today have more options, and they are not afraid to take risks.”
HR’s role in finding the right IT talent
In Halperin’s opinion, to find the right IT talent, HR must first build a strong pipe by identifying the audience’s behaviour: including where they look for content, what content they are consuming, how they deliver messages. She noted, “Once you place the channels and what the audience is curious about, you can start to deliver messages. Next is building a solid funnel with well-defined selection criteria and excellent candidate experience. Most people want to feel respected. Last but not least, is moving fast as strong talent won’t stay available for long in a competitive market.”
"A positive attitude should be more important than strictly the performance. Strong performances with poor interpersonal skills eventually prevent success and inhibit creating a good culture in the company.”
Reducing attrition
The top reason that employees change jobs is to pursue career growth. Therefore, you need to start by building an environment where people experience growth and development, are fulfilled and know that their daily job contributes to the customers. In addition, assuming 17% of new hires leave during their first six months, you need to create a great onboarding process where people feel welcomed, know what to expect, and understand the company’s vision and mission. Halperin advised, “During the selection process, a positive attitude should be more important than strictly the performance. Strong performances with poor interpersonal skills eventually prevent success and inhibit creating a good culture in the company.”
Attracting and retaining tech talent
According to Halperin, the biggest challenge is professionalism and the ‘know-how’ of talent acquisition. She added, “It often happens that startups seek and hire people to fill junior positions, many times bringing people with insufficient experience, and they don’t understand why it’s not working. In today’s competitive environment, where hiring is the first challenge, you must know ‘how to play’. You need to embrace marketing practices to identify unique channels, to build a story, to create awareness and ultimately to stand out. Running the funnel is also essential, but without Recruitment Marketing, it won’t work.”
Creating a positive work culture
Halperin identified four practices to create a positive culture at work:
- Leadership: organisations should have a well-defined purpose and brand—why it exists and how it wants to be known. Leaders should map out a course for improvement. Identifying where the company is today and where they want it to be in the future, and more importantly, taking action.
- Managers that embrace the ‘coach’ style and not the ‘boss’ style: the best organisations have leaders who encourage their teams to solve problems locally rather than using top-down commands. Managers should focus their training and development programmes that build local managers and teams’ capabilities to solve issues on their own. Managers should also learn how to identify the team members’ strengths and produce better outcomes.
- Company-wide communication: the best organisations build systems that teach managers how to align with their innate tendencies.
- Accountability: tolerance of mediocrity does not exist in the best organisations. These organisations define and strive for high team performance, and it is clear that a manager’s job is to engage their teams. The best organisations believe that, and they create high-value career paths for individual contributor roles. No one in the organisation should feel that their progress depends on being promoted to manager. The best organisations know there is no meaningful mission or purpose without clear expectations, ongoing conversations, and accountability.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
