10 Ways IT Recruitment Differs from Other Industries

Careers in the tech industry require specialised skills and qualifications not commonly found in other sectors. As a result, IT recruiters need to understand the technical requirements of various roles, particularly since the title of each position often hides the niche skillset that candidates are expected to possess to fill that vacancy. 

IT recruitment is a vital component of many companies' long-term business strategies, especially when it comes to meeting the high-volume staffing demands that project work can entail. Businesses must be able to attract IT talent, but this requires committing time to understanding the unique challenges facing candidate acquisition within the market and the legislation surrounding contract work within the industry, which can take resources away from other business-critical activities.

This is where a specialised IT recruitment agency can step in—recruiters will communicate directly with candidates and engage with online communities, professional networks and specialised job boards to access the professionals with the right blend of skills and competencies for the role. With remote jobs in IT on the rise and candidates coming to employers with niche requirements for career progression, utilising the services of an IT recruiter can help to navigate the challenging process of talent acquisition.

This article explores ten ways that IT recruitment differs from recruitment in other industries, highlighting how organisations can combat the IT talent shortage through the services of an expert consultant, who can help to set technical interview questions, address the growing demand for remote jobs in IT, and help to construct interview questions to determine cultural fit.

If you’re interested in learning more about how IT recruitment can help your organisation to effectively source and retain candidates, see our guide to recruitment process outsourcing for an in-depth exploration of how an IT recruiter can provide expert embedded HR and talent acquisition support.

1. IT Recruitment Experts Understand the Competitive Job Market

Given the fast pace of developments within the tech job market—with new mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs happening each day—staying up-to-date on the upcoming challenges within the IT industry is a full-time job. With the cost of a poor hire rising to 30% of a successful candidate’s first-year salary, businesses looking to secure talent expose themselves to significant risk if they don’t pay close attention to their hiring strategies.

IT recruitment consultants conduct in-depth market research and analysis to understand and proactively address organisations’ anticipated hiring needs, helping their clients to stay competitive when it comes to acquiring the talent that can empower their products with a fresh perspective. 

In addition, recruitment consultants within the IT sector will maintain strong connections with other organisations within the industry, attending events and conferences, building relationships with professionals, and staying informed on the languages, stacks, and tools set to disrupt the tech ecosystem. 

IT recruiters can always benchmark salaries and benefits for the organisations contracted for their talent needs, ensuring they can attract and retain high-quality candidates.

2. Technical Interview Questions and Assessments are Crucial

Compared to other industries, IT recruitment is unique in its heavy emphasis on the technical knowledge and skills that candidates present. As a result, experts in hiring for the tech industry will develop a deep understanding of the sectors they recruit for, enabling them to accurately assess the skillsets of the professionals they communicate with, allowing them to speak on the same level as these potential new recruits, ensuring that an organisation is well-represented. 

IT recruitment consultants will partner with clients to understand the core competencies and technical skills needed for a vacancy, regardless of the level of seniority the role entails. With this information, they’ll collaborate with an organisation’s existing staff to develop the technical interview questions and assessments needed to measure candidates’ abilities.

Often, this takes the form of coding challenges, used to evaluate candidates’ proficiency in the languages that are required to complete the day-to-day tasks of that role. At the same time, the interview techniques that IT recruiters utilise prioritise candidates’ problem-solving abilities—with ongoing assessments such as probationary periods and work trials ensuring that any new hire can perform well in their role.

3. Keeping Up-To-Date on the Latest Developments in the Industry

IT recruitment professionals will pay close attention to the fluctuating salary trends, skill requirements and hiring practices within the tech industry. 

Their day-to-day research tasks will see them looking to understand average salaries and how these figures change for each specific location they support with their recruitment services. This can help them to advise their clients on competitive remuneration packages for a given role.

Similarly, tech consultants will always be looking to improve their hiring practices and produce technical interview questions to accurately assess candidates, meaning that they gather and evaluate data on how long it takes to fill open positions, understand interview processes which are valued at market-leading organisations, and address the ways in which companies can retain their new hires once they’ve been onboarded. 

They’ll also be looking closely at their client’s business through on-site visits and meetings with senior leadership to understand how to best construct interview questions to determine cultural fit, a crucial aspect of ensuring that their placements work well.

A large part of the role of an IT recruitment expert will see them discussing the challenges facing talent acquisition within the industry with business leaders. This research can help them address the growing demand for candidates with expertise in cloud computing or cybersecurity and advise their clients on emerging opportunities and areas of focus—valuable insights within the fast-paced computing environment.

4. Recruiting for Niche Skillsets Amidst the IT Talent Shortage

The talent shortage of appropriately skilled IT professionals remains one of the biggest challenges facing tech businesses in 2023. This is particularly valid when recruiting cybersecurity professionals and software developers, with over 70% of digital leaders noting that skills shortages are preventing their organisations from keeping up with the pace of evolution within the industry.

IT recruiters are helping to solve the IT talent shortage by ensuring that job requirements are being tailored to the talent pool that is available, increasing the likelihood that organisations can find the right candidate for their roles—or understand how they need to re-assess their roles to match the candidates that they can attract. 

At the same time, IT recruitment consultants assist their clients with the difficult task of sharing their employer brand with candidates. This is often overlooked during the hiring process but is essential for attracting the top talent by highlighting the company’s values, culture and benefits, differentiating businesses from their competitors. 

Once staff have been recruited, the next challenge is keeping them on board—IT recruiters can help develop the learning and development programmes that increase career mobility within their clients’ businesses, reducing staff turnover and inspiring the creation of a positive and supportive working environment.

5. Utilising Passive Candidates to Address High Demand

By conducting talent mapping exercises, IT recruitment experts are able to identify passive candidates that are a good fit for the specific skills and attributes required for a vacancy. Whilst these candidates may be more senior and looking for remote jobs in IT to match their expertise, having in-depth knowledge of the talent landscape for the wider sector is invaluable for business leaders.

Understanding the available talent within a specific industry or geographic location—as well as the requirements and ambitions of that talent—can help connect organisations with candidates who may be a good fit for future roles. This is even the case if they were outshone by other candidates on technical interview questions, for example, since a recruiter will always feed back to their passive candidates and encourage them to enhance their skills.

IT recruitment consultants also utilise referrals to tap into networks of passive candidates—much like recruiters working in other industries—but, given the independent nature of professionals working within the sector, these referrals can often significantly impact recruiting for niche roles, particularly where benefits and remuneration are more competitive than the industry average. At the same time, referrals can help recruiters to understand how well a potential hire will work with a team, even before they’ve had a chance to pose interview questions to determine cultural fit.

6. Helping to Set Up Distributed Teams and Remote Workers

In a 2022 study on the workforce of the future, Upwork noted that remote-first organisations were least impacted by the effects of the “Great Resignation”. Only 31% of remote-first companies highlighted that staff turnover negatively impacted them, compared to almost half of the organisations prioritising on-site work.

The talent pool that IT recruitment consultants draw upon will have a number of candidates with proven experience working in a remote or distributed team and can supply candidates that are better equipped and require less support to work in a virtual environment. Their interview techniques for these roles will assess candidates’ communication abilities and capacity to collaborate and manage a personal schedule, helping to ensure hires can maintain high productivity.

IT recruiters will also provide their clients and candidates with the best practices surrounding remote or hybrid work, suggesting project management tools and collaboration software that can ease new hires into the working practices of their client’s organisation. With remote jobs in IT on the rise, they can also highlight the best performance metrics to monitor and report on staff success—helping their clients to establish processes for managing geographically distributed teams.

7. The Importance of Cultural Fit

A well-known brand or respected product or service is no longer enough to attract the best talent in the IT industry. Companies looking to address the IT talent shortage need to focus on building talent funnels that prioritise company-candidate fit. IT recruitment experts can help facilitate this process—ensuring that candidates brought forward to the interview stage have already invested in the company’s long-term vision. 

This is arguably even more important for senior and executive-level leadership roles, where the expectation of remote jobs in IT grows, meaning it can become more challenging to communicate internal culture to potential hires.

IT recruitment consultants will collaborate with clients to deeply understand their company’s principles. They’ll conduct interviews with key stakeholders, review marketing collateral and observe the workplace environment to ensure they can target interview questions to determine cultural fit. 

This focus on cultural fit extends to the interview process. Whilst common interview questions in the IT industry focus on competencies, many recruiters are integrating behavioural questions into their interview processes. These help to elicit responses from candidates, which can help them to illustrate how a candidate will approach working with the already-established team.

8. Data-Driven Recruitment Services

IT recruiters will use data analysis tools to track and report trends within the wider sector, helping clients understand the supply and demand for different roles. These talent analytics provide valuable analytics that can forecast future talent needs and potential recruitment challenges, which is key to the consultative recruitment process. 

Many agencies and consultancies leverage AI-empowered software and tools to parse applications quickly, reducing time-to-hire by up to 40%, and ensuring only qualified candidates make it through the screening, interview, and assessment stages. 

At the same time, this focus on data has meant that IT recruitment professionals are focused on their own performance metrics, helping them evaluate and improve their service provision by reducing cost-per-hire and increasing candidate satisfaction.

9. Recognition for Certifications and Professional Development

Certifications and continuous professional development are crucial for experts working within the IT industry, and recruiters looking to source candidates for their clients’ vacancies will always note relevant, industry-recognised training and qualifications when communicating with candidates—from Google Analytics for data professionals to Cisco’s certified training for networking experts. 

IT recruitment consultants will often look for evidence of these qualifications during the screening process, utilising third-party verification services to confirm a candidate’s details on professional development are valid and up-to-date, providing additional assurance to their clients that a potential recruit has the skills required by the role and can comply with any industry or government regulation.

10. Helping to Make IT Jobs More Diverse

Research by consulting firm Accenture has identified that women only hold 27% of computing roles in the US. Moreover, their Tech Culture Reset report highlights that the proportion of women working in tech-focused roles has actually reduced by 3% since 1984. With over half of the women in IT roles leaving the industry by the age of 35, it’s imperative that employers address their shortfalls in diversity, equality and inclusion.

Specialist IT recruitment consultants ensure that job descriptions and person specifications are written in an inclusive manner and can appeal to a diverse audience. They will also work with your organisation to ensure that roles will attract candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. Remote jobs in IT, for instance, can help candidates with disabilities to re-enter the workforce without needing to travel to an office during the week. 

This aspect of an IT recruiter’s role can extend to showcasing existing efforts for diversity and inclusion within their clients’ marketing materials or targeting underrepresented groups through their networking. 

Many recruiters and agencies will form long-term partnerships with diversity-focused organisations and charities providing training in IT—such as Girls Who Code, which has been able to provide IT training and support to over 500,000 women—helping to nurture the next generation of tech talent.

IT Recruitment Firms Adress the Industry’s Unique Challenges

The processes employed by IT recruitment consultants differ significantly from those used to attract and retain talent in other industries.

Given the pace at which technology advances—and how this can quickly reshape the way that businesses operate—organisations looking to attract the best talent need to ensure they’re aware of the latest trends and remain competitive in the market.

The role of IT recruiters in addressing the IT talent shortage is becoming increasingly apparent, particularly when we consider the expansive networks of active and passive candidates they have access to and their ability to communicate what sets their client’s company apart from competitors. It remains a complex and dynamic field whose importance will only grow, especially as skills shortages continue to disrupt business activities. 

Experts in Tech-Forward Staffing and Executive Search

The IT recruitment consultants at Fruition take pride in helping businesses to fulfil their niche tech staffing needs, no matter how complex the duties for a vacancy might be. Whether you require support with assessing candidates via interview questions to determine cultural fit, or you’re looking for a partner to conduct long-term talent mapping on your behalf, contact us to discover our tailored hiring and onboarding services.