Trends and Tips for Tapping Tech Talent

These are interesting times for securing tech talent.

With the current unemployment rate at 3.7 percent, the job market is highly competitive, and that’s particularly true for the technology sector. 

Reaching out to agencies that can offer the right talent when and where it is needed is proving to be the solution among savvy organizations. 

Key among the advantages that the right agency relationship offers: the opportunity to leverage specific expertise on an ongoing, ad-hoc, or one-off basis.

In our rapidly changing market, here are six reasons why joining forces with an agency might be a better idea than hiring or relying on in-house talent:

1. Hiring processes are costlier and more complicated than ever before. 
2. Employees are an investment and represent overhead in benefits, office space, and training.
3. Ensuring that an in-house staff consists of employees who have the depth and breadth of skills required to meet current and future needs may not be feasible for many organizations. 
4. Top talent knows their worth. Along with their increasingly high salary demands, they tend to continue looking for new and better opportunities.
5. If the hiring decision doesn’t work out, there are costs associated with parting ways along with the risk of legal liabilities.
6. The market is moving forward at a rapid pace with constantly emerging needs for new types of specialization. The expectation that a few great hires or one exceptional, in-house team, can anticipate and proactively take on every new challenge impedes both agility and opportunity. 

Agility Rules

How to respond to these challenges in an environment where not keeping pace with what’s new and next is not an option? Strategic agency relationships. 

Reaching out to firms with targeted expertise that specialize in focused training, rapid-fire development, exceptional design, astute marketing, or incisive consultation on a depth and breadth of topics is proving to be the optimal path forward.  

While there is sometimes a tendency to view relationships with contractors as “all business” and lacking the connections that easily develop among in-house teams, I’ve often experienced a high degree of commitment and connectedness within agency and client relationships that are built upon a personal stake in clients’ success. Bridging this divide calls for an intentional focus, and can be facilitated by a workshop that’s designed to provide a deep understanding of a client's business and knowledge transfer to the agency partner.

There is no question that relationships optimize outcomes. Trust, genuine commitment, and true connections serve to drive game-changing synergies. In many respects, I’ve found that the quality of the relationships can make the difference between a transactional, task-focused approach, and a strategic, long-term vision.

And who can argue that work is considerably more fulfilling and fun when we’re connected with each other both professionally and personally. 

Looking to join forces with an agency that offers industry-leading expertise, and launch a relationship that can ignite new possibilities in web development, human-centered design, strategic planning, and accessibility remediation? Contact us today.