When Finding Tech Talent – Everyone Needs a Personal Shopper

June 2nd, 2016

personalshopper

By Rishon Blumberg, 10x Management Co-Founder

In the last two decades as the internet has grown in both content and popularity, it has become increasingly hard for individuals and organizations to figure out what information is relevant, pertinent, and emanates from a trusted source.  In music the advent of streaming outlets like Spotify and iTunes Music has given the average fan access to virtually every song ever recorded – yet it’s harder than ever to know what to listen to.  The same is beginning to happen with films and tv shows – there’s too much to watch.  And in the press, everyone with a blog is now able to place their content alongside media behemoths like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others – it’s no wonder why so many people don’t believe in climate change, a simple google search brings up more than 2.8 million different articles!  Where do you look to find those items that are most relevant to your needs?  Whom do you trust?  It’s overwhelming.  You need a personal shopper or guide, someone to curate those items that are relevant to you and your needs.

How Do You Find Talent?

Well, the same is true in the tech world.  There is a tangible difference between a good developer and a great developer.  But how do you know what to look for and where do you find what you need?  If you’re a large company, you’ve got a department whose sole purpose it is to find and vet potential hires.  The problem is, the market is shifting so much, that there are fewer and fewer highly skilled technologists that are interested in W2 full-time positions.

Recent studies point to there being more than half a million unfilled tech positions.  This is due to a few different factors:

  • we’re not producing enough people skilled in those areas, many of the new entrants into the marketplace aren’t looking for a “career” so much as a means to become their own boss
  • those in the market now are embracing quality of life over the security of a full time position
  • the addition of the affordable healthcare act has made it much easier for people to make this move to becoming a freelancer or independent contractor and know they can find coverage.

In short, there is a massive shortage of people interested in W2 positions.  Many are turning to contract based work to satisfy their various goals.

So, where does that leave most entities in search of tech talent?  Today there are a few different solutions to find freelance developers but most tend to be marketplaces (think Upwork) where the burden to vet a given candidate falls on the entity trying to hire said candidate.  This leads to delays in finding the right resource and often means that projects are built using subpar resources that either fail when scaling or worse yet, never work right to begin with.  If you’re not a professional at recruiting and vetting tech talent, you’re really rolling the dice.  Furthermore, it takes time to find the right person even if you have those skills.  More often than not, you’re busy enough just trying to manage your current tech projects and you don’t have the time or resources to devote to properly finding and vetting the right candidates.

The 10x Difference

Curation is what separates what we’re doing at 10x Management from most of the other resources currently available.  One of the biggest values that we communicate to our customers (the companies that hire our clients (the talent) are our customers) is the fact that we extensively vet all of our tech talent, we select just the right resource and present it to them.  We spend time with our customers to understand not only what technical skill sets they require, what their tech stack is but also what industry they’re in, if they need a dedicated or part-time resource, if the engagement can be done remotely, how long they expect to need someone; in effect, all the elements that makes their project unique.  We match as many of those qualities to the client we represent that not only fits the skill sets but also has the availability to start when the customer needs, is interested in the project, etc.  After we make that determination, we present that one person to the customer.  The best part about our process, is that more than 95% of our customers end up contracting with the first client we propose to them AND we can often have that person working on the project in as little as 24-48 hours from first introduction.

We are your personal shopper.  We find out what you need and present a pre-vetted, exceptional candidate option to you.  This drastically reduces the time to product development and relieves our customers of having to do the heavy lifting of finding and vetting the right candidate.

Technology affords amazing efficiency, but we have yet to see an algorithm that is a perfect substitute for the human touch.  That human touch is what we’re selling.  It’s what makes our offering so beneficial to our customers.  We care, and that care translates into a better fit, a better engagement and better results.  When virtually every company and government relies on technology to survive, why would you ever trust your tech talent sourcing to an algorithm?

Everyone needs a personal shopper!

 

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You might also enjoy reading, How Firms Can Prepare for the Freelance Economy.