If you’re struggling to find developers, you’re not alone.
Our Skills Audit 2019 found that developer roles were far and away the most difficult to recruit for.
That’s why, as the trade body for Greater Manchester’s tech and digital businesses, we’re committed to tackling the skills shortage head on.
Some of the ways we’ve done this include allowing our members to advertise their positions for free on our busy job board, or by allowing them to raise their profile and employee brand by speaking to the devs who frequent our regular tech events or sharing news with the devs that read our newsletter.
We’ve also created our industry-led, industry-backed Level Four Software Developer Apprenticeship, a programme that’s allowing forward-thinking businesses to be an active part of the solution when it comes to bridging the skills gap.
We believe our apprenticeship scheme is important as it
- Encourages greater levels of diversity by widening the talent pool
- Allows industry to have a greater say in the skills being taught to developer
- Offers apprentices unparalleled access to new skills, mentors and experiences
We’ve also set up our early stage Talent and Skills provisions Digital Futures and Digital Her both of which aim to inspire and encourage young people into the industry by arming them with knowledge about the exciting roles and pathways into our sector.
To continue this important work, we rely on even more of Manchester’s forward-thinking and progressive companies becoming a part of the Manchester Digital community by signing up to become members.
In the meantime, we thought it would be useful to create an article that offers advice to any Manchester businesses that are looking for ways to fill software developer roles.
Attend meetups, the proper way!
As Manchester Digital’s The Ultimate Guide to Manchester Coding Schools, Coding Clubs, Codings Meetups and Bootcamps shows, Manchester isn’t short of a software-focused meetup or two.
If you want to find devs who would like to work for your company, make it a priority to go and connect with developers where they like to hang out.
At Manchester Digital, we also help our members to connect with developers by allowing them to raise their profile and employee brand within the community by attending our tech events, networking evenings and by sharing their news across our platforms and allowing devs to know what kind of company you are and what type of work they do.
Improve the culture and sell the role
With developers being so in demand, they’re hardly going to choose to work for a company with an ethos and culture that fails to impress them.
By attending meetups, you’ll have a better idea of how you can improve the culture of your company but here are some things to think about.
- Do you pay fairly and offer benefits such as working from home and flexi time?
- Is your team diverse?
- Do you provide learning opportunities for staff and allow provide workplace support, should they require it?
- Does your product make people want to work on it?
Remember, if the conditions are right, you may well find a candidate that will stay with your firm for years.
So, create a culture that people want to be a part of and then sell it in a truthful way that appeals to developers and demonstrates why you’re a unique proposition.
When selling the role you might want to check this article to ensure that you’re hiring in a way that avoids unconscious bias.
Permanently advertise on job boards
Find job boards that have a proven track record of attracting developers, those ones that candidates will use time and time again for each career move and advertise on them as much as possible, even when you’re not recruiting.
Be truthful about what it is that makes you unique and do so in a way that is actually specific and appealing to developers – just as you ask people to put their best foot forward with the résumé, so should you with the landing page for the job.
Raise your employer brand
Does your company have a culture that devs want to work in? Do you regularly speak at or sponsor the tech events and conferences that potential employees will attend? More importantly, does your dev team regularly speak at these events, does the community know what you’re up to?
If the answer to the above questions is no, you need to do some work on improving your employee brand.
Reminder – as well as having free and unlimited use of our job board, members of Manchester Digital can improve their employee brand by attending, sponsoring or speaking at our regular tech events such as Demo Nights.
Leverage social advertising
Advertising jobs on social media are one of the cheapest things you can advertise.
If you know what you’re looking for in terms of necessary skills, what technologies they’ve worked with in the past, what areas they may live in and be able to commute in from, and the kind of companies they’ve worked with before, you can utilise LinkedIn / Facebook’s extensive targeting capabilities and show social media ads to high-match candidates.
Become a member
If you want to connect with Manchester’s digital and tech community and increase your chances of finding developers who will want to work for your company, then email thom@manchesterdigital.com to request a free Manchester Digital Member Benefits brochure.
