As tech skill shortages reach record heights, traditional recruitment models fail to keep pace with the demand for talent.
The German tech market is a prime example, a thriving, innovation-rich hub that sported 149,000 IT vacancies at the start of 2024 (12,000 more than in 2022).
Filling niche roles on time in a fast-moving market is tough, even before you factor in a shrinking global economy, transformative tech, and a large helping of uncertainty.
Tighter margins have made the cost of a bad hire difficult to bear, particularly for roles where expertise translates into direct competitive advantage. From project delivery to operational resilience, skilled and culturally appropriate talent is the key to a winning formula.
What’s the best way to pinpoint talent in a skill-short market? Here at Trust in SODA, we’ve taken a community-led approach to recruitment since day one, and it’s helped us connect thousands of innovators with the candidates they need to thrive. What exactly does that look like? If you’re struggling to build the right talent strategy, our specialist tech recruiters have put together some handy pointers below.
Why Community-Led?
Access to a strong candidate network should be the bare minimum. Community-built networks go several steps further, flipping the traditional search methodology on its head.
By creating an authentic community platform centred around a particular job function, candidate demographic, or industry, you’re creating a concentrated hub of talent that provides consistent value to its stakeholders.
This engaged community becomes a space to share ideas, connect job seekers with industry leaders, uncover job opportunities, and allow candidates to actively participate in meaningful conversations about the future of their industries.
Through the community-led approach, world-class candidates aren’t just another target for a job posting, they’re valued members of a vibrant ecosystem.
The best communities provide their members with mentorship, employability support, public speaking opportunities, and a chance to showcase their talent to a wider network that may have been otherwise inaccessible.
Our group mission is to build diversity, create inclusion, and encourage workplace innovation. Our community-led approach to recruitment has been an invaluable part of that mission, and in an era of global skill shortages, it offers a unique solution – by attracting diverse talent from a broader pool, we can quickly identify, attract, and place hard-to-reach candidates, even in a contracting market.
Community Building
Inclusivity is the foundation of a strong community. Whether you’re developing a community around a shared experience (Ex-Military Careers for example), a common goal, industry, or identity, cultivating a space that celebrates and recognises diverse perspectives is paramount.
Here are some of the building blocks to help you get started:
Diverse Representation – representation is a major strength of any diverse community. ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ is true for many candidates in areas that historically lack diversity, like software engineering for example. Ensuring that your community leaders and guest speakers represent a wide spectrum of identities and experiences helps foster a stronger sense of belonging for your members.
Explore Relevant Themes – meaningful content creation needs to be community-driven. What trends, challenges, and opportunities are the community facing currently? What’s relevant to their needs?
Create Engaging Initiatives – Community-building initiatives can take a range of forms, including (but not limited to) panel discussions, employability workshops, podcasts, webinars, interviews, conferences, networking meetups, mentorship opportunities, or online discussion forums.
Collaborate with Charity Partners – collaborating with non-profits and social enterprises can help you expand your network, enhance your branding, and combine resources to better serve your target demographics. For example, our charity partners for Pride in Tech include Micro Rainbow, Global Butterflies, and the London Bisexual Network.
Support from Trust in SODA
Whether you’re hoping to build out a brand-new DevOps function or place your first CTO, Trust in SODA’s community-led, diversity-focused recruitment methodology has you covered. Reach out to the team to find out more today:
