Beyond the Traditional Talent Pool: Finding Tech Talent in Unexpected Places
To keep pace with the IT talent shortage, CTO’s need to get creative and look beyond traditional talent pools.
Consider upskilling your existing employees to further enhance their digital and tech skills. You could also consider career switchers, looking to move from their current career path and reskill in an in demand area such as software development or data.
One example is Hallmark, who worked with Corndel to set up a Data Academy to build their data capability from the bottom up. They soon found the value of technical skills in unexpected places. Adam Yare, Hallmark’s writing director, believed data wasn’t relevant to his creative role.
He quickly learned otherwise thanks to his data apprenticeship.
“The way we use data in my team is somewhat arbitrary. Before starting the programme, my main interaction with data was through Excel, which was limited to manual input, serving as just a recording tool. Now I try to transform the data our team use into visuals, adopting visual storytelling and dashboards, catering to a creative audience.”
A further example of the success of IT apprenticeships can be seen at property portal Zoopla, which enrolled 10 software engineers on an 18-month Corndel Software Engineering Apprenticeship. By bringing in brand-new trainees, Zoopla demonstrates the value of apprenticeships in building a robust and reliable pipeline for future tech talent.
Maximising the Potential of Tech Apprenticeships
Apprenticeships are a powerful tool for upskilling and reskilling employees at any level of their career, with qualification levels to suit every learner. Adopting an apprenticeship programme can also be a budget-friendly solution as you can put this in place for no cost using your Apprenticeship Levy funding.
The Apprenticeship Levy is not something that IT leaders may be familiar with but it can be invaluable in funding programmes to upskill and develop talent within IT departments. The Apprenticeship Levy promotes professional training and aims to close skills gaps within the UK economy.
Employers with an annual pay bill exceeding £3 million contribute 0.5% of their total pay bill, minus a £15,000 annual allowance, to the Levy. These funds are allocated to a digital account, which employers use to finance approved training programmes. With access to this funding, you can implement IT apprenticeship programmes and upskill your talent with valuable digital skills such as Software Engineering and DevOps.
There are so many benefits of using your Apprenticeship Levy. You can upskill your employees in key areas to drive growth and productivity within your business, whilst keeping employees engaged, motivated and happy. You can solve skills gaps, such as in technology, to gain a competitive edge in an increasingly crowded marketplace and ensure your team stay curious and innovative:
- Digital Transformation and Technological Advancements - To maintain a competitive edge amidst digital transformation, tech apprenticeship programmes ensure employees continuously assess and integrate emerging technologies.
- Talent Recruitment - Apprenticeships strategically addresses talent scarcity by developing an internal pipeline of skilled professionals.
- Talent Management and Retention - Beyond competitive compensation, apprenticeships foster a culture of employee development, addressing the digital skills gap for long-term talent retention.
Building reliable and robust future talent pipelines
As we saw in the case study from Zoopla, successful businesses are looking beyond today and tomorrow. By investing in Software Engineering or DevOps apprentices, you’re developing a strong talent pipeline for the future of your organisation. Reskilling and upskilling your workforce creates an agile and resilient environment equipped to evolve with the demands of the business - such as the introduction of AI and other new technologies.
HR Magazine puts it well: “The more agile your workforce is, the better prepared you are for the future of work. This is about what you need now and what you will need in the long term and building your team strategically around that.
“With a skills-based model, you can have clear processes for the reskilling and redeployment of employees, as well as looking at high potential for skills within your employees.”
Career development is as important as remuneration for many younger employees.
Corndel’s Workplace Training Report 2024 shows that three-quarters of employees need professional development for them to want to stay in their jobs. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of UK employees report that the opportunity for professional development is important to their decision to stay in their jobs. Expectedly, younger adults aged 18-34 years old are most interested in improving their professional skills (90%), followed by 35–54-year-olds (75%) and then those aged 55+ (54%). Over half (57%) of employees have received training to improve their leadership skills.
Creating job roles which value and place priority on career development, through apprenticeship programmes and other similar high-level training, should be a priority for IT leaders.
Closing the UK's Tech Talent Skills Gap
To benefit from highly qualified and skilled IT talent in the current climate is a balance between attracting new recruits using high-value incentive packages that go beyond salary and providing your existing employees with the chance to become experts.
Adopting a holistic and forward-looking approach is the most effective way of closing the growing IT skills gaps. As a CTO or CIO you should consider an approach which includes a range of tools from seeking out opportunities to upskill within your organisation, to developing apprenticeship programmes, to bringing in and retaining motivated employees who are keen to learn.