Why Can’t I Fill My Open IT Positions?
If you are an IT manager within a state agency in Tallahassee you have probably experienced the following scenario at least once. You find yourself on your third position advertisement, your third round of candidates, and while you’ve met some very competent people you just can’t seem to close the deal. All the while the section manager (or CIO) keeps hounding you with “you have to get that position filled or it’s going to be frozen or taken away…”
The fact is Tallahassee is an IT workforce oasis in the middle of a barren pan-handle. To the west there is not a sizable collection of IT resources until you get to Pensacola, east as far as Jacksonville, and once you turn south out of the panhandle all of the IT ”oxygen” is sucked out of the universe by Tampa, Orlando, and Miami. What about North? Tallahassee is the “last chance” for a sizable IT market until you get to Atlanta. Add to this the fact that the job you are likely trying to fill is in high demand and you will see that in reality you are locked into a competition for talent.
Maybe you have made some offers but the candidates backed out or maybe you just are not getting qualified responses at all. Traditionally, state recruiters have leaned on government job stability and benefits to lure talent in but this just may not be enough. Here are a few “non-traditional” points to consider which may be causing your candidates to look at other options:
The salary does not match the position responsibilities
I’m not talking about the old standard complaint that “state jobs don’t pay much”, that is a given. Honestly people who want a six figure salary don’t apply for public service positions anyway, so the below-industry government pay scale is common knowledge and not likely causing you to lose candidates. What I am referring to is the habit of government hiring managers to advertise a job description which is beyond the specified pay-grade - either because they cannot re-classify the position in time for their actual needs or are just being lazy.
Take some time to verify your position description against the class descriptions provided by DMS or better yet have a look at the O-NET occupation codes published by the USDOL/ETA. The O-NET codes have generalized occupational descriptions you can use as a sanity check.
The point here is that if you need a lead architect for your team don’t try to advertise that low-level Programmer I position with a dressed up position description which includes responsibilities normally outside of that role (like enterprise architecture planning or management of a team). Any candidates you interview who are qualified at the Programmer I level won’t meet your expectations for the more advanced position requirements and any candidates who are more qualified will feel like a bait-and-switch is in progress.
You don’t “impress” the candidates in your interview
Like it or not when an IT professional comes in for an interview it is a two-way street. Just as you are sizing them up for your team they are sizing you up as a reflection of your team. If you don’t know what you are talking about find someone on your team who does and have them run the interview.
I participate in government interviews on a regular basis – both as a candidate and ”sitting in as the technical person”. Probably the most egregious error I see in application development interviews is the team manager trying to sell the candidate on being part of an Agile team and then describing a waterfall work process. Agile is a good selling point for developers but it is far more painful for them to work for an IT manager who pretends to understand technology concepts.
You need to understand why someone would leave their current job and come to work for the state. Maybe you are offering more money but I doubt it. The most common reason is the person wants to be in an organization they can learn from or they want to make a difference. With that in mind, if you don’t have something to teach or you don’t have a burning vision to execute then you are not the organization they are looking for.
Your IT organization has a poor reputation
Remember the earlier “Tallahassee is an IT workforce oasis…” statement. Well ask yourself, what happened to the person who last held the position you are trying to fill? Did they win the lottery and move to the Bahamas? Did they land their dream job? More importantly, did they leave Tallahassee or are they still in town?
If the last employee left the job because they weren’t satisfied then you have the beginnings of a problem. If a few more employees have left for the same reason then you already have a big problem. Just what do you think happens when you smack around the locals and send them back into the same small candidate pool? They tell their friends (your potential candidates) all about their experience.
On a daily basis I am asked by on of my IT peers to comment on the team environment or leadership of a local IT shop. Some I have worked for as an employee, some as a contractor, and others I may have partnered with. Maybe they want the scoop because they have an interview with you tomorrow or maybe it is just a table full of geeks shooting the breeze at the pub. Tech geeks aren’t great politicians so we always give our honest opinions – sometimes positive, other times not so much.
So what can you do about all of this?
- Go through your position descriptions and make sure they align with common industry descriptions. If you have ”programmers” over-seeing the work of contract staff (or other employees) without a clear title distinction, realize this structure will seem suspicious to a candidate from outside of your organization.
- Clean up any “dotted line” reporting structures. A matrix organization is fine for project management but if a new candidate meets three different bosses during the interview process they begin to get the idea that no one is in charge. Be aware that the problems with a poorly defined matrix organization go beyond the initial interview. Many employees who leave a projectized state agency will indicate that there were just “too many cooks in the kitchen” and they didn’t know who they reported to. Note: This is not a negative reflection on shifting toward a project oriented business but reflects more on how such a change is implemented.
If you’ve developed a bad reputation, sniff around and see where it might be coming from. It is most likely your agency had a bad run at some point and you just haven’t shaken the reputation. To find out where the problem is, make contact with past employees if you can and don’t ever let anyone out the door without a good exit interview. If you find that you have a particularly “acidic” manager or lead technician you may need to reconsider the return on investment you are getting for that person’s abilities.
- Go that extra mile to put a public face on your IT shop and tell your story from your agency website. Remember, your audience is NOT the general public or John Q Taxpayer so don’t write the site content for that purpose. Your target audience consists of your peers in the technology industry. Write for your partners (other government agencies) since anything that would be of interest to the techs at a partner will likely interest a potential candidate.
- Get involved in local interest groups. Prompt your team to get in the mix on one or more local IT interest groups. If you can swing it, sponsor or host a few of the meetings or brown bags.
