Cultivating a Strong Tech Culture to Improve Hiring
Tips & Techniques for Leveraging Culture for Talent Acquisition
Welcome Leaders,
Most companies have no idea what a powerful talent acquisition strategy having a strong tech culture can be.
I’ve done insane amounts of hiring mainly because our tech culture was so good.
But companies that don’t have a tech culture at all or have a really bad one don’t know how to set things up right to take advantage.
This week I open up my spell book playbook to help you solve this problem.
Let’s get to it.
Cheers,
The Struggle
Companies are desperate to hire great technologists but it’s almost embarrassing how often they make it obvious that they don’t have much of a tech culture.
In fact, without realizing it some organizations make candidates feel like the company isn’t interested in technology at all.
Companies accidentally do this in a number of ways and it’s definitely a turn-off to good engineering candidates who then end up going somewhere else because of it.
A lot of businesses have difficulty avoiding this situation because they simply lack the knowledge of how to build a strong tech culture and then leverage it in the right way to hire.
It’s the Recruiters, Stupid
One easy way to tell which companies suffer from this issue is to talk to their recruiters / talent acquisition team.
Very often the recruiters at these organizations have never even hired technologists before. And while they can recite the requirements, in the job description they don’t know anything beyond the surface level tech jargon. They have almost definitely never sat down with their in-house tech team and asked them what they’re working on. And they certainly have no idea what things like the difference between data science & data engineering is, as an example.
(On a side note, if you find a recruiter who really knows tech then hold on to them for dear life.)
And yet these rudderless recruiters are on the front lines of talent acquisition.
High quality candidates will sense their lack of knowledge, and a big red flag will immediately go up in their heads. They will take the lack of recruiter tech knowledge as an indicator that the company doesn’t know what they’re doing. They might continue the interview process but as a company you’ve already got a tick-mark against you in the candidates mind.
Of course, IMO none of this is really the fault of the recruiter.
It is the business behind the recruiter that is doing a disservice in terms of not cultivating a strong technology culture and then enabling the talent acquisition staff to communicate that tech culture to candidates in the right way.
Let’s dive into the simple ways a company can create a strong tech culture & then we’ll talk about how to leverage it properly for recruiting purposes.
Tips for Cultivating a Strong Tech Culture
So, how does a business cultivate a strong technology culture?
As always let’s start top-down.
👨🏽💼 It begins with the CEO.
I’ve seen far too many CEOs who want to run a tech company or get the business benefits of being a tech company, but don’t invest any of their time in the tech side of the business. This will be solved differently at every organization, of course, but the key is for the CEO to invest at least some time in tech. Everyone else in the org will take their cue from them.
🥸 Next, the CTO has to get their head out of the weeds.
If the CTO is heads down in the technical weeds and doesn’t care about culture or its impact on hiring, well then there’s going to be a problem. The CTO has to pull themselves out of the weeds and think hard about the tech culture they want to create. It doesn’t just happen all by itself. The CTO must be prescriptive in their actions. And it cannot be left to others. The CTO has to drive the culture building.
💰 Money has to be spent.
If the business is spending < 9% of revenue on tech it’s going to be difficult to create a strong tech culture simply because there won’t be many people to maintain it & a lot of A & B candidates just won’t be interested. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, though. I’ve seen startups with just 2 people create a solid tech culture. The problem is most companies are NOT startups. So, you don’t have to increase your investment in tech but then don’t expect to easily hire great talent either.
💬 The company has to talk about tech. A LOT.
You should have a good amount of discourse about tech ongoing in the company. This can be during ELT meetings, all hands calls, in Slack, basically any and all channels where staff, customers, executives and so forth are gathered together. Find ways to inject tech in the right places and the right times. Don’t overdo it of course. But companies that want to be tech companies have lots of meetings where tech NEVER comes up and that certainly won’t help your tech culture.
👩🏽💼 Technology must be represented at the executive level.
A technologist should have a seat at the leadership table and a voice in the decision making of the business. If this isn’t the case, then think about how that impacts incoming technical candidates. If there is no influence at the exec level is the business really taking tech seriously? Probably not. A CTO can fill this role or a VP of Product or Engineering.
🚀 Innovation must be encouraged.
Is the business creating any new IP? Is it doing anything unique or differentiated in the market in terms of its tech products? What about purely the technical backend? Technologists by nature are interested in building new things. That’s just part of their DNA. What they build doesn’t have to be world changing, but there should be some innovation going no matter how small.
🧑🏽🎓 Foster continuous tech learning.
Tech & engineering is just like any other subject in that the process of learning never ends. Companies may THINK once they hire an engineer they’re good to go. But businesses must foster continuous learning or else the tech culture will start to wither and die. Engineers can learn in a myriad of ways including “on the job,” but the concept of continuous learning & improving skill-sets must be encouraged. All engineers should learn new things at least each month, quarter or year. Learning should be discussed in 1:1’s and performance evaluations should involve building and maintaining learning plans.
🏆 Rewards, Rewards, Rewards.
Companies with the best tech cultures have some kind of reward system involved. It doesn’t have to be super complicated. But showing that you’ll reward technologists when they do good work goes a LONG way to creating a strong culture. It doesn’t even have to be big monetary rewards. If an engineer built something with high ROI for the company, then sending them to the latest AI conference for a couple of days is a great reward.
Leveraging Your Tech Culture for Recruiting
OK, so now that you have a great tech culture going, how do you leverage it to help on recruiting?
Here are 6 changes you should make immediately:
Have Your Front-Line Recruiters Interact with the Engineering Team
Have your front-line recruiters / talent team talk to and interact with the engineering team on a consistent basis. The recruiters need a strong understanding of what projects the engineers are working on, what the culture is like, and a sense of the engineering language being used. This will help them both develop some tech knowledge and create rapport with future technology candidates.
Have Your Engineering Team Start Networking
You read that right. If you’ve got a good tech culture established your engineering team should be singing that from the rooftops. That means blogging about it, writing LinkedIn posts…whatever it takes to get the word out. Candidates must see your engineering culture as an attractive environment that they would want to be a part of. And who better to hear that from than fellow engineers?
Integrate Tech Culture in Leadership Communications
The CEO and CTO will likely be doing some public engagements across various channels and in those communications they should start to integrate appropriate elements of the tech culture of the company. For example, showcasing a recent big tech success story. Candidates are likely to hear these talks on LinkedIn or the company website & see the buy-in from the top of the organization.
Have HR Showcase Your Tech Stack and Projects
Clearly articulate the technologies you use and the projects you’re working on your careers page and job postings. Potential candidates are often looking for specific technologies to work with and showcasing them can attract talent interested in those areas.
Highlight Employee Testimonials and Case Studies in the JDs
Share stories from your current tech employees about their experiences, career growth, and the impact of their work IN THE JOB DESCRIPTION! This is vital. Authentic testimonials can provide insights into your companies tech culture and what new hires can expect.
Promote Open Source Contributions and Tech Community Involvement During Candidate Conversations
Encourage and highlight your company’s involvement in open source projects, tech conferences, and community events when recruiters and engineers are talking to candidates. Participation in these areas demonstrates a commitment to the broader tech community and can attract candidates who value collaboration and continuous learning.
Closing Thoughts
Clearly none of this is easy.
It takes time to cultivate a strong technology culture within an organization, especially if the business doesn’t have a long history with it.
This can be especially true for services businesses and tech-enabled service businesses. On the other hand, typical SaaS companies usually have less of a problem with developing tech cultures.
A good rule of thumb is about 12 to 18 months to go from having zero tech culture to having a reasonably good tech culture (if the ELT is aligned.)
The biggest difficulties are not on the execution side, in my opinion. I’ve seen companies set this up well in the past. The challenge seems to be knowing what to do (all the stuff above).
There are usually 2 key stakeholders who need to understand what to do: the CTO and the CHRO (HR leader). If they understand it & buy in and align, then they can usually direct their troops to get the work done.
Ultimately, I think a strong technology culture is essential to having strong technical talent acquisition.
A lot of leaders ignore it, but you should instead use it as a strategic advantage when recruiting and retaining talent.