Securing Top IT Talent with Ergo
“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity”
John F. Kennedy, 35th U.S. president.
A well-known known quote that has become clichéd in our post-pandemic (perhaps present-pandemic is more apt) world that is actually misleading as “critical moment” would be a more correct translation than “opportunity”. Nonetheless it serves to mobilise the masses of positivity and therefore serves the greater good which is perhaps what JFK meant it to do.
Regardless of this vernacular faux pas Ergo’s IT Recruitment division does indeed see opportunity in crisis and has been expanding dramatically over the first 4 months of 2021 making dozens of hires across the business especially in areas of Cloud Architecture, Project Management and IT Support.
So how have we managed to source top IT talent to meet a huge increase in demand for our services in such a difficult market? With a concerted and varied approach utilising every channel available and thinking outside the box as I’ve described below.
- Managed Active Pipelines
We contacted hundreds of recent candidates and contractors to check if / when they are back on the market. This provided valuable market insights and enabled us to rapidly turnaround new requirements. - Utilised Overseas Markets
While Ergo are not averse to hiring overseas staff this practice became more common when immediate resources were required to meet the surge in demand for Office 365 tools such as Teams and SharePoint. With the vast majority of IT professionals working remotely now employers can see that the practice is not simply practical but in many cases mutually beneficial leading to increased productivity and happier employees. This will have major ramifications for work practices going forward and a more flexible approach to how, when and where we do business - Considered Transferable Skills
Not every department grew in the way that our Modern Workplace team did and rather than making redundancies Ergo considered the transferable skills of staff who could be redeployed elsewhere in the business. This proved a huge success for obvious reasons and showed that agile is a mindset and not just a methodology. For example; Field Engineers were moved into Helpdesk roles. Account Managers joined the Sales team and Citrix Specialists upskilled on VMWare and WVD to work with the VDI team. - Upskilling
Upskilling existing staff through professional certification was prioritised. Dozens of staff became ITIL certified. Many others gained Microsoft Certifications in Azure Services. Internal promotions resulted and junior roles were backfilled with candidates from our pipeline as described in Step 1. - Investment in tools
Making the most of our existing staff played a huge role in helping Ergo to navigate through the Pandemic but as a market-leader we also needed to keep abreast of what is happening externally and to do this we invested in several new tools including “best-in-class” ATS (Applicant Tracking System), advertisement and document-management solutions. This investment will future-proof our Recruitment team for years to come and ensure that we continue to grow.
I’d like to end this blog on another quote which I feel captures the agile, pragmatic nature of Ergo and our enthusiasm to evolve.
“When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form — or a species — will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.”
Eckhart Tolle
View our available roles here or for more information email me.
