Looking For IT Talent In All The (Un)Usual Places

Recently this year's crop of graduates hit the IT job market. Check out how some companies are using innovative techniques to recruit these days.

MICROSOFT: Hi-Tech and Hot Tubs



Video is one way Microsoft attracting new, young staff. The software behemoth uses video to give recruits a sense of not only the type of people who work at Microsoft. But it's also not unusual to find those types of "promos" on YouTube, Soapbox, etc.

In addition, Microsoft has several nontraditional, social-oriented recruiting initiatives, each designed to help people who are thinking about applying or already interviewing for a new job. A sampling includes:


-- Microsoft's JobsBlog is written by Microsoft's recruiters for those who are thinking about a career at Microsoft, are already in the interview process, or are just curious about working at the company.

-- Hey Genius is a recruiting site aimed directly at college students. There are videos, Tech Talks, games and other interactive features on the site. The Hey Genius campaign also hosts on-campus activities on more than 200 campuses. A potential Microsoft recruit might be invited to hop in Microsoft's Jobcuzzi, a portable hot tub used at recruiting events.



-- A Facebook page: Working it @ Microsoft. Many of the "Meet Microsoft" videos can be found on the Facebook site, including employees such as Derek and Tina.

Solution provider Tata Consultancy Services (2008 VARBusiness 500 rank: 18) is confronting head-on a future with drastically fewer qualified technical workers. According to India's software trade body, NASSCOM, there is likely to be a shortfall of half a million professionals in the IT sector by 2010. Obviously, in order to fill the impending skills gap, organizations need to look beyond traditional approaches of hiring over the next decade.



"One successful approach to meet the suitability challenge is look beyond the traditional engineering and IT talent pool and recruit and train science graduates from top-notch colleges," said Ajoy Mukherjee, vice president and Global Head of Human Resources at TCS (pictured).



"In 2006, TCS launched the talent transformation ("Ignite") program, which aims to transform science graduates into global software professionals. Ignite is the first scalable program undertaken to draw graduates from disciplines other than engineering into the global technology services industry. It is a strategic initiative that has dramatically expanded the talent base for TCS and has given us access to a wider base of talent pool in the country to meet our aggressive recruitment needs."



According to Mukherjee, TCS has found that the quality of talent at the end of the training program is at par with engineering graduates. More than 3,000 science graduates have successfully completed training under Ignite and have been inducted in TCS.

Traditional approaches to recruiting and hiring today's best college graduates are giving way to, appropriately enough, technology-based ways of finding new employees.



"The traditional approach to recruiting the best and the brightest from the top universities has given way to the Internet and technology. For example, students want validation that a prospective employer is an employer of choice so they rely on blogs to hear what people are saying about a company," said AMD's CIO Ahmed Mahmoud (pictured). "Companies need to leverage the Internet, social networking sites, the blogosphere and Web 2.0 at large to connect with new graduates and to attract the top talent."



That top talent can be tough to find, with busy social schedules competing with already crowded academic schedules. So, while on-campus recruiting is still the gold standard, companies are increasingly participating in universities' "Virtual Career Fairs." That reduces the costs to companies, and gives students the flexibility to post on the positions based on their schedules. "You also have some schools and companies using applicant tools that auto-match the applicant directly to the open positions. Companies should leverage Web 2.0 tools to help build strong and robust coop-intern networks, enhance employee referral programs, advertise positions, and increase networking capability."

Enterprise search software developer Vivisimo calls its strategy, "talent attracts talent." Vivisimo, which spun out of Carnegie Mellon in 2000, was ranked a market leader in enterprise search in Forrester's Q2, 2008 Wave report. Through the "talent" program, the company invites promising candidates to visit and have lunch with the techies they'd work alongside.



"In this informal setting, our talented young employees' enthusiasm and their experiences reveal our culture better than anything," said Anne McCafferty, one of Vivisimo's top recruiters (pictured). "Our current employees are at the heart of recruiting more top-notch people."

The majority of SAP employees around the world are university graduates, mainly from the fields of science, engineering and business.

"Because younger workers tend to be much more computer savvy, SAP has expanded its search tools to include social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Bejant and Xing," said Mark Steinke, vice president of recruiting for SAP (pictured).

But SAP wants to be sure that its partners, too, are able to hire employees with a well-rounded package of IT and business process management skills. To that end, more than 900 colleges and universities take part in the University Alliance program, which provides top IT and business graduates with skills and work experiences that directly supports our customer requirements.