IT Skills Problem: How AI Can Solve the Dilemma

According to Bitkom, the number of vacancies in IT has risen again in 2021 and is now as high as 96,000 vacancies. In 2022, it will therefore be increasingly difficult for companies to attract the coveted IT talents.

In order to find the right specialists, they invest more and more budget in measures such as active sourcing and advertisements. But is this the right way to fill vacant IT positions quickly and efficiently and to be successful in the war for talent?

Caution: Companies lose too much time recruiting IT talent

Recruiting company Brandmonks warns German companies against relying solely on well-known and sometimes quite expensive recruiting methods when recruiting IT talent: “These may work for other departments, but they rarely bring the desired success when looking for IT experts. On the contrary: companies lose a lot of money and time if they look for IT talent solely through job advertisements and active sourcing,” says Babakhani.

Because most IT professionals have long stopped responding to this type of approach, they block ads and headhunters and are usually on completely different channels. “When recruiting IT specialists, it is therefore particularly important to analyze this target group very precisely in advance. Because only when we understand when a job change is attractive for them, what concerns they have and what topics they are dealing with can we address them online, for example in special forums, and arouse their interest,” knows recruiting expert Babakhani. He therefore urgently advises companies to explore new avenues when looking for IT specialists. Only if you question your old recruiting methods and supplement them with new methods will you find the desired experts faster and more efficiently and win them over.

The solution: fill IT positions up to 85 times faster with fully automated recruiting

Babakhani sees a great opportunity for companies in fully automated recruiting via artificial intelligence (AI). That is why, after two years of development in close cooperation with SAP, his company launched the flynne tool, which gives companies access to candidates who would most likely not have reached them through conventional recruiting channels. The tool is currently used both in the SAP partner ecosystem worldwide and outside of the SAP world for the recruitment of IT talents and specialists.

“In addition to relevant hard facts, such as B. IT implementation experience or programming languages, the potential and important personal characteristics of the candidates are also queried and matched with the job profile. Through the combination of requested skills and psychometric questions, flynne can analyze the motive and value structure of the potential applicant based on data and at the same time arouse the interest of the candidates in a new job,” says Babakhani.

However, even this AI method only works when recruiting IT specialists if the target group has been precisely analyzed in advance and a touchpoint strategy has been developed that can be implemented via an online campaign.

This fully automated search also saves the company a great deal of time. “Active sourcing or headhunting would take much longer and would also be significantly more expensive. For example, screening 1,000 profiles, approaching suitable candidates and arranging an initial introductory meeting would take almost half a year. With flynne, the same process runs fully automatically and saves up to 85 percent time and up to 80 percent costs in the recruiting process,” says the expert. “For most companies, we therefore recommend a mix of different methods that suit the target group, such as the use of fully automated AI recruiting and targeted active sourcing.”