87% of executives have unanimously agreed that finding the right tech talent has become a struggle. This talent shortage has festered every industry. And with the number of unfilled IT positions rising to 700,000 in the U.S, the talent crunch will only intensify in the future.

In such a deficit labor market, building a talent pipeline is the only way to survive.

What is a Talent Pipeline?

Talent pipeline is a simple concept where you keep a stack of talent resources in reserve for future hiring projects. This method differs from the traditional reactive approach of hiring. In place of waiting for the resource request to be raised, you start searching when the project is in discussion or research phase.

However, it’s surprising to know that only 11% of talent professionals and hiring managers follow a proactive approach of hiring — while nearly half (48%) remain reactive in their hiring process.

Transitioning to the proactive approach can be hard at first. You will have to keep your eyes and ears open all the time to look for candidates that suit your precise requirements. But looking into the sky-high demand of tech talent, it’s your only resort. We have laid out five sustainable pipeline building strategies to make talent search easier for you.

1.  Attract Tech Talent with Techathons

The smartest approach to building a tech pipeline is to attract talent instead of running after them. And organizing a Techathon is the best way to pull geeks towards your company.

For geeks, it’s a competitive stage to show their mettle and push their limits. But for companies, it’s a golden path that leads towards an array of talented candidates who can be included in the talent pipeline.

Besides, the gamut of resources received from such an event is broad – from freshers to experienced. It provides a wide breadth of talented resources ranging from college graduates, junior programmers to senior architects and tech leaders.

If you’re a small company and cannot afford to conduct Techathon,  go for co-sponsoring events and programs conducted by other organizations or tech schools.

2. Search for Talent in Non-standard Tech Programs

A global survey of 1,000 business leaders concluded that going beyond the conventional method of hiring is the number one contributor to consistent and quality resources.

This means if you’re aspiring for quality tech talent, you should let go of the traditional recruitment methods and places. Instead, innovate and go beyond the standard procedures.

Local community colleges, training programs, and boot camps are some good places to start with. These communities dedicatedly work to develop an economical, reachable platform for people hailing from different economic strata. You can partner with non-profit organizations such as girlswhocode, code.org, hackthehood.org and youthbuild.org among others.

For example, Holberton school organizes a two-year program for the students with no programming background.  And then trains the students to turn them into a full-fledged software engineer. They have an impressive track record of placing their students in tech giants like Google and Facebook.

Further, you can supplement your non-standard tech hiring practice with referral programs. Capitalizing on employee referrals is the most common practice followed by the companies to cut down their hiring cost. Moreover, researches have shown that a company can source more than 48% of their new hires from referrals.

To start with build a structured referral program by defining incentives and targets. Then, start evaluating the portals from the market that best serve your referral program. Jobvite, RolePoint, EmployeeReferrals, are few of the most-used referral portals that you can consider during the evaluation process.

3. Don’t Ignore People with Disabilities

According to a recent amendment in Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Department of Labor (DOL) has set a goal for many U.S. companies to expand their workforces so that 7% of their employees are disabled.

The government is consistently asking companies to widen their horizons and include disabled workers in their workforce. According to the world economic forum, individuals with disabilities make up 15% of the world’s population. It’s a highly significant number that can’t be swept under the rug.

Therefore, you should embrace the disabled section as well into your tech pipeline building efforts. AbilityJOBS, AbilityLinks.org, Getting Hired, Diversity Jobs are few of the many online job portals working in this direction. You can partner with these portals to find the relevant tech talent matching your exact requirements.

Companies like Accenture, AT&T, Barclays, DXC Technology are already leveraging this win-win solution by maintaining a continuous pipeline of talent with disabled individuals.

4.  Follow Inside-Out Approach

Adopt an inside-out approach to create a tech talent pipeline. In place of starting your search from outside, seek resources inside your organization.

Look for employees who are willing to learn and upskill themselves. Chances are you will find a great number of employees willing to take the challenge of learning a new programming language or tech platform in the market. Upskilling is hugely beneficial in today’s tech sphere to keep up with the fast pace of changing tech.

For example, as soon as AT&T realized that technology would transform every part of their business in the near future, they instigated a reskilling program. Investment of $1 billion was made in reskilling its workforce of 250,000 employees.

Those who participated in the program were 2x more likely to get a new job at AT&T and 4x more likely to get a promotion.

Senior Vice President of HR, at AT&T, John Palmer said, “At our size, you can’t find that talent, bring it in, and maintain a culture,”. Thus, in place of relying and waiting on external resources, they decided to invest in their employees to build a self-sufficient hiring program.

5.  Get Hold of Gig Workers

Utilizing the gig workforce is the next best alternative to recruiting permanent employees. Gallup says 36% Of U.S. workers are part of the gig economy and 29% of all workers in the U.S. have an alternative work arrangement as their primary job.

If you have short-term or temporary projects lined up for the future, utilizing the gig workforce is the ideal solution. To start with, have a healthy balance of 70/30 for permanent and gig workforce.

You can also partner with contingent staffing agencies to get hold of the tech gig workforce. These agencies have a good network of contingent tech talents such as freelancers, temps, and contractual workers.

Partnering with contingent staffing agencies offloads your work of scrounging for the resources and also cuts down your hiring efforts and costs to a great extent. As more and more U.S workers opt for this agile, flexible and independent style of working, the gig workforce will soon become essential for every company.

Having trouble building a tech talent pipeline? Let Infojini assist you. With over 14 years of experience in recruiting and staffing talent, we know all the right places for the right tech talent.