How IT Managers Can Use Charity To Recruit The Best Workers

Some job candidates are attracted by the charity that your firm does
Some job candidates are attracted by the charity that your firm does
Image Credit: John Ragai

When the unemployment numbers dip down, it can become a lot harder for an IT manager use his or her IT manager skills to find the right people to staff his or her team with. The pool of candidates is just a lot smaller – and there are a lot of other companies that they can go to work for. What you are going to need is find a way to make your company appear to be different from all of those other companies. It turns out that charity work just might be the right answer.

What Are Job Candidates Looking For?

If you want to have any hope of building the IT team that is going to allow you to accomplish all of the things that the company needs you to do, then you are going to have to be able to attract the right talent. Do you have any IT manager training on how to accomplish this? Today’s millennials have a lot of options and your firm is just one of them. You’re going to have to stand out if you want to be successful.

The key is to understand what candidates are looking for from an employer. You need to understand that you are competing with all of those start-ups that can offer a candidate stock options and other things that you may not be in a position to offer.

What this means is that you need to understand what today’s candidates care about. They want to take an active role in solving some of society’s bigger problems like water use, education, and energy. Your candidates are impatient – they want to solve problems now. They believe that the tools to do so exist, the work just needs to be done.

How Important Is Charity In Recruiting?

One of the challenges that you may run into is the fact that the share of total charitable donations that come from firms has been static for a number of years, hovering at about 5%. Most firms give just under 1% of their pre-tax profit to charities. However, we need to keep in mind that this is a lot of money – last year it totaled US$18B.

You need to understand that 63% of job candidates don’t bother to research how much your company gives to charity. 39% of candidates did take the time to discuss a company’s work with charities during their job interview. Of this group, 55% said that the company’s level of involvement played a role in their decision to either accept or reject the job offer.

The company’s work with charities can help to foster an emotional connection between the employee and the company. Many candidates really want to make an effort to make the world a better place. However, they don’t have the resources to do this. That’s why how their company deals with charity work can play a big role in their decision to join the firm.

What Does All Of This Mean For You?

As IT managers we are responsible for building the best IT teams that we can. Much of this has to do with finding ways to attract the talent that we’ll need. When the job market is tight, we need to find ways to make our company stand out from all of the other firms. IT team building is one way to do this, but we need more.

Our company’s involvement in charitable causes can play a role in our ability to attract talent. Millennials want to make a difference, but they don’t know how to do so. If they see that our firm is taking the time to do good things, then they may be willing to join our firm because of our charity work.

You can’t just do charity work because you want to attract the best workers. Instead, it really has to be a part of what the company wants to accomplish. If you can do good things and attract good people, then everyone will benefit.

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: How do you think that you can get candidates to become aware of the charity work that your firm does?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Would it be fair to say that what your IT team is working on is top secret? In most cases the answer to this question would be probably be no. However, the companies that your company competes with would probably like to know what your team is doing and what business problems you are trying to solve. What this means is that as an IT manager it’s going to be your job to use your IT manager skills to keep a lid on what’s going on.