The Key Step Fast Growth Companies Must Take Before Recruiting Tech Talent

You’re not the only one thinking it — building a unique tech brand that attracts top engineering talent is tough. Questions like: how can we keep our engineering blog up to date, what social channels should we post on, and how do we leverage internship programs have become common among Venwise members who are part of one of our curated communities of fast-growth business leaders. With that in mind, we dug deeper on these types of questions at a recent roundtable co-hosted with TechGrok. The upshot? Before using marketing tactics to attract tech talent, it’s important to start by asking: what’s the culture of our existing engineering team?

If you’re unclear on that answer, take a hard look at your current team’s culture and identify areas of improvement before you decide to invest in promoting it. Focus first on your existing current team to improve retention, and up the engagement and authenticity of external branding efforts. From our perch, member companies who build a strong cultural foundation generate an authentic external brand that attracts top talent and continues to amplify via an effective ongoing hiring funnel process.

What about fixing broken or dysfunctional engineering cultures? No magic bullets surfaced, but four good steps did:

1. Identify the root of the problem (e.g. product and tech team communication breakdown).
2. Tackle problem by committee (roundtable the issue with the entire tech team and address the problem head on).
3. Demonstrate changes (team needs to see real changes to build momentum).
4. Continue to gather feedback (don’t stop the process prematurely).

While it’s not easy, if you feel like you’re spinning your wheels when attracting top engineering talent, you may want to consider fixing your ship before you begin to sell the journey.

If you feel that you’re there on team culture, there are proven playbooks on promoting your brand for recruiting purposes. Tech blogs, public events and meetups, and intern programs are a few tools to get you started.

For more information on how Venwise’s curated communities and how we help leaders of fast growth companies solve their toughest challenges, check us out at Venwise.com.