Living in Silicon Valley and working in the world of recruitment, conversations naturally turn how competitive the tech talent market is whenever I chat with my neighbors in the Bay Area.   Julie Cooper writing for BizJournals the other day had a line that made me chuckle,  “Being a computer engineer who's hunting for a job in San Francisco is kind of like being in the studio audience on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" when Oprah gives away cars to every guest: "You get a job! And you get a job! And you get a job!"”

The US economy continues to move out of recession and as we hit a five-year mark of declining unemployment rates, the future from an economic standpoint looks bright (as long as the future of robots taking over your job doesn’t frighten you.)  It’s a candidates market currently.  They have high expectations for a consumer grade experience in the recruitment process and if you drop the ball on any one aspect of it, expect to hear about it all over whatever the latest social media network is trending at the moment. 

Pick your buzzword and candidates are looking for it – work/life balance, great culture, work with meaning, free coffee carts, daily happy hours, bring your dog to work day, flex scheduling, nap rooms, decompression chambers, etc. ad nauseam.  How is the average small or medium sized business supposed to compete with the seemingly unlimited funding coming from the major tech players? 

Honestly, it can be tough out there but often times it’s not just what you are doing, but how you are doing it.  Maybe you missed the story about the Google employee who quit his dream job and the shockwaves it set off.  Or the Facebook engineer who left his prime gig to help a start up that is looking to revamp how we look at education in this country.  Running the behind the scenes machine to produce webinars, podcasts, blogs and all things digital for the past few years I thought I had heard pretty much every anecdote out there.  But I was pleasantly surprised to hear an off the cuff remark about a recruiter retweeting her boss re: a recent WoW raid and tagging it with an open position she was sourcing for.  That single tweet became a source for multiple qualified leads. #LeeroyJenkins Maybe it’s time to start pick an avatar and star playing, tbh the extent of my WoW knowledge starts and stops with that South Park spoof form a few years back.

If you are currently struggling with the beast that is hiring tech talent I have some good news.  The one and only Steve Levy will be joining me for a special webinar – “Hiring Tech Talent Is Easy…Right?” next week 6/16 at 2pm ET with Steve onboard, I can promise you two things.  One – my friend the purple squirrel whisperer will leave you with some actionable tips that will help you start to improve your efforts that day and Two – He will do so in a way that will have you laughing and probably receiving more than one sideways glance from the other citizens of your cube farm.  Hope to see you there.