Digital transformation workforce: need to be treated according to IT industry standards

Digital transformation workforce: need to be treated according to IT industry standards. The sixth part of Acquiring and Organizing Talent to Drive Digital Transformation (DX) Success explores the importance of treating members of a dedicated digital transformation (DX, DT) organization in line with IT industry standards. Examines the competitive landscape of the domestic and international IT labor market and the strategies needed to recruit DX talent.

Up-and-coming careers in IT and the demand for digital transformation talent

Most of the jobs in the top 10 of Glassdoor’s list of the 50 hottest jobs of 2020 are in the IT field. The list was based on salary, job satisfaction, and job placement rates, and the top 10 jobs include front-end engineer, JAVA developer, data scientist (AI modeler), product manager, DevOps engineer, data engineer, and software engineer, all in the IT field.

The current state of domestic and international IT talent competition

In fact, these are the people who are essential to digital transformation. The domestic situation is not much different. Recently, the battle for IT talent among Korea’s top IT companies, such as Naver, Kakao, Delivery Nation, Coupang, and TOS, has been fierce enough to resemble a war. They are competing fiercely to recruit A-level developers with the best treatment in the industry, as well as large signing bonuses (incentives given in advance upon signing a work contract), various other welfare benefits, and stock options. This competition for talent is only getting more intense.

The importance of treating your digital transformation workforce right

The reason for the lengthy description of the job market in the IT industry is that the talent for digital transformation falls into the above categories and is competing for talent with the big names. One of the first things that comes up internally when you’re building an organization to execute DX from a non-IT perspective is the treatment of new hires. This is not only true for large organizations, but also for small and mid-sized companies.

If you’re a small startup, you have the flexibility to negotiate with the managing director and make decisions based on individual capabilities, but if you’re a larger company, you’re limited by the size of your workforce, and you can’t treat people differently for different jobs. However, the bottom line is that it is important for DX employees to align their treatment standards with the company’s existing treatment and the IT industry in which they work. This will ensure organizational continuity.

Key factors to consider in digital transformation staffing

Beyond the need to align average pay with market standards, there’s something else to consider when hiring new talent. In IT, the difference in productivity between an A-player and a C-player is more than double. So, if you can, it’s better to hire one A-player, even at a higher salary, than two C-players. Of course, as your organization grows, it’s not practical to keep everyone at A-level talent.

But in the early days of building a new organization, it’s a good idea to keep it that way. And one more thing, what companies like Google, Netflix, and Amazon in the US have in common is that more people want to work for them because they know that the people they work with next to them are A-listers and they want to work with them and compete with them. This can also be an important factor in driving loyalty to the company. This is something that we need to think about when we’re recruiting talent.

Digital transformation workforce: Strategies for reference checks and turnover in the IT workforce

When conducting a recruitment interview, it is difficult for managers or interviewers to accurately assess a person’s capabilities based on a short interview time. However, people in IT jobs are relatively easy to evaluate because it is easy to check references and see their own apps, services, and data modeling. When checking references, it is possible to get two or three or more external people instead of just one.

In recent years, the IT industry has seen a lot of competition for talent, and it’s not uncommon to see people jump from one job to another in the middle of a project for a higher salary. It’s not uncommon to see people leaving for double their previous salary. Not all employees decide to change jobs simply because of salary. However, it’s important for executives and managers to realize that many workers are getting offers from more places than they realize. For non-IT organizations, the loss of hard-earned talent can be devastating. Don’t overlook the fact that digital transformation is more likely to be an individual effort than an organizational effort in the short term.