For the past few years, I’ve been living in one of the fastest growing technology economies in the country (yes, Orlando), helping rapidly growing tech and software companies develop talent attraction and recruitment plans.
Demand for numerous positions and skills-sets is consistently outweighing the actual size of the talent pool in Orlando. Engineering talent, technical talent, SaaS Sales professionals, Digital Marketers, and other tech roles are in constantly higher demand than supply.
But that’s what we’ve got to deal with. While Orlando is consistently bringing in new talent on its own (population growth at about 1.04% annually, not bad), to scale our companies at the rates we want, we need to get more creative.
We come to a few different solutions to combat this talent-deficient and create scalable organizational growth. Without the talent that we need here locally always ready to go, we are forced towards two methods. Talent Recruitment and Talent Development. To rapidly scale a company in an emerging market WITH a talent-deficit, we need to perfect a blended model of these methodologies.
Talent development is basically creating this talent out of thin air (sort of). Bringing in individuals based on capabilities and potential, not hard skills.
- Many times, you can scale quicker by bringing in nonconventional backgrounds (different industry, different product models, different primary job responsibilities) to fill openings.
- You look aggressively for soft skills (ability to learn, coachable, interpersonal skills, etc) and invest like crazy in hard skill training and development.
- Leadership must be on point with communication and teaching, helping grow people into the sharp tech executives you need to build a company.
Talent recruitment is about attracting high-caliber with given technical skills to come join wherever you are. Sounds simple, but there are some nuances to doing this in an emerging market.
- You’ve got to convince people to join you in a market that is not entirely mature yet, which has some inherent risk to them.
- This gives you an opportunity to get skilled works that will “hit the ground running”, but your opportunity must be intrinsically better than their current situation (compensation, equity/options, career development, etc.)
Orlando is growing fast as hell, but its tech community has not gotten close to the level of somewhere like San Francisco or DC. People will come this to market though for the opportunity. To be part of its long term growth and establish themselves as a leader in the space.
Taking a blended model of development and recruitment can help you scale your team at the rapid pace you may need. Things are progressively getting easier for emerging markets with digital work-spaces, remote positions, and other technology. But at the end of the day, you usually need a solid core next to you day-by-day to grow your company. Maybe call a good recruiter if you know one 😊.
