How Company Culture Attracts Top IT Talent in Colombia

These shifts have affected Colombia as much as anywhere else. The demand for high quality IT talent has increased exponentially, but supply has not kept pace.

It’s all about identity

For Colombian developers and IT workers, it’s a buyer’s market. And deciding where to land is more than just a question of who offers the highest income, but also which organization offers the best cultural fit. What I have experienced in the IT talent acquisition industry is that each organization has its own “personality” that defines it, and not every personality is compatible with every type of client, project or candidate. So the key part here is to do your own internal research on what works and what does not work for your organization, geography, and company culture. Step by step one will eventually discover the organization's true identity, needless to say is a process that takes time.

This is going to be a more productive approach than only focusing on which candidate or project is “good” or “bad”. Don’t get me wrong: I strongly believe that being selective is vital for success. But there has to be balance. It is not wise to completely disregard candidates or clients in any given moment given how quickly everything is changing. The outcome inevitably is going to be a lot of missed opportunities and the real challenge is to maintain those types of relationships alive after that first rejection.

The art of building a successful employee Brand in Colombia

A company whose reputation is built on its constant rejection of developers is definitely not a catalyst for business growth nor talent attraction, especially here in Colombia, where everything is taken personally. So selecting an inclusive type of communication style within the hiring experience and keeping candidates in the loop is crucial to maintain your cultural brand.

Having conducted the research to figure out who we are and where we are going as an organization, it’s also our responsibility to spread the word to let the world know how awesome we are —and how awesome we want you, our potential employee, to be. But we cannot limit ourselves to just that. We also have to show how we as an organization are contributing to actively turning that into a future hire by engaging potential applicants. After connecting with our talent brand and looking at our Careers page, full engagement is achieved when applicants submit applications to our job opportunities.

Traditional strategies like crowdsourcing, recruiting newsletters, testimonials, job boards, social networks and different types of events do work to a certain degree. But in order to be impactful, attract, and retain, you as a recruiter need to develop a personalized experience for each candidate. That can even go as far as adding a social component to the mix. I’ve observed that once we start implementing these types of mid- to long-term strategies with the current employees and talent pool, they all become identified with your brand and culture. This leads to sustainable and measurable business growth, so experimenting with new things and taking intelligent risks will always be encouraged in our FullStack Labs culture, and this is what differentiates us from others. FullStack Labs has managed to attract and retain high-quality talent in Colombia - check out the FullStack team! Our offshore team is managed by Ivan Ardila. If you are interested in joining our team, please check out our Careers page.