Is IT Employer Branding Becalmed in a Sea of Sameness?

The IT sector is one of the most competitive markets for talent, but it seems that a lot of the employer brand messaging might not be cutting through because it all says the same thing...

We all know the IT talent market is very competitive. But in case you don’t know, here are some numbers to consider:

• In 2021, software engineers at Hired received almost twice the number of interview requests compared to 2022, according to their “2022 state of software engineers” report.
• According to the Datapeople Tech Hiring Report, IT job posts doubled in the US last year, while the average number of applicants shrunk by 25%.
• At a global level, Korn Ferry in “Future of work: the global talent crunch” points out that today there are 1.2 billion unfilled job positions, causing a $112.2 billion revenue loss. They estimate that the talent shortage in IT will reach 4.3 million open positions in 2030 and an unrealized output of $449.70 billion.
• In Argentina, according to Iprofesional, even though the salaries of the IT sector have grown an average of 30%, the talent shortage is expected to grow three times (from 5000 to 15000 uncovered positions).

Remote work is also expanding possibilities for IT professionals. Hired’s report affirms that those who are open to working remotely have received 20% more interview requests than those who are not. At the same time, small companies and start-ups are matching average market compensations. So yes, the competition for IT talent is booming, and companies have many players to watch out for.

So, it’s easy to see that, even with a pandemic in tow, this industry hasn’t slowed down.

Tactics to become attractive

There’s a saying that goes “The talent war is over: talent won”. This is exactly what’s happening in this industry: talent won, and companies are looking for the best ways to showcase themselves as great employers.

But for the IT industry, this is a hard task. What all companies did at first was to offer great compensation packages. Perks like great salaries, total flexibility, remote work possibilities, upskilling opportunities, training allowances, gifts, celebrations and many more became a standard in this sector. All companies were offering the same functional proposal to their talent audiences. IT professionals started to become more and more demanding, and companies thought it was time to explore new ways to stand out. Beyond perks and functional traits. 

That’s why employer branding becomes a must for IT companies to position themselves as great options into the talent market. They started to communicate heavily towards their talent audiences, generating content in social media, participating in talent-oriented and recruitment events and launching impactful attraction campaigns. But…

The sea of sameness

We’ve been doing some research, analyzing 36 IT companies, to be precise, and their main employer brand messages. Here are some examples:

Do what you love, create the future you want

Come build the future with us

Work at the heart of change

Let's change the future of work. Together.

Create the future of digital experiences

Create the future with us

We make an impact that shapes the future

What impact will you make?

Together we build the best brands

Do your best work ever

Connect anything. Change everything.

We put them all together and, through a word-cloud free and online software that everyone can access, we entered all those messages to see which were the most repeated concepts. And this is the result:

So, what did we find here?

• It is clear that the future and the possibility to create it, change it, build it and be part of it is the most repeated common theme on the EB main messages of most tech companies.
• They also tend to talk about making an impact and owning all these changes and creations for the future.
• Most EB main messages seem to be a call to action. Which reflects that they are focused mainly in recruitment and talent attraction, when it comes to their employer brand. 
• Many messages tend to showcase some kind of an exciting, unparalleled path for those who would like to join. And a good part of them are more about how exciting the companies are and how lucky you would be if you become an employee, rather than a “what’s in it for me” kind of message.

So, that’s the sea of sameness in the IT world. It has a lot of future, change, impact, creation and building. It depends on you if you want to drown in it, or design your own, unique, beautiful island.

Next week, we will show you how to swim out of it.