More than wages: How a company can recruit tech talent in SEA

By Nandita Nandakumar 29 Jan 2019 7 min read

Veteran recruiter Nandita Nandakumar, Associate Director at Robert Walters’ Technology Commerce Division, shares how companies can win the war for tech talent in Southeast Asia.

When I first started in tech recruitment almost a decade ago, IT was just a support function. These days, IT drives the business.

We see this in Southeast Asia, where a young and growing population has embraced the digital way of life. The region boasts some of the most promising tech unicorns in the world, from Grab and Sea Group, to Lazada and Go-Jek. Who could have imagined, a decade ago, that billion-dollar tech businesses that revolutionise transportation, shopping, and entertainment would emerge from Southeast Asia?

But the tech talent crunch – a global problem – threatens the region’s burgeoning potential. In Southeast Asia, tech talent ranging from developers and software engineers to data scientists are in higher demand than ever before, and businesses are taking notice of the region’s growing skills gap.

A 2018 report by Slush Singapore and Monk’s Hill Ventures about the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem showed that 90 per cent of the tech community builders, venture capitalists (VC), and tech founders surveyed believed that the skills gap is a “major issue” for the tech industry. While respondents cited software engineering as the number one skillset that is by far the most challenging to hire in Southeast Asia, they also thought that cultivating more “abstract skills” such as product-building, design, and even digital marketing, is important for the tech industry.

Against this backdrop, one of the biggest questions that many companies face today in the region is this: What do firms need to do to distinguish themselves, attract, and retain the best tech talents out there?

Let’s face it: Salaries are important. Companies need to be realistic about the cost of talent and provide compensation that is commensurate with a prospective employee’s skillsets and experience. You may use our most recent Salary Survey 2019 as a point of reference.

A survey that we did last year showed that pay and benefits continue to rank top among jobseekers when looking for a job. But jobseekers also valued a company’s growth prospects and the brand name of the company.

Here are four areas companies should think about when devising their recruitment strategies.

1. Embrace new methods of recruitment to target tech talent.

With the rapid improvement in education and ease of movement across borders, talent can come from anywhere. For companies, this means having to explore less traditional methods of attracting talent.

Apart from traditional recruitment platforms like career fairs, or recruitment agencies, create your own opportunities to find talent – don’t wait for them to come to you.

One way that many companies have attempted to do this is through hackathons that present a problem for interested developers to solve. Coding challenges and workshops attract and empower talents in tech. These events bring together top programmers, students, and professors from around the world.

For instance, in 2017, Indonesia’s Go-Jek held its first hackathon that drew thousands of applicants from across Indonesia. Such hackathons open the door not only to the best tech solutions, but also to top candidates.

(From left to right) Andre Susanto of SAILYY, GO-JEK Indonesia HR Director Monica Oudang, Muhammad Mustadi of SSX_Ceria, and Mochammad Fatchur Rahman of Quantum Sigmoid. SAILYY, SSX_Ceria, and Quantum Sigmoid were the three winners of Go-Jek’s first hackathon Go-Hackathon in 2017. Image Credit: Go-Jek

Firms should also consider widening their nets and hiring based on a candidate’s potential value-add, not technical background. I’ve noticed that for many US tech companies, soft skills like the willingness to learn, enthusiasm, and an
innovative mindset are prioritised, as these are sometimes more essential to building a good team. Hard skills, on the other hand, can always be acquired through on-the-job training.

For example, firms I have worked with have shared that graduates in psychology can be valuable to user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design, despite lacking traditional technical training in these areas, as they better understand user behaviour and thought patterns.

2. Make sure the pace of hiring reflects your firm’s digital edge

Technology is constantly evolving, with the pace of change accelerating. Apart from innovating new products and services and investing in their employees to stay on top, tech companies need to ensure that company processes are equally efficient.

Firms that take too long to hire lose out on the best candidates. I once came across a firm that took eight to ten weeks – sometimes more – just to release an offer. You can only imagine how long the interview and screening process was before that. Even big, brand-name tech companies are guilty of making this mistake.

The hiring process is an important reflection of company culture, and tech candidates expect it to mirror the speed at which things happen in the firm. Streamline the recruitment process and act quickly to avoid losing the best candidates.

3. Understand that tech employees enjoy innovative disruption – so create a work environment that encourages that.

A third factor that companies tend to forget is that in today’s talent crunch, focusing on the people, rather than the products they create, is key.

For many of today’s younger workers, work has to be meaningful as well as rewarding. A work environment that is less rigid enhances personal and professional development.

At the same time, top tech employees disrupt and break boundaries. They think out of the box, and do not adhere to conventional methods of doing things. A work environment that encourages this flexibility tends to attract like-minded talent.

For example, Google has long encouraged its employees to devote 20 per cent of their time to passion projects. Gmail, Google Maps, Twitter, Slack, and Groupon all started as side projects. It is one reason why Google remains one of the most innovative companies in the world, and one of the most sought-after employers.

To this end, it pays to invest continually in upskilling your staff. Ensuring that your employees are equipped to handle the most cutting edge technology is good for business, but has the added advantage of keeping them engaged in their work.

This is important because I’ve noticed that the tech industry attracts a particular personality type – the tech talent I’ve worked with tend to be excited about change and keen to improve, paralleling the quick advancement of technology. Investing in training and mentorship, and offering opportunities to learn new skills, show your firm’s commitment to providing an upward career trajectory for your employees.

The IBM Skills Academy in Singapore is a good example. It offers training to those keen to bridge their digital skills gap and stand out from the competition. It adopts IBM’s training, digital learning assets, and certification to equip people with skills in new, emerging technology in cloud, data, or cyber security.

4. Help yourself, help the ecosystem – your recruitment strategy can develop regional tech talent.

Hiring foreign experts on a contract basis to train up a local team is a strategy increasingly used by tech firms in the region, and has been helpful in developing a good base of tech talent here.

Offshoring some tech aspects of a business to other parts of the region has also resulted in regional specialisation, with some countries building a competitive advantage in particular tech skillsets. For instance, Vietnamese coders are rapidly emerging as one of the top coders in the world.

Apart from developing local tech skills, many countries are also investing in returning talent to the region. Southeast Asian talents who have worked in Silicon Valley in key positions are invited to bring their tech expertise home, to contribute to the regional tech boom.

Singapore is no different. For instance, at Robert Walters, we started a Balik Kampung (Malay for ‘come home’) campaign in 2014 to help overseas Singaporeans secure a job back home, especially in the technology and banking sectors to fulfil the shortage of such talent in the market.

Companies attracting returning talent to fill key roles in their team are not only building a better tech team for their business – they are part of the solution to creating a robust tech talent ecosystem in the region.

Southeast Asia: A region brimming with potential

With tech sweeping across Southeast Asia and changing the way people work, play, and communicate, developing a pool of tech talent to support this phenomenon has become a concerted effort across stakeholders.

The talent crunch in tech is a reality, and it shows no signs of abating. To cope with the competition for the best and brightest, companies need to stay nimble, quick, and responsive. That's the best way to ensure that your pipeline for talent stays running in Southeast Asia.