The shortfall of top IT talent in Europe continues to intensify and therefore attracting, developing, and retaining this talent has become critical to many organizations, especially those that rely on technology innovation. This competition for talent means that the most successful organizations are focusing on putting their employees first by developing employee value propositions and a culture that encourages ‘Generation Y’ to innovate and succeed in a dynamic and empowered environment. Consequently, this has led to the rise in the high tech, high growth ‘innovator hubs’that are multiplying across many European business centers.

Traditional methods of technology development have changed; many of the job roles that exist within these businesses have also changed, from ‘C-suite’ down – such as the CIO, CTO, CMO – have merged into one role. A leading technology start-up in London typically does not have a HR Director or, for that matter, a HR department. This would have been unheard of in the past and challenges the role of HR more than any other function in order to keep pace with innovation, evolve and become agile. The owner and key decision maker is usually a combination of the CMO/CIO who could be product visionaries and bank upon HR to enable and empower their business. Today, a CTO is a marketer, a technologist,and even the salesman – all three. Welcome to the world of the evolved IT executive.

At Arrows Group Global, our teams are like global talent scouts and we deliver our service utilizing agile methodologies. We look and feel like a digital agency but deliver in a professional services style, building upon our core business in recruitment. Our center in India has become pivotal to our global thinking and approach, integrating seamlessly with our various European teams. We offer resourcing advice, branding consulting, and source full teams by taking ownership for pyramid sourcing rather than transactional relationships.

The 3 stage approach that we adopt at Arrows Group is:

• Think global. We recently hired a Bulgarian digital expert relocating from the US, recruited by our team in India to work in Germany. Old ways of recruiting, acquiring, and accessing talent are no longer effective. Companies that fail to adapt risk ending up on the losing side when attempting to attract the best talent. Today’s boundaries are imaginary, and this defines each organization’s success and sustainability.

• Act fast. We re-engineer client processes into ‘sprints’ so there is structure and pace, but action is decisive and clearly defined. We are organized to support clients in a 24/7 model to identify, attract, and acquire the best candidates.

• Be rigorous. We utilize NLP techniques to select the right cultural as well as technical fit. In the modern world, being able to “fit” into a team is as important as being technically competent.

Today, technology has disrupted old business models beyond recognition, with social, mobility, analytics, cloud, and customer-focused personalisation the new challenges to address.  Identifying, attracting, and retaining the right talent for the right job will transform any organisation if executed correctly.  The upside is sustained competitive advantage through an irresistible value proposition for employees and customers.  The digital technology industry of today is founded on innovation and agility - applying these principles to Talent Acquisition and integrating talent with digital enterprise is long overdue.