Month: December 2022

How non-tech founders can build great technology companies

If you’re a founder from a non-tech background, you may feel disadvantaged when building a technology company. You may need to figure out where or how to start. But with the right advice and resources, you can overcome these challenges and create a successful tech company. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some tips for non-tech founders and helpful resources that will guide you through the process. So don’t worry – you got this! Just follow these simple steps, and you’ll be on your way to success.

Building a product/service without understanding of the underlying tech can be tricky. You may face some challenges like:

Hiring a technical team

Building a tech team is the most challenging part of setting up a startup. You need to find tech talent that is suitable for your business needs. Sourcing, engaging, and hiring tech talent takes a lot of time. If you are looking to hire developers, you need to figure out the entire development pipeline. Assigning them roles and responsibilities can be challenging if you don’t know the tech. 

To overcome this, non-tech founders can benefit from the expertise of a reliable pre-assembled plug-and-play tech team. Instead of worrying about recruitment or team leadership, you can focus on developing your product or service.

Finding a co-founder with a tech background

While having a co-founder with the tech expertise is not mandatory, they can help build a tech team. They can also be critical players in business-related activities such as networking, pitching to investors, presenting your products at conferences, and gathering user feedback.

Many benefits come with finding such a co-founder. But recruiting a technical co-founder can be challenging too. Many non-technical startup founders need help figuring out where to start looking for such experts.

Solution?

Outsourcing with an external tech company means that you’ll be benefiting from the technical expertise of teams that may be located all over the world. This helps broaden your search and find people excited about your product. Plus, you can always leave the door open for bringing a tech co-founder on board when the time is right.

Non-tech founders have succeeded and how!

Wonder if you can succeed as a non-tech founder? There are plenty if you are looking for some inspiration. Founders with no education or work experience in the technology space have gone on to become successful entrepreneurs.

Brian Chemsky is one such name. He and co-founder Joe Gebbia famously built the 100 billion dollar business Airbnb without an iota of coding skills. The duo were industrial design/graphics design graduates from Rhode Island University. Today, Airbnb is over six million rooms strong in over 81,000 cities globally as of 2020. 

For another non-tech entrepreneur, the journey began in 2012. Falguni Nayar, the founder of the Indian online cosmetic marketplace Nykaa, was a banker for two decades before dipping her toes into entrepreneurship at age 55! Nykaa specializes in multi-beauty and personal care products. Today, the e-commerce giant is valued at approximately $13 billion after its recent listing on India’s National Stock Exchange.

Similarly, Alexis Ohanian, a non-technical entrepreneur, co-founded Reddit. As a prominent news aggregator, Reddit receives over 1 billion page views per month and can convert a news topic into a viral hit. Ohanian co-founded Reddit with co-founder Steve Huffman after graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005 with degrees in commerce and history.

We could go on and on. But the bottomline is, if they can do it, so can you. Let’s see how. Start by building a solid tech team.

How can you build a strong tech team?

Finding tech talent is difficult for many CEOs. After all, even if you know your business well, it might be tough to discern if the person you hire can truly accomplish what is required of him/her. According to a McKinsey survey, 61% of HR professionals believe building a tech team is the most challenging for them in the years ahead.

Regardless of the daunting hurdles in finding tech talent, established organizations can only expect to survive in the digital era if they are technologically strong. As a result, IT talent should be the CEO’s top focus.

Here are a few tips that will go a long way if you want to build a tech team as a non-technical founder/entrepreneur.

Multi-pronged approach

Filling your tech-talent demands is becoming a multidimensional competition. Companies must spend concurrently throughout the “hire to retire” life cycle.

This begins with creating a digital-talent engine; a dedicated team is tasked with managing the whole employee experience, from hiring and onboarding to generating new career pathways and continually upgrading capabilities.

Bridge the talent gap

Do your employees have the skill required to fulfill your business needs? Analyze the skill gaps of your employees periodically and develop training sessions to refresh their existing talent or upskill them.

Focus on candidate experiences

To find the perfect tech talent, a more effective approach is to focus on the candidate’s experience. You need to improve the virtual candidate experience since 70% of companies in a recent survey said their recruiting and onboarding was at least half virtual. Some ways of doing that include the following:

  • Tech talent want to meet other technologists, so ensure that engineers and other relevant roles are part of your interview team. 
  • Promising applicants are ambitious and have a wide range of possibilities. Create an interview and evaluation strategy that can result in a decision in as little as one day.
  • Because IT talent isn’t only going to job boards, be active in non-traditional channels like hackathons, open-source channels, and skill-specific curated sites. 

iView Labs as a talent partner

iView Labs can be a potential partner that helps businesses find tech talent. We have a team of experts who know how to find the best tech talent. This way, businesses can focus on building their product or service and not worry about the nitty-gritty of hiring. iView Labs is a reliable partner that you can trust to build a tech team for your business.To learn more about iView Labs, kindly log on to our website www.iviewlabs.com and to get in touch with us with your queries and needs, write us an email at info@iviewlabs.com and sales@iviewlabs.com. Download the latest portfolio to see our work.

How and Where to find the most suitable tech talent for your business

A competent tech team plays a vital role in keeping the gears of any organization running smoothly. From system design to creating system architectures, code and workflows to troubleshooting issues with operating systems, networks, databases, hardware and software, tech talent or their lack can make or break a business. 

So the question most of us face as entrepreneurs is how do we as business tackle challenges related to talent shortages. 

In a maze of job portals, social media, and online forums, where do you start?

Read on for tips and tricks to help founders and entrepreneurs find suitable tech talent.

1. Understand the Position You Need to Fill

The first step towards finding the right talent is understanding your own need for talent. 

Long term vs short term Need, Specialised or Just getting the work done, Part time or full time, On Premise or Remote. Having a better clarity on the nature of the job and a working style for this role which is mutually beneficial for you and your business can really help to fill the position and get the necessary work done. 

If you have a long-term need for an expert with specialization, it can be worth going through a rigorous recruitment process. But if you have a specific short term need for project-based work, it can be worth looking into hiring an agency or a Gig Worker. Small agencies and Gig workers can often help with out-of-the-ordinary situations:

  • Short-term projects or development “sprints.”
  • Projects requiring a limited number of hours
  • Cybersecurity emergency
  • Troubleshooting apps or software

 However, suppose you need specialists who understand your business and can provide consistent support for your tech development, processes, apps, and products. In that case, it’s far better to have a full-time tech team, whether that’s in-house staff or a hired consulting firm.

2. Know the Ideal Candidate 

When looking to find talent and build a tech team, it’s important to first understand what you’re looking for. Who is your ideal candidate? What kind of skills and experience are you hoping for? Knowing the particular skill sets and experience required for the position will help you rapidly sift out unqualified applications, allowing you to focus on those who are worth your time.

Once you have a clear idea of your ideal candidate, you can start to craft your candidate persona. Consider market demographics when doing this. For example, if you want to find tech talent, remember that almost half of all tech candidates are under 35. This information can help you adapt your candidate persona to find tech talent that matches your needs.

 3. Figure Out What Your Ideal Candidate Wants

It’s not just you who chooses your ideal candidate. Your ideal candidate should choose you too. The current workforce is spoiled for choices. They will choose the opportunity that best suits them. Hence, to find the right tech talent, you must know what they want.

According to surveys from LinkedIn and Glassdoor, these are some of the factors that IT job seekers identified as most important:

Benefits – 63%

Salary – 67%

Company Culture – 60%

Location – 59%

Work/Life Balance – 29%

Consider what makes your ideal candidates tick. Include that in your job description.

4. Look at the right places

Even with the perfect job description, you won’t get any leads if qualified tech professionals don’t see your posts. You need to know where to find the best tech talent. 

Job portals like Indeed and Monster may be good for getting resumes. But most of the qualified tech talent gets hired through strong personal networks. To find the crème de la crème, go to where you know the tech community spends its time. Like: 

  • Industry websites (GitHub, Stack Overflow, etc.) 
  • Online forums 
  • Local technology events 

People hanging out on these platforms are the ones serious about technology. Go hire them! 

5. Work with a tech talent company

Of course, building a tech team doesn’t necessarily mean making a permanent hire. It merely means finding tech talent to complete a task. Sometimes, the easiest way to fill employment gaps is by using the services of a tech staffing company. An IT staffing company saves you from a complicated hiring process.

One such trusted solution provider to find tech talent is iView.

With iView, you can build a tech team quickly without any research, job postings, or scouring hundreds of applications. iView presents flexible solutions where you can choose the number of tech people you need and their duration. Thus, you can easily scale up or scale down your workforce as needed. You can now be more flexible with your projects and save time and money hiring unnecessary full-time employees.

So, if you’re struggling to find tech talent to manage your projects, trust the experts at iView to build a tech team for you. We have rich experience and can help you get the qualified professionals you need to complete any IT project.

Footnote:

At iView Labs, we offer technical team talent on demand to supplement or add to businesses’ current capacity and meet your needs for technical development. In accordance with the talents required by the business, we match, build, manage, and operate their technical teams for a more sustainable functioning. This broadly fits with the core principle of the digitisation movement, in which technology should ease your life and allow free creative minds to reach new heights. Rest assured that our team will continue to put our best foot forward to deliver astounding results. Want us to become a part of your growth journey? Get in touch today.To know more about iView Labs, kindly log on to our website www.iviewlabs.com and to get in touch with us with your queries and needs, just write us an email at info@iviewlabs.com and sales@iviewlabs.com. Download the latest portfolio to see our work.