How to Hire Candidates without a Tech Background for Your Tech Company
It is easy to think you would need an employee with a degree in computer science for tech companies in Singapore—and for some jobs you do. However, there’s plenty of room in the tech job market for people with no IT background. The Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) Jobs Situation Report for information and communications technology (ICT) states that in 2020, 30% of job openings at tech companies were for “tech-lite roles.” These include positions like Digital Marketing Specialist and Customer Success Manager. Tech companies are still hiring for non-tech positions in Marketing, Sales, and HR as well.
Take inspiration from 31-year-old Fadhillah Johari. In 2020, she successfully transitioned from Product Support Specialist at her previous workplace to Customer Success Officer at Inspire-Tech. She lost her job due to company restructuring, and pandemic hiring freezes made it challenging to find a new position. After reading MOM’s Jobs Situation Report, she decided to upskill by taking classes in “Python programming, data analytics, e-commerce and digital marketing” under the SGUnited Skills Programme.
She also joined the SGTech Career Support group. There, she came across the software development company Inspire-Tech, which was participating in the initiative. After that, she scored a 6-month attachment with Inspire-Tech through the SGUnited Mid-Career Pathways Programme.
Here are some tips for hiring potential employees with no tech background for your tech company.
Not All Openings at a Tech Company Need Employees with a Tech Background
No business can run on software engineers alone. Here are some of the non-tech jobs you can hire someone with no tech background for:
Marketing
Sales
HR
Customer Success
Business Analyst
Project Manager
Product Manager
Account Manager
Consider Candidates’ Transferable Skills
When applying to tech companies, a candidate’s transferable skills can be their greatest asset. Here are some of the skills that you can look for:
Project Management This skill involves leading a team and coordinating with various departments to ensure a project stays on track and achieves the desired outcome. A candidate will need good leadership skills to motivate colleagues and organisation skills to make sure the team meets their deadlines.
Collaboration Exchanging ideas and working well together in a team is crucial for any workplace. However, it’s especially important in environments like tech, where people are expected to innovate and come up with quick solutions to problems.
Creative Thinking Whether they are coming up with new features for your company’s app or brainstorming for a new marketing campaign, being able to think out of the box is essential.
Problem-solving Problem-solving means not only seeing areas for improvement but also coming up with feasible solutions. To do this effectively, they will need to analyse and look at an issue from different angles.
Flexibility ICT is a fast-paced environment in which things are constantly changing. A new hire must keep up and adjust when projects suddenly go in a different direction due to new circumstances or setbacks.
Communication This skill is essential when it comes to coordinating with teammates and other departments on projects. It isn’t just about getting a point across—it involves being able to listen to co-workers as well. In tech, this may also mean understanding technical explanations from colleagues, and articulating them in ways that non-tech co-workers and customers can understand. Some roles will also require an employee to explain input from customers and stakeholders to digital workers.
According to the Harvard Business Review, ICT companies often use the STAR method in interviews. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result. The interviewer will usually ask a question along the lines of “tell me about a time when…” or “Show me an example of a situation where….” The candidate is then expected to talk about a situation in which they displayed a certain trait, including their assigned task in that situation, the action they took, and the result of their actions. As you use the STAR method, you can discover how candidates used some of their transferable skills above to solve a problem or complete a task.
Encourage Existing Employees to Upskill for the Role
These days, even traditionally non-tech roles are becoming more and more digitalised. Picking up a few technical skills can help a valuable employee to ready themselves for another job in your company.
For instance, in digital marketing, some knowledge of data analysis will be useful in profiling your customers. And according to Channel News Asia, coding helps people in all sorts of non-tech jobs work more efficiently, from business development to marketing. Being familiar with things like data analytics and UX design can also help an employee communicate more easily with digital workers in your company. After all, it’s easier to get on the same page if they speak the same language.
The important thing is to determine which digital skills and tools will be useful for a particular job. The learning curve may be steep, but with patience and a positive attitude, anyone can pick up a new skill and excel at their job.
There are all kinds of resources for learning digital skills, from apps like DataCamp to online classes and workshops. Employees can even enrol in full-time courses under the SGUnited Skills Programme.
If an employee has undiscovered potential in an area, they might even be interested in switching to more specialised technical roles in the company. The government and ICT companies are dedicated to growing Singapore’s pool of local digital talent through initiatives such as IBM’s TechSkills Accelerator Company-Led Training programme and Microsoft’s #GetReadySG.
Get Employees into the Right Mindset
Encourage employees to adopt the attitudes and ways of thinking that allow digital workers to thrive in the tech industry. It’s important to have a growth mindset. After all, technology is constantly changing and evolving. To keep up, people in this industry are always looking to enhance their skillsets and find learning opportunities.
It’s important for them to have grit and determination as well. They will most likely be working in a fast-paced environment. And as they work with software engineers and full-stack developers, they should be confident in what they are bringing to the table. As someone without an IT degree, they can provide a different perspective than colleagues who have been immersed in tech all their lives.
Get Advice from People in the Industry
Networking with people from the tech industry comes with all sorts of advantages. You can ask them what the working environment is like in their company and adapt practices that work for their employees. They could also tip you off on the latest technologies that are relevant to your particular industry. Your connections may even give you an introduction to potential hires.
The first place to start would be friends or acquaintances who are already working in ICT. If you don’t know anyone, there are organisations like Girls in Tech Singapore that are dedicated to increasing the number of women in the industry and offer support, training, and mentoring.
Hiring someone without a STEM degree for your tech company may seem unproductive. However, ICT companies know that having a diverse workforce is key to innovation and success. Because of this, they are more open to hiring and upskilling talent with non-tech backgrounds. With the right mindset, you too can be at the forefront of Singapore’s digital economy.
Visit the Employers Insights page for more tips that can guide you in attracting the most suitable jobseeker. It can also help you stay up to date on the latest employment trends to boost your talent acquisition needs. Register now on JobStreet to start you off on building your workforce today.