What does it take to hire and retain technical talent?

Continuing with my recent thread on IT employment, you might find this article from Network World interesting. Quoting the article:

IT managers say now more than ever they struggle to find qualified IT employees and to keep key talent on staff, while tasked with delivering ever more services to the business.

The concerns certainly are not new, but they are growing in importance, according to the Society for Information Management (SIM). This week the organization revealed that "Attracting, developing and retaining IT professionals" topped its annual list of IT management concerns, ahead of financial woes related to reducing costs and technology-related worries such as security and privacy. SIM reports that IT managers are experiencing staff turnover rates of less than 10% this year, which is far lower than years past, and that attracting talent worries most because of a dwindling resource pool.

"The challenges with attracting talent stems from a pipeline of qualified candidates that isn't as large as the demand companies are seeing for new people, which is a good thing for our discipline," says Jerry Luftman, SIM's vice president of academic affairs. "It's good news that the amount of resources being demanded from IT are on the rise, but it's happening at the same time a large number of workers are leaving the workforce."

As a result, IT managers say they wrestle often with the challenge of hiring people that fit well into their organization in the hopes they won't lose the talent quickly.