The Role of Employer Branding in Attracting and Retaining Information and Communication Technology Talents

The Fourth Industrial Revolution dramatically increased the demand for information and communication technology specialists, globally. According to human resource specialists and industry experts,competition between companies to attract talents in this area has intensified all over the world. Moreover, this is further aggravated by the fact that information and communication technology specialists can work remotely from different locations and place of residence no longer limits their employment in companies in other countries. Moreover, the establishment of remote work was remarkably accelerated during COVID-19 pandemic. Recruitment and retention of talents is related with number of challenges in Georgian information and communication technology companies as well. In addition, the specific characteristics and preferences of the "Millennials" and generation “Z” (which includes most of the information and communication technology specialists) should be considered. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role and importance of employer’s brand for information and communication technology talents. The overall objective was to identify means to attract and retain these talents in the face of fierce global competition. The main question of the conducted research was - what role and importance does employer's brand have for the talents of this sphere? A combination of mixed-research methods has been applied. Initially qualitative research, in-depth interviews were conducted with human resources and employer brand specialists, who are actively working to attract and retain talents in information and communication technologies. At the second stage, In the framework of the quantitative research, the talents of the same direction were surveyed through a structured questionnaire. Based upon the results, the employer brand is a topical issue, both, for talents and organizations. Moreover, challenges were revealed that are being met in our reality and are important parts of the employer brand. According to the results, the main challenge perceived by employers is attraction of information and technological talents and selection of right motivational systems for them. Although the field is still in the early stages of development in Georgia, companies are increasingly emphasizing employer branding strategies in the field of human resource management and are willing to incur financial costs for this. Companies do not spare time nor money to attract the best talent. On the other hand, the results of quantitative research show that the employer brand has quite big impact on the perception of talents towards companies. Whileselecting an employer they pay attention to various important components of the employer brand