This a guest post by Danielle Geoffroy, a Research Associate on the Application Development & Delivery (AD&D) team.

You have a people and organization problem. In our 2015 survey, we asked what the biggest barriers to success are when it comes to delivering customer-facing mobile and web experiences. The answer didn’t surprise us – the top three challenges were all talent-related. Digital experience delivery is the new black, and in order to incorporate it into your strategy and brand, you need to hire a new breed of development and delivery talent: technologists that are creative, understand business goals, and are up to date on new technology and languages (think WCM, not just ERP, and Javascript, not just Python).

In order to hire this premium talent, you must think like the talent. These designers, developers, creators didn’t grow up in the suit and tie corporate world, and will need competitive salaries and benefits plus much more: meaningful, fast-paced work cultures that foster development.

In order hire this talent that has new priorities, we identified three C’s to build your perfect match digital experience team:

  • Culture:  We often discuss the idea of the “X factor” when hiring. Define what the X factor means for your company’s culture and then color it for what you envision for your developers and designers.These hires should push you out of the box, not color within the lines of it. This may mean that you also have to shift your own internal culture as well in order to empower your talent to do work that is worth writing home about. 
  • Coaching: Understand that this will not be a 9-5 thank you for the check, type of experience. Just as you want to be pushed by your talent, your talent needs to be pushed by you. Top talent wants to learn new skillsets, stay on top of latest trends, and gain business acumen.  For example, SapientNito has their Chief Marketing Technology Officer University, a program curated and dedicated to developing the multidisciplinary skillsets of the future for their employees.
  • Community : With the high demand for digital experience talent,  the ball is in their court.  There has even been Jerry Maguire-like positions created to handle the bidding wars.  Consider ways to embed yourself into the delivery communities to promote your firm's own thought leadership to proactively recruit talent. You may do this by attending or sponsoring events, or you can go as far to host your own.  Do not sit around and expect to collect resumes: top talent gets courted rather than waiting for offers.

Our recent report, The Three C’s of Finding and Retaining Digital Experience Talent, expands on the notion of implementing these recruitment strategies into your company, by providing tips and real life examples of how companies successful in delivering digital experiences, have overcome the people barrier. We'd also  love to hear your stories about finding and retaining top development talent in the comments below.