What is a StackScore?

Why do some organizations attract the top talent other cannot?  Companies struggle to hire top developers, competing for the same limited pool of top talent.  Extensive effort and investment has been placed on the sourcing of talent without addressing the root causes of their inability to attract top development talent in the first place. 

StackScore started as an internal tool we developed to standardize our evaluation of a client's marketplace attractiveness to development talent and qualify the employee value proposition. Now, we present the score to our clients as a part of our standard process.  

The StackScore is a number between 1-100 that  quantifies the characteristics of an organization's capability to attract and retain top tier development talent.  

The more attractive a company, the higher the StackScore.   

How is it used?

StackScore is used to quantify a client's external attractiveness within the development community. By identifying areas of weakness, we can then address them at the enterprise or divisional level. 

It's simple: The best way to recruit and retain top development talent is to create an organization attractive to developers.  We survey extensive populations of developers to understand their key motivators and the characteristics they seek.  We also examine great software development organizations to understand their ability to attract, motivate and retain top tier developers.   

​With this understanding, we help organizations understand and quantify their attractiveness with their StackScore, address the areas to improve their attractiveness, and provide in-depth assessment and certify their improved StackScore.   

Understanding and analyzing the StackScore, we help clients in three important ways:

• Address immediate and cost effective ways to improve their score, improving their ability to attract and retain top talent
• Work with senior management to address the larger enterprise (and often expensive) issues 
• Help organizations build teams with a higher caliber of candidates than they would otherwise be able to attract themselves

How is the StackScore calculated?

We evaluate and benchmark an organization against over 40 specific facets of developer motivation and then apply them to our carefully weighted StackScore relative to other companies within the marketplace.  We find that great software development organizations that are able to attract and retain top tier developers have previously addressed many of these motivators, have developed an appealing employer value proposition, cultivated a well defined culture, and so have a higher StackScore.  

Bringing it all together:
​Employment Branding and Marketing

• ​Assess  employment brand relative to the market and the Employee Value Proposition (EVP), which forms the basis of the current state StackScore
• Craft detailed recommendations providing clear direction into an integrated and holistic brand strategy and marketing plan 
• Define new organic employment value proposition  & messaging - building a new narrative
• Communicate new narrative and brand utilizing a development-centric omni-channel approach ​
• Measure business impact of branding and marketing
• Monitor on an ongoing basis the effectiveness of the message

** Note - the preliminary StackScore is based upon an initial client conversation and is not intended or recommended to substitute for a comprehensive brand assessment and strategy implementation.