If you want to be successful in technical hiring, you must keep up with the current status of the industry. This includes staying on top of industry changes and figuring out how they can affect future recruiting trends.
What has changed in the technical hiring industry since the pandemic?
Since the emergence of COVID-19 in 2020, we’ve seen unprecedented changes in practically every sector of business and daily life. But what impact has this had on technical hiring?
Jake Perez, the editor of Linkedin News, claimed in late 2020 that many of New York City’s office buildings were vacant. The question of whether or not big corporations need to renew their leases on these expensive real-estate premises is still being debated. For many firms, remote work has become the norm, and it’s one of the most significant areas of change in technical recruitment.
Technical hiring isn’t slowing down
First and foremost, tech professions continue to be in high demand all across the world. “More than two-thirds of the top 15 fastest-growing job titles are specifically tech-focused,” according to Talent Point. Nonetheless, the tech industry has been negatively impacted.
For the first time in years, technical hiring began to decline during the pandemic. As Julia Pollak, a Zip Recruiter labor economist put it:
“Tech is actually the industry with one of the largest declines in job postings and that’s perhaps surprising because, with so many in-person brick-and-mortar types of industries on pause, one would think the internet would be taking over.”
Pollak’s remarks are in direct conflict with a Microsoft forecast from 2021. According to the report, “tech hiring will grow from 41 million in 2020 to 190 million in 2025,” according to Fiona Carney, Chief Marketing & Operations Officer for Microsoft Asia Pacific.
So, why is there so much conflicting information, and which source is the most reliable? Well, both answers may be correct.
The pandemic appears to have created an early shift in technical recruiting statistics that had not before been observed. Before the epidemic, there was such a high demand for developers that many people could afford to hunt for better jobs. Those same developers have been spooked into thinking more cautiously about their prospects after the outbreak. They want to keep what they have for the time being, at least for the sake of job security.
However, according to Microsoft’s study, the epidemic will not keep technical hiring static for long.
Despite the pandemic’s upheaval and the resulting changes in working environments around the world, the tech industry continues to outperform the rest. Not only that, but as more and more industries transition to digitalization, IT hiring will almost certainly increase.
In other words, if you want to migrate your processes online, whether you’re in finance, retail, or education, you’ll almost certainly need to recruit a computer expert in the near future.
So, does this imply that all aspects of the technical staffing market will soon be growing once more? No, not exactly.
Recruiters in the technical hiring market face some challenges.
‘Poorly constructed hiring processes,’ according to Forbes, are the top difficulty facing the technical hiring business. Take-home tests and coding challenges, which don’t assess candidates’ genuine talents and don’t assist recruiters to weed out the weaker candidates, are still being used by tech recruiters to waste their candidates’ time.
The solution is to establish succinct interview approaches as well as a faster and more effective candidate experience. One that does not waste the candidate’s valuable time. The top developers are aware of their worth and will not waste time.
Using a developer screening tool to expedite your interview process is a no-brainer. Apart from that, simple solutions such as a free online tech recruiting course will assist recruiters in fine-tuning their current methods.
Remote hiring in the tech industry
The pandemic may be coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean everything will go back to normal. Many developers, in particular, can work from home with ease. As a result, the tech industry is more equipped than others to work remotely permanently. In one sense, it means that developers may now fill positions thousands of miles distant from their homes. Cities, states, and even countries are all affected. This newfound freedom, though, comes with its own set of difficulties.
When it comes to working remotely full-time, one difficulty that not only the tech hiring sector but businesses in general face is the topic of pay. As more businesses move part or all of their operations online, the issue of payment will become more prominent than ever. Should you, for example, be paid the same as your coworkers if you live in a different city?
Assume you’re a senior developer at Silicon Valley in San Francisco. Because of the competitive business environment in the area, as well as the exorbitant cost of living in San Francisco, your income is likely to be high. Imagine that your tech company has shifted online as a result of the pandemic and that someone in Kansas City or Delaware, where competition and costs aren’t as high, has started working remotely at your company in the same role as you.
Should they be compensated the same as you? They will, after all, be paying less in rent and living expenses than you will in California. It’s an essentially ethical matter that the tech sector is grappling with, and several major tech businesses have responded in a variety of ways.
When it comes to technical hiring, some organizations have begun to offer new hires location-based wages. According to CNBC, Facebook is one of the corporations that has said that it will begin to “adjust salary to your location.” This, of course, will have repercussions for coders all over the world.
Technical hiring from a larger pool of candidates
Another intriguing aspect of technical hiring that could change is the diversification of technical employees and, in particular, where they are based.
Before the epidemic, tech behemoths looked to London, San Francisco, and New York for new engineers. Those same world-renowned IT hubs attracted developers looking for top tech jobs. However, things have changed since then. With remote work, a developer may get employed from their home in Wisconsin just as easily as they can in Silicon Valley. As a result, diverse types of individuals and cultures will be mixing more than ever before at the imaginary tables of the world’s leading tech businesses, although theoretically.
Is it possible that this may generate a rift? Or, more likely, will it necessitate a hitherto unimagined innovation? Only time will tell if this is true.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, stated it this way:
“When you limit hiring to people who either live in a small number of big cities or are willing to move there, that cuts out a lot of people who live in different communities, different backgrounds, or may have different perspectives.”
Technical candidates have some challenges when it comes to getting hired.
So, how do candidates adjust to this shifting technological landscape and what new hurdles do they face?
Upskilling
To secure a job, tech applicants must be adept in their skill sets now more than ever. Not only that, but as technology improves around them, existing developers will need to look at ways to improve their skills. Because the market develops so quickly, a developer who does not master new abilities will be obsolete in a few years.
“Existing employees may require up to ten new talents to accomplish their jobs by 2021,” according to 4 corner resources in late 2020. As a result, more employers are turning to upskilling to close the gap,” he said a year ago.
Future developers will need to learn new abilities to succeed. Worryingly, many tech companies are woefully underprepared when it comes to training their engineers in the new skills required to propel their organizations forward.
Developer candidates, on the other hand, can do a lot to not just land new jobs, but also to continue to adapt and prosper in their present tech professions.
A developer’s versatility can be a valuable asset in the future. Full-stack developers, for example, are in high demand since they can work on both the back end and the front end of a program.
Dev-Ops experts, who specialize in both development and operations and are in high demand, are in a similar situation. Many of them were originally typical software engineers who upgraded their skills to fill a void in the market. Engineers may find that the only way to survive in the changing world of tech hiring is to push themselves to improve in areas where they are weak, making it more difficult to be missed.
Artificial intelligence in technical hiring
Artificial intelligence will increasingly enhance recruiting as technology progresses. “The AI market is expected to rise to 190 billion dollars by 2025,” according to BambooHR.
Machines will replace an increasing number of roles totally, but they will also support and enhance an increasing number of others.
Recruiters in the technical field can now rely less on CVs and previous experience. What will matter in the future are the talents a developer possesses or lacks.
Artificial intelligence will, and already is, aid in the selection of candidates. ‘Talking the talk’ is no longer an option. For developers, this means being able to show what they can do practically, swiftly, and in an interview setting.
Conclusion
The tech employment sector, as we’ve seen, will continue to expand. As a result, more jobs will be created, and businesses will need to figure out the best method to fill them. Artificial intelligence and automated screening are likely to become prevalent in the near future. Not only in developer evaluations, but in a wide range of occupations. It is the responsibility of tomorrow’s businesses to ensure that their employment processes are as efficient as possible. To enhance the applicant experience and ensure that the essential tools are in place to assist them in their search for the best prospects.
Additionally, it is the responsibility of the candidates to ensure that they possess the necessary qualifications for the position. Developers should strive to improve and learn new abilities regularly. Many developers’ success will depend on their ability to upskill and keep up with technological advancements in the future.
Before you go, check out my articles on How much Web Developers, and Front-End Developers earn!