Over recent years, the demand for tech talent has increased dramatically. As more businesses undergo key digital transformations (accelerated by the pandemic), they need skilled tech workers in various roles. From website developers to e-commerce experts to information security pros, businesses now have a critical need for certain types of tech workers.
This increased demand means more businesses than ever are aggressively competing over the same tech talent. As such, recruiters and business managers need to account for these changing dynamics in their talent acquisition strategies. Otherwise, they may soon find themselves facing crippling skill or talent gaps.
Read on to discover some of the most significant shifts in tech employment that can help shape more strategic and efficient hiring.
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“Conventional” Tech Roles Are Expanding
Attracting tech talent is often hard enough, given the complexity involved in many tech roles. Sourcing and onboarding valuable tech workers can prove even harder. Businesses can experiment with different approaches to overcome this problem, such as switching to a more decentralized recruitment model for certain roles.
The altered strategy does not change the fact that most markets are seeing a significant hiring shortage when it comes to tech talent – there are simply not enough workers to go around. However, even conventional business roles have expanded beyond their traditional job titles and descriptions. Workers are far more flexible and open to learning.
In this context, a reskilling program can help businesses meet some of the technical skill gaps they encounter. Careful consideration of the most essential skills needed can help businesses prioritize the skill gaps they can meet with a new hire, as well as the ones they can remedy by reskilling existing workers.
Challenging Work Is Key to Worker Engagement
The compensation and benefits structure always plays a key role in an employee’s career choices and will continue to do so. However, the need to grow and gain exposure that opens up further growth opportunities is almost always a close second. With tech employment becoming so competitive, it is not enough to hire tech talent based on an appealing benefits plan.
To retain them, managers and business leaders must make every effort to keep them engaged. One of the best ways to do that is to offer challenging and meaningful work. Financial motivation coupled with the growth that comes from challenging roles can better attract and retain talent than either can do alone.
Workers Have Access to Greater Mobility
The Great Resignation refers to a record rise in resignations that signals a potentially significant change among candidates. Even in the tech world, employee turnover rates have spiked. This is because more employers have a greater need for tech skills and experienced talent, and they’re more than willing to compete to acquire workers that are already actively employed.
This increased skill mobility means the most skilled tech talent could face very little difficulty in moving to another employer in search of better opportunities. While this obviously implies greater difficulty in retaining tech employees, it also presents increased opportunities to hire additional talent with more competitive offers.
A Hybrid Workforce Is the Most Efficient Model
Workforce models underwent drastic changes over the course of the past two years. The pandemic allowed remote working to move from the realm of possibilities to a demonstrable business model. That said, some roles just cannot be executed in a remote format, but hybrid workforces can take care of this problem.
There are undoubtedly some concerns with managing remote workforces, such as monitoring performance or carrying out effective workplace investigations in the conventional sense.
At the same time, remote models enable access to much larger candidate pools. Remote workers can be based anywhere in the world and may strain hiring budgets less than a locally sourced hire. In any case, hybrid working models ensure the essential workers needed on-site can continue working with relatively greater workplace safety.
Remote workers can be sourced from much larger talent pools, helping businesses close talent gaps with relative ease. Most tech workers that recruiters engage with this year expect a similar workforce model from the get-go.
