In Context: Tech Hiring & Trends
Spoiler alert: It's tough out there. But we’re still successfully hiring at every level from junior to exec. Keep reading for more info on how 👇
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General Hiring Trends
You don't have to look far to see headlines about general hiring challenges.
In May, total vacancies exceeded hires by 3.28M - a record breaking amount beating the previous year 2000 record.
In June payrolls saw their largest increase in 10 months.
(See: Bloomberg for more info.)
Though a lot of this pressure is in services/hospitality markets, even lower skill hiring pressures can create ripple effects to white collar jobs.
Note: In the context above “skilled” refers to an HR ratio regarding the training required to successfully operate in a position - service industry jobs are difficult and deserve respect!
Anecdotally, we’re hearing candidates relay that they’d prefer to travel, spend time with their families and catch up on other hobbies this summer than chat and think about career moves.
We suspect this is a seasonal reaction to being quarantined last summer.
Regardless of the cause, this shift in priority adds yet another layer of complexity to the challenge of finding and attracting the right talent to any team.
Tech Hiring & Trends
Remote: Increases in Quantity & in Competition
42% of companies now advertise fully remote jobs, as opposed to hybrid or flexible jobs.
Remote has opened up options but increased competition.
So, while there are more talent pools from which to fish, there are also more people fishing in your pool.
Larger talent pools also translate into higher volumes of junior and entirely unqualified candidates, creating a greater need for stringent reviews and follow ups during the hiring process to identify the right talent.
New versions of “applied”.
TikTok applications are still in pilot but we think alternative ways to bypass formal applications will be the new norm. Working with someone based their GitHub, website or LinkedIn will continue to grow outside of formal, traditional resumes.
Perks vs. Money: More Emphasis On Cash
Here’s the general equation that’s defining the current perks vs. money motivation balance:
↑ in remote work +
↑ in post-pandemic anxiety +
↑ leverage for employees =
more emphasis on $$$
If an employer offers free soda or a concierge service for employees when they’re in the office, it may sound nice on paper but these perks have literally no appeal to remote workers.
The prioritization of money over perks is causing various compensation pivots. Tech leaders like Stripe & Lyft are reducing their vesting cliffs dramatically and speeding up payouts to year one.
ACTION TO TAKE:
Up front clarity on salary range and making sure you’re not prioritizing “a deal” will be important to successfully hire right now.
Underpaid employees are also a significant retention risk. We can help you with a comp study/report if this is a concern and have this handy retention checklist for risk management outside of compensation.
Why is it so much harder to hire senior level people?
The overall lack of supply has also created a lasting flywheel effect.
Teams understandably feel like they have more work than people (due to low supply) and thus decide they can’t/don’t want to mentor and hire at the junior level.
Junior people (not enough of those either) then don’t get hired and trained fast enough to meet that demand and the cycle continues where mid-senior level candidates are stretched and don’t add junior team members.
A Dice report noted a 28% increase from Q4 2020 to Q1 2021 for historical perspective.
Consider the following look at current US based posted tech jobs via Indeed to illustrate the competition for senior engineers:
Microsoft studies predict that tech jobs will top 190 million by 2025 - up nearly 5x from 41 million in 2020.
ACTION TO TAKE:
If you’re interested in changing this trend and building future engineers, we’re happy to connect you with volunteer opportunities at a number of our partner organizations who are building tech talent.
If you want to talk about building junior level pipelines into senior, we had great success with this at Centare and we’re happy to discuss.
What else do we see coming up?
Recruiting is changing. We’re ahead of the curve and we’ll keep you there too.
Recruiting used to be all about finding people.
For those of us who have been around awhile, we all remember trying to get our hands on a company directory. Identifying options was gold.
Today, it’s easier than ever to identify candidates and we have many tools to get their contact info. But so much information is overwhelming them that engaging is the real key to effective recruitment.
Attention is the currency.
At Newance, we’re well ahead of this curve with:
Personalized outreach to candidates
Much more thorough research than our competitors
3x industry average response rates
We’re also continuing to add to our Engineers in Residence with the new addition of Ben Juarez to the team.
Ben has over five years of engineering experience including building and providing the tech curriculum for important organizations like i.c.Stars.
Working directly with engineers like Angus Kinsey, Graham Eger and Ben help us to stay ahead of the curve and ensure our work is not just about the tech industry but part of the tech industry.