Dice – Top Tech Hiring Trends for 2023 With Art Zeile

William Tincup: [00:00:00] This is William Tincup and you’re listening to the Recruiting Daily podcast. Today we have art on who’s over dice, uh, and can tell us a whole lot about dice. Um, but our topic today is the top tech hiring trends for 2023. Everyone’s familiar if you’ve listened to this podcast, you’ve listened to art before he is been on the show, and you’re familiar with dice because they have the best brand in our [00:01:00] space dealing with tech.

Pants down. It’s not even a close race. So you, you’re familiar with dice, but, but you, you are being familiar with art. Would you do us a favor, art and introduce both yourself and maybe, maybe tell us what DICE is doing new or a new product that y’all have launched or something like that. ,

Art Zelle: absolutely William, and thanks for having me on the show.

Sure. Um, again, art Zaley, the c e O of d h I group, which consists of dice and clearance jobs are two brands and they are two tech focused career marketplaces. I would say for dice, kind of the big news for fourth quarter and kind of moving into the first quarter of this year, we had a number of different.

Updates to our site itself. So one of the themes that was pervasive in 2022 was the need to essentially encourage technologist engagement with our site. And that sounds pretty obvious, uh, but there’s a lot of things that we did to make it a lot easier for them to, for example, put together [00:02:00] a new profile or update their profile.

We also had a real key capability that was just released a few weeks ago. That is actually pertinent to our clients, and that is the ability to invite specific candidates to apply. So our process is pretty simple. You can put in a job posting and our search pain, and as a result of that, you get a listing in a priority order of the best candidates out of our profile database that fit the skills that you’re looking for.

Now, there’s a button right next to each one of those candidates say. Please apply to this particular job posting. We think you’re a great fit. So it’s a, a signal, an important signal that a recruiter can send to a candidate that they really want them to think about the application process for that particular job posting.

So a number of different things, um, that has, that have been relevant over the last several months, but really proud of the fact that the team [00:03:00] continues to. Have a minor release probably once every day or two. Yep. And then we shoot for having one to two to three major releases per quarter. And that’s, A real change in pace from, I’d say five years ago.

Right,

William Tincup: right. Well, that’s what what I love about that is, again, the world’s changing at that rate. You know, like the Moore’s Moore’s law applied to kind of everything we, we know and love and, and y’all are always innovating. You know, you’re not, you’re not resting on your laurels. You could, I’ve seen companies do it.

You’ve seen companies in the space do it. Absolutely. And you’re not, which I, which I love. Dumb, dumb question. With, with clearance jobs, can either a candidate or a recruiter, can they cross-post

Art Zelle: uh, yeah. Cross-posting meaning, uh, between two platforms, right? Yes. We have several customers that have. Both subscriptions, right.

A lot of the Clarence Jobs client community really comes down to military [00:04:00] contractors. Right? Right. And they will engage, obviously in secret, top secret, other classified programs, but they’ll also have unclassified programs. So there are a lot of military contractors, the Lockheeds, Raytheons, Booz Allen, Hamilton’s, that will be, um, subscribers to both platforms B based on the needs of their specific project.

William Tincup: Oh, that’s great. Well, I’m glad I asked cuz I would assume that they, they couldn’t, but, uh, you just nailed that. So let’s, let’s talk about what you see is, you know, you have a wonderful report, people can download it, et cetera. So like, when you did this research, what. , what surprised you? Like when you look at 22 and how it’s shaped out and now as you look forward to 23, was there anything in the data that, or any of the trends that kind of popped out that you were like, eh, that that didn’t, that, that doesn’t seem right?

Or is one kind of glaring, uh, you know, casting a shadow over

Art Zelle: others? You know there, there are three distinct aha moments [00:05:00] when looking at that particular report. The first is that there’s been this narrative, obviously continuously through 2022, even into January of this year, that there are all these big tech.

um, company layoffs taking place, right? Nevertheless, the unemployment rate for the tech sector has remained incredibly low. And in fact, Compte just announced that for January that rate was 1.5%, right? So, you know, structurally that is close to zero. In fact, I always question whether or not the BLS. Manner of figuring out the unemployment rate actually works for the tech sector.

So I think that for all practical purposes, we have zero unemployment in the tech sector. What does that mean? That means that it’s obviously a seller’s market. Um, the candidates are being chased, even given the narrative of all these layoffs. In fact, there was a recent study that was done by Revelo Labs that looked [00:06:00] at the.

Employees that were laid off over the course of 2022, and they found that 72% of those folks that were laid off actually found a new job within three months, and many of them weren’t even looking. In fact, another interesting trend I think that’s happening is that when companies are laying off folks that are in these more.

Kind of divisions like, um, Microsoft, uh, laying off folks from their HoloLens division or Amazon laying off folks from their robotics and drone delivery divisions. Those folks are actually probably going out and raising some money and, and, um, engaging in startup activity. So again, there is this pent up demand that still exists for tech talent.

That’s trend number one. Trend number two. And this one really blew me away when I was reading it in our report. When we surveyed these respondents and the surveys went out roughly third quarter of last year, [00:07:00] 52% of tech professionals said that they were looking to change employers in 2023. , we’ve never seen that high of a statistic.

Wow. In the entire time that we’ve been doing these surveys, I would say roughly speaking, that statistic was about 20 to 25% pre pandemic. Right Now, a lot of people have been asking, well, what does that mean? Like half the population is actually looking. Oh, yeah. I think that the issue at heart is that tech talent really understands that remote and hybrid work environ.

Works for them. It actually makes ’em a lot more productive. That’s right. And so if you’re not offering that, they’re looking at alternatives. That’s right. But 52% is, that’s a big number.

William Tincup: That’s stunning number. That is a stunning number. And I think you’re right. I think that the, we had to go through a pandemic to learn this, but with tech talent.

The, the, you know, again, it’s flexibility, right? At the end of the day, everyone, all, all folks, they want flexibility. If they want to go into an office, [00:08:00] great. If they don’t want to go into an office or ever go into an office, great. But with tech talent in particular, it’s, again, they see it as, you know, um, kind of a work life balance.

A way to kind of get into their hobbies, a way to get product, uh, their productivity done at, at whatever time that they need to do it, and then go do other. Absolutely. And so I, I think, again, if you’re forcing people into an office, um, and you’re doing it with tech talent, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re losing, um, you’re losing at least half of the candidates just, you know, like you could search as you probably your team has, you could search remote or remote work and dice, and it’s gonna be probably some of the most used search.

Art Zelle: Absolutely, especially for the candidate side, no question about it. Right, right. And if,

William Tincup: if you’re putting something up there, and again, I feel sorry for the TA practitioners that have to recruit and their company is forcing folks to come in. It’s just good luck. [00:09:00] Yeah. Well, okay, so that was the first, that was a huge number

Art Zelle: by the way.

Yeah. Yeah. And so ultimately, um, that was a trend that stick out to me, and roughly speaking, about 37% of our jobs right on dice today are remote qualified. Wow. Some of, you know, the community understands how important this is to tech, but clearly there’s also, you know, two-thirds that don’t just yet

That’s be a growing

William Tincup: trend. Well, that’s the, that’s the number you look at. It’s like, oh, well cool. 37%. That’s great. That’s, uh, up from 2019 for sure, but that also means that 63% don. Get that. Yes. I don’t understand that. Uh, so that, that’s and are

Art Zelle: challenged in this environment isn’t finding the right talent.

And if,

William Tincup: if you don’t, if you don’t, again, if it’s, if you really want the talented people, you gotta play the way that they want you to play and, and, uh, or you just, you just won’t have the most [00:10:00] talented people. I, and that’s okay. If you wanna make that, that’s a cognitive decision. If you wanna make that.

That’s, that’s fine. We will have, you know, b teamers, uh, or c teamers. That’s fine if that’s a strategic decision. I think with a lot of leaders, they don’t understand that the unintended part of that is like they’re going to end up with C players.

Art Zelle: Exactly right, and especially given that unemployment rate figure.

Mm-hmm. , um, I have to say the third statistic that just jumped out from this report for me was a question that we asked the candidates. We said, um, in, in how many instances or I, I don’t remember exactly how it was a phrase, but the, the question was, would you leave your present position to go to another company for higher compensation?

Even if it had a negative reputation, 80. Oh interesting. Percent of the respondent said, no, I will not leave for higher pay if I don’t appreciate the [00:11:00] mission and the reputation of the company that I’m going to. Oh, that’s shocking. Again, speaks to, you know, supply demand and balance the fact that, yep.

candidates have a lot more authority in the negotiation. They can get everything that they want. They can get the compensation Yeah. That they want. They can get a remote or hybrid work environment and they can work for a company that they appreciate, that they appreciate the culture, they appreciate the mission of the company.

And especially given all these tech, um, layoffs, I think it has really blemished the reputation of big tech and. Companies in general. I think people are thinking, well, there’s, you know, other companies that clearly are in other domains like finance, banking, aerospace, defense, consulting, uh, healthcare, that are, that are engaging in super interesting projects and I can improve my skillset.

Right? Which is really big theme across all technology candidates. And I, I don’t have to be going, you know, to. Software company that might have lied to [00:12:00] me about their, uh, relationship with their, with their employees. So you, you

William Tincup: know, I, I believe there’s a little yellow journalism that’s going on with tech layoffs because things aren’t contextualized.

Like when you see something like Amazon’s laying off 10,000 people, well that okay, if you just stop there. Oh my goodness. The company that I like, they deliver stuff to me, the company I use. I can’t believe that. That’s crazy. , but over the course of the last three and a half years, they’ve hired 400,000 people.

Yes, yes. You know, like, where’s that news as it relates, like contextualizing? Oh yeah, we, they went through a layoff cuz less people are having things delivered. Uh, fair. Uh, but oh by the way, we should give them credit for the, and I don’t know if it’s 400,000 or whatever, but this large number of people that were hired over the pandemic, like there should.

that there should be some context that’s put to Totally,

Art Zelle: yeah. I, I totally agree with that. In fact, um, you know, kind of one of the famous statistics that came out over the last [00:13:00] couple weeks is that Meta actually hired three times as many people last year as they laid off in the, you know, last quarter of the year.

Right? And so obviously there is this strong and continued interest in tech candidates for these larger tech, um, firms. In fact, I really believe. What’s happening is a resetting of bets. Like I told you, that hundred percent Microsoft is, you know, laying off people from their HoloLens division and Amazon has laid off people from their loan delivery wings.

They’re, they’re still, they’re pruning hiring people. They’re just different bets on the table in terms of That’s right. Product set

William Tincup: and, and you know, apple. It’s an interesting tech company cuz they didn’t go through a lot of hiring during the pandemic. Yes. Yeah. And, and so they’re, they’re also not going through a whole lot of, of layoffs.

So, but, but again, that’s the context. You don’t, so you don’t see Apple laying off 15,000 people, but you also need to see Apple hiring 15,000 [00:14:00] people over the last three.

Art Zelle: So I think they just had a much more cautious approach. And obviously they’re a company that is operationally extremely efficient, a hundred percent.

So good for them, for their, you know, way of managing through a very difficult environment. It’s always a difficult environment, right? Hundred, a hundred percent. Um, but it’s, it’s kind of interesting. I do agree with you, William, on the fact that there is no context. Yes. All you hear is about the layoffs.

You don’t understand. You know, what preceded the layoffs and where it actually lands them. The other interesting thing about the meta story is that, uh, when, uh, it was announced by Mark Zuckerberg that they would have their layoffs at an earnings call in the q and a period afterwards, he distinctly said, yeah, but we’ll be back to the same number of people by middle of 2023, just in different divisions.

William Tincup: Probably, probably didn’t get, probably didn’t get any airplay. No, I didn’t get any airplay. Well, because you know, when you, when you’re looking at news, People are trying, this is why you don’t, uh, wherever you consume news doesn’t matter if it’s social or, or, uh, [00:15:00] on cable or whatever. Wherever you consume your news, they’re trying to get clicks and to sell advertising.

So no question. They’re, they’re not trying to tell you like the whole story or the whole truth, and they’re really not cuz a good story. It’s not gonna get as many. , like we could have the same exact story. Amazon hired 400,000 people over to the pandemic. That gets no clicks. Zero clicks.

Art Zelle: I a hundred percent agree.

And people want something that’s a shock to the system. That’s right. That’s what, that’s right. That’s what they’re gonna read because they wanna, um, change potentially their viewpoint and if they have something that’s confirming of their existing views. Yep. It’s more modest, you know, kind of in, in

William Tincup: orientation.

That’s right. Well, this is why the Sun and the National Enquirer still. Because when you’re going through a grocery line, you look over and you say, oh, princess Die was an alien. Oh, wow. Now that has no basis in reality, but it gets you to look at it and that’s, it’s all shock value. It’s all shock value. I think that’s [00:16:00] what all this tech layoffs.

It is the weirdest recession, quote unquote recession, because you have people feeling like there’s a recession and you have the lowest unemployment numbers that you’ve seen in years. . So like normally these things are in parallel. Yes. Like 2000 or nine 11 or oh eight or whatever, whatever time, it’s like, okay, the, we are going through a bad economy and oh by the way, we have talent surplus.

That those two things aren’t running parallel with this particular, uh, whatever it is, what we call it. Um, so that at one point that’ll get reconciled and I think it’s gonna get reconciled and we go, go, when we go back and look at the numbers, cuz the numbers aren’t that.

Art Zelle: I totally agree. Yeah. In fact, I would say what’s interesting to me is that even late last year, a lot of economists were calling for a 5% plus, um, unemployment rate being the result of the Fed Reserve, you know, increasing of interest rates, right?

And now people are talking about the no [00:17:00] landing res, you know, um, environment for 2023. It’s not a soft landing. It’s not a hard landing. We’re just gonna plow through and we’re still gonna have, uh, G D P growth. I personally, That a lot of people left the workforce in 2020 and 2021, and they’re structurally out.

Yes. The participation rate in the workforce isn’t where it was prior to the pandemic. Then you don’t have as many people from immigration perspective coming into the United States because of the politics associated with that. And then in specific terms for the technology industry, we’re still chugging, chugging along, just creating about a hundred thousand or a little bit over a hundred thousand.

Software programmers each year they’re coming out of university and college system, right? So there’s just these structural impediments to getting more workers into the workforce, and it’ll take a while for that to adjust and, and clearly more than just in increasing interest rates. What’s,

William Tincup: it’s, [00:18:00] it’s, you probably looked at this market before, like nurses, nurse, nurse practitioners, hourly nurses.

We don’t make enough. As a society to fill the demand of today, much less the demand of. Software engineers, same bit. We just don’t make enough of,

Art Zelle: and so, and it’s more acute in certain areas. Like for example, one of the distinct trends as we look at the job postings in 2023 is there is an increased and elevated interest in data science and anything that’s associated with machine learning, anything that’s associated with artificial intelligence.

Yep. And obviously, you know, the headlines are talking about chat, G P T, um, Just about every day now. Well, that’s actually really happening inside of the economy of the United States. People are. Desiring more machine learning as part of their software platforms. Right? And so those particular areas we’re clearly not anywhere close to the supply.

We need to, you know, well embrace all of the [00:19:00] corporate America’s plans for machine learning and, and, uh, artificial and intelligence. And

William Tincup: you, and you touched on it, uh, a little bit, it’s like our immigration, like H one B, uh, uh, visas. We used to be really good at this. Like, okay, we, we would, we as a country we’d like, okay, we don’t have enough of, let’s say, software engineers.

We would then go worldwide and go, okay, hey, uh, there’s a, there’s a pocket here in Poland that has wonderful folks. They’re super skilled. Like, let’s bring ’em in. And, uh, absolutely,

Art Zelle: totally in favor of that. Oh yeah. I mean, you know, you think about the fact that, um, the Indian Institute of Technology graduates.

15 times the number of, uh, folks from the equivalent school, m i t here in the United States. Yep. That’s such a, why don’t we take advantage of that great talent? Because they’re gonna be, be building great products and services. Yeah.

William Tincup: They’re gonna build it for somebody. It’s a question of who are they gonna build it for?

Is, are they gonna build it for China, Russia, uh, the UK [00:20:00] themselves, et cetera. Like it, it’s one of those deals at the end of the day. the team with the best talent

Art Zelle: wins. No question about it. Not all the time,

William Tincup: but you know what? Pretty close to . Pretty much close to all the

Art Zelle: time. It’s a better bet. .

William Tincup: It’s a better bet.

Um, I wanna get your take on money cuz you, you, you did. Um, money versus, uh, um, I can’t remember what it was. Reputation? Yeah, reputation. And you probably didn’t do this in the data, but just your take on money versus. If, if, if it came down to a significant, you know, we’ll make it a significant raise versus.

A hundred percent remote.

Art Zelle: How do you I think it’s trending towards remote right now. Yeah. And that’s cause a lot of studies have come out over the last year showing that when you do work remote, you’re actually saving not only time during the day that the time associated with commute or the time associated with just the, um, you know, the extra work [00:21:00] that you’re doing in the office.

But you are also saving money in terms of the gasoline, um, expenses of, yeah, I can call himself.

William Tincup: So yeah, commute. Commute. The word commute, yeah, absolutely. You can, A recruiter, a friend of mine actually runs recruiting, talent acquisition for a company in the Bay Area, and he called me. and, uh, one day during the pandemic and he said, Hey dude, I need help.

Yeah, whatever. So I need, uh, I need synonyms for commute. . I need . I’m like, I’m like, excuse me. He goes, well, I get these guys gals to this one point, and then I gotta bring in this whole, you gotta be in the office one day or two days a week, whatever the bit was. And I’m like, uh, you need to lead with.

Art Zelle: Yeah, I was gonna say, that’s an instant filter for most of the technology community.

That’s right. Just start there. Yeah. Not waste your

William Tincup: time. Yeah. Because you’re not gonna trick them, first of all, to think that, that it’s, that’s really, uh, it’s offensive to everybody. You need to actually, you, you [00:22:00] need to actually talk about it first. And he did. So he actually changed his strategy and just said, Hey, you know what?

This is the job. This is the company. This is why we believe in it. And, and, and I think it worked well for him because he basically said, you’re gonna be in on the days that the CEO’s on. It’s a smaller company and it’s like you’ll get time to build some soft skills, but also to build some comradery and you’ll get to be where they’re with the ceo, like it’s mandatory Wednesday or whatever the hell the, the thing is, is like, you know what, we’re all gonna be in here and, we’ll, it’ll be more fun, probably less productive, but it, that’s

Art Zelle: how we.

I think it’s better to be transparent to your point upfront and, and sell the benefits, right. I mean, right. Um, but, but getting back to your question about remote versus compensation, these studies have basically said that the, um, ability to eliminate your commute, is the same as getting a raise of between five and $8,000 per year, depending upon where you live.

Right, right. And the, the duration of the commute. But that’s pretty [00:23:00] sizable, so I think a lot of people are tuned into that right now.

William Tincup: What’s your take on location based, the pay or even kind of the way you look at the market? Because I’ve, I’ve had this feeling. Compensation biases, uh, pay equity biases, kind of some of ’em shake out in the laundry of, of location.

So yes. You know, Janet, VP of Sales and Topeka Tom, VP of sales in San Francisco do the exact same job for the exact company, have the exact same experience, same quota, the whole bit. One gets paid, base, gets paid significantly more than. And, and so I’ve kind of fought for a long time against location-based pay.

Just you’re buying a set of skills wherever they live. They live. But

Art Zelle: that’s me. I think it’s gonna be normalized, you know, in the near future. And, and I agree with your thesis that they should go away. It should be based on skillset and experience exclusively, right? I do [00:24:00] think that location based pay is a vestige.

The government. That’s right. Government has always operated that way. Yep. So bigger companies operated that way. Now, given the current state of the environment, people need talent and they need to pay whatever that talent is demanding in terms of kind of like their background, experience and their knowledge of the pay scales that are out there.

There’s obviously these rules across multiple states, including California now, New York City. and Colorado that give pay ranges. That’s right. They’re not that useful because people make a big range as opposed to something that’s a narrower range. Right. But I still think that the, the notion of compensation and what you’re worth is getting out into the community.

And so people are gonna say, well, I know that I can make this in California. I happen to be living in Charlotte, but I know what I’m worth.

William Tincup: That. That’s right now more than ever. Yes. Uh, they, they know what they’re worth and they’re unwilling so many people during the pandemic left some of those [00:25:00] technology centers like Austin or, or San Francisco or Seattle, et cetera, and went wherever they wanted to, Montana or wherever they wanted

Art Zelle: to.

Idaho, absolutely good friend of mine, wherever the lifestyle was, um, perfect. That’s right.

William Tincup: Wanted to go back to Idaho. For years. He was slugging it out in San Francisco and I would say he was having a bad time, but he, his wife kids, they moved to. And he loves it. He’s like, I’m not moving back. I don’t care what’s going on.

Like,

Art Zelle: I grew up in Idaho, so that one definitely resonates with me. , and hopefully he likes hunting, fishing, and

William Tincup: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. No, he’s that guy. He’s a, he is, they’re that family. So it’s like he wants his kids to grow up the way he grew up. And, uh, and he couldn’t do that in San Francisco. He couldn’t model that anywhere in San Francisco.

So, uh, I did wanna ask you one last thing in, in the, you. job postings. There’s some of ’em that do well and some of ’em just don’t do well. And we talked about remote versus not remote and specific salary versus large [00:26:00] ranges and things like that. Is there any other tips or any other things that you’ve seen that, that just, you know, this is a do or a don’t, you know, with a job description, with dice or, or clearance jobs, what, whatever you wanna phrase it, but,

Like I, I know that when people listen to these shows, they like, they, like, they love, like tips and tricks. So is there anything that you can give them, especially with Tip? Oh, absolutely.

Art Zelle: So, so that, it’s a great question. Uh, and it’s a, you know, like it’s very relevant in terms of getting the attention of the candidates.

Um, I would say number one, make sure that you’re not introducing any kind of bias in the way that the job posting is written. For example, you know, something as simple as saying, He should do this, right? Obviously that implies that it’s a male oriented position. . So eliminate all the points of bias within the text itself.

The second, I think, and more important, um, trend that’s happening right now is, uh, people are talking a lot more about their culture, right? And they’re talking [00:27:00] about the soft skills that are necessary, that they’re looking for as a signal to the candidates that they have that kind of a culture, like for example, if you put.

Soft skill set that you need. You want somebody that’s empathetic that says something about your culture right, itself. And, and so I always say that by adding to the soft skills and adding dimensions to your culture, you are telling the. The candidate, what kind of a company you are, what kind of values are important to you, as opposed to just the strict skills like you, Java and net, and, uh, working knowledge of AWS and their infrastructure and their services catalog.

So, Again, those soft skills and the cultural signals that are sent are super critical because candidates pick up on that.

William Tincup: Yeah, and I think, I think some, some folks that are listening would write that off to generational, but I think the. , the pandemic got all of us to reset and rethink our lives. In fact, you, if we, [00:28:00] if you went through, I’ve said this before, but if you’ve went through the re the, the pandemic and you didn’t reevaluate your life, you, something’s wrong with you.

Yes, exactly. Right. So there’s that. But I think just the, you know, the, I like signaling about soft skills and cultural things the companies have to fulfill on it, right? Because job postings, yes. That’s. Historically been sales documents and I’ve been on record of saying that a job posting should both repel and attract.

So someone reading, you know, a great job description, I that, you know, half the people reading it should go, yeah, that’s not the job for me.

Art Zelle: Yeah. It, it should be a filter. It’s, it should get to an efficient next step for everybody that’s reading. That’s right. That’s right. That’s a great con construct. I really like that.

Well,

William Tincup: it sure is. Now. So brother, I love having you on the podcast. Thank you so much. This

Art Zelle: is, thank you, Willam. I really enjoy it. Every, every time we have an opportunity to have this conversation, I, uh, always learn a lot, so I’m very grateful.

William Tincup: Thank you my friend, [00:29:00] and thanks for everyone listening. Until next time.