Research by Deloitte found that 68% of respondents reported that bias had a negative effect on their productivity, and 70% reported that experiencing bias negatively impacted their work engagement, while 84% said that bias affected their happiness, confidence and well-being. 

To reduce bias in recruitment, companies have turned to objective skills-based assessments to ensure a fair chance for all candidates. Even when companies use coding tests, however, technical recruiting is susceptible to bias and unfair practices that can hinder inclusive hiring.  

Here are some of the most common unconscious biases and how they can impact hiring at your company. 

What are Unconscious Biases? 

Unconscious or implicit biases are social and cultural beliefs about certain groups or individuals that exist outside of your conscious awareness. These biases are formed through an interaction of environment, media, life experiences and social relationships. They influence your attitude towards others and can cause you to form harmful assumptions about them. 

Since these biases are implicit, you have to actively look out for and address them. Some of the most common unconscious biases impacting hiring include: 

Gender and Race Bias – Unconscious racial or gender bias leads to unfair treatment of women and individuals from minority groups. 

Appearance and Age Bias – Hiring teams often characterize candidates based on their appearance, i.e., how they dress and age. For example, young professionals are considered to be lacking experience, while older professionals are considered outdated. 

Affinity Bias – A tendency to gravitate towards people like ‘us’ based on appearance, experiences, or beliefs. In hiring, affinity bias affects organizations trying to hire someone exactly like them. It is essential to recognize the importance of ‘culture add’ vs ‘culture fit’ here. Look for professionals who add value to your organization rather than those who simply ‘fit.’ 

Education Bias – Recruiters often prefer individuals from certain elite educational institutions. 

How Biases Impact Your Organization and Recruiting 

Due to specific skills requirements and fewer tech professionals, tech recruiters are limited to smaller candidate pools. Add to this the undue emphasis placed on formal educational qualifications, such as a bachelor’s degree in computer science, and you narrow the funnel even further.  

But formal education and work experiences are often available to a limited number of people and can cause recruiters to reject non-traditional applicants. Implicit biases also impact how you attract and review applicants from historically underrepresented groups.

For instance, research reveals that white people have higher top-of-the-funnel pass-through rates, while Black and Hispanic/Latinx talent have better pass-through rates during other stages. The finding indicates that top-of-the-funnel hiring practices like resume review are greatly impacted by unconscious biases. 

Unconscious gender and racial biases keep women and individuals that belong to minorities from receiving job offers, equitable pay and work satisfaction. As of 2021, the gender pay gap research finds that women earn only 82 cents per every dollar a man earns. 

So, how can you use objective coding assessments to overcome bias? 

How To Use Coding Tests to Eliminate Bias  

• Assessing Job-Relevant Skills

Assessing a candidate’s skills using validated coding assessments shows you how they will perform on the job. “Job relevant” means that the evaluation is associated with their prospective job role and responsibilities. Validated hiring assessments use different tasks to evaluate a candidate’s skills realistically. 

Relevant assessments also ensure that you are evaluating your candidates fairly and not based on arbitrary standards of what they ‘should’ know.  

For example, while hiring a mobile developer, you may want to give them a task to develop a mobile app. With a job-relevant task, the candidate also becomes acquainted with duties they will encounter during their work. 

• Recognize that Your Solution is Vulnerable to Bias 

When companies adopt coding assessments or other automated solutions, they may assume that their recruitment process is now free from bias. They often fail to validate their assessments or conduct adverse impact analyses to ensure fair practices. Many commonly-used coding tests can include discriminatory language that provides an unfair disadvantage to certain groups. 

But you must remember that just as humans are susceptible to biases, your technology solutions are prone to bias, too. Recognizing potential pitfalls of your hiring processes is essential to designing a fair hiring practice. 

Conclusion 

Bias in recruiting, especially in the tech industry, has caused businesses to reevaluate and improve their hiring practices. With the popularity of skill-based hiring, organizations have turned to objective coding assessments to overcome hiring bias. While coding assessments are great at widening the talent pool at the top of the funnel, assessments must be validated and analyzed for adverse impact to avoid introducing bias.

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So far in 2022, more than 21,500 U.S. tech workers have lost their jobs, said Layoffs.fyi, a website that monitors job cuts. In May alone, tech layoffs jumped 780% over the period January through April combined said the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Many reductions have been seen certain segments pf technology, like crypto or venture capital-backed businesses, which are moving into an austerity-focused frame of mind. The reasons: the recent crash in cryptocurrency is making companies there more cost-conscious, while VC-backed companies want to avoid going back to investors for additional funding. The payments companies Klarna and Bolt Financial together laid off 900 workers recently, while businesses like Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook) and Uber Technologies said they plan to slow or freeze hiring.

Against the Tide

Whether companies are snatching jobs away or not, hiring in the tech sector remains strong, Reuters said. That includes tech roles in healthcare, finance and IT. But for those who’ve won and lost a job, the landscape is particularly bleak. These candidates have been locked out of their almost-employers, which have already put together new groups of recruits. “Pretty soon,” said one, “I’m also going to be competing against people graduating in 2023.”

While executives say the overall job market remains strong – the unemployment rates is pegged at about 3.6%, near its 50-year low, reports The Wall Street Journal – employers are finding it more difficult to forecast their business over the next 12 months. “When a company revokes a job offer,” the newspaper said, “it indicates a company’s business outlook has changed so quickly it has to undo hiring plans made sometimes weeks before.”

Brian Kropp, distinguished vice president of Gartner’s Human Resources practice, believes companies that are withdrawing offers risk “potentially catastrophic” reputational damage.  “Just think about how unfair that is to people you’re rescinding the offer from,” he said. “You’re putting them in a painful situation.”

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The survey also found that Black Americans perceive STEM pathways to be out of reach.

Almost half (45%) of those who havn’t studied a STEM subject said they had considered it, JFF said. “But 21% of these individuals thought it would be too difficult, 21% didn’t know enough about it and 14% felt it would be too expensive”

The survey also reported that Black Americans do not universally feel that they have access to high-paying technology careers.

“Black Millennials and Gen Zers were more likely (24% and 29% respectively) to view technology as exclusive, compared to 17% of Black Gen Xers and 15% of Black baby boomers,” JFF added.

Racial Equity Gap in Tech

In edition, the survey also found that while four in 10 Black Americans said they work in a digital or IT-related field, they were more likely to be men between the ages of 16-34.

“Women were more likely than men to report leaving high school with only general technology skills and no access to advanced technology opportunities. Black women also were 10% less likely to report a high level of job satisfaction compared to their male peers,” JFF said.

Michael Collins, a vice president at JFF, noted that careers in IT and technology can offer pathways to economic advancement in an increasingly tech-driven economy. However, too many Black Americans — particularly Black women — face systemic barriers that put the economic opportunity of the tech industry out of reach, Collins said.

“We need to better understand these barriers, which begin in K-12 education and higher education only to be reinforced in the workplace,” he said.

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According to the technology trade association CompTIA, 73% of HR professionals believe hiring will become more challenging over the next 12 months. Two-thirds believe that persistent roadblocks may become the new normal in hiring.

CompTIA published the figures in its annual “Workforce and Learning Trends” report.

“Hiring and talent development practices that worked a decade ago are no longer adequate in an era of digital transformation and rapid innovation,” said CompTIA President and CEO Todd Thibodeaux. Companies need to carefully examine how they’re preparing, recruiting and retaining employees, he said. That includes making sure educational models keep pace with new skills requirements, modernizing outdated evaluation and hiring criteria, recruiting from the full talent pool and putting people in a position to make the best use of their skills and talents.

What’s Shaping Workforce Needs

CompTIA identified five areas shaping the workforce and learning landscape:

• Employers and workers are negotiating a resetting of expectations on both sides
• Talent pipeline deficiencies highlight the need for human infrastructure investment
• More employers drop four-year degree requirement in favor of skills-based hiring
• The need to crack the code of soft skills with new approaches
• HR is working to balance data-driven and people-driven approaches to talent management

Given these trends, HR executives expect to give close attention to reskilling and upskilling their current employees. More than six in 10 believe increasing the skills of existing workers will offset the need for outside hiring and aid the organization’s retention strategy.

And, indeed, the adoption of skills-based hiring practices continues to trend upward. Support for eliminating or relaxing four-year degree requirements increased from 76% in 2021 to 85% this year, for example. CompTIA said this could contribute to less “overspecing,” or specifying more skills and credentials than are necessary to fill a particular job. When that happens, employers produce job descriptions that few, if any, candidates are qualified for.

For IT hiring, 76% of respondents say professional certifications are a factor in their decision-making. Some 47% expect the importance of certifications as a candidate evaluation tool to increase. And, 45% of organizations report using a skills framework to provide structure to the recruitment and development of their tech workforces. Another 36% are exploring the idea.

Finally, two-thirds of HR professionals expect to place greater emphasis on soft skills in the future. Among the reasons: developing well-rounded employees with more growth potential, creating an environment of innovation and collaborative problem-solving, and building a strong, healthy corporate culture

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A new report from Eightfold AI, “How Banks Can Become Future Ready,” found that in order to tackle trends such as the increased use of AI and big data, the growing importance of cybersecurity, advancements in cloud computing and open-banking APIs, along with the rise of blockchain technology, banks need to quickly rethink their talent strategies.

While banks have made significant progress in meeting the digital demands of their customers, the industry continues to face challenges when establishing digital-first talent strategies, the report said. Only 15% of the top in-demand skills are currently being used within their IT workforces.

Inter-Industry Competition

Competing with FinTechs (and sometimes Big Tech companies) requires banking institutions to hire and build talent with a skills-based approach, such as:

• Upskill and reskill to help bridge the gap between rising and declining skills within every role. This requires a particular focus on equipping IT employees with rising skills such as Python, Docker, node.js and Machine Learning, the report said. Developing future-ready front and middle office employees will require a focus on rising skills such as digital sales, data analysis and business intelligence.
• Calibrate roles with future skills and consider recruiting emerging skills from outside the industry (e.g. Big Tech companies) to fulfill skill requirements.
• Adopt a “hiring for potential” mindset by analyzing who has potential to learn the most in-demand skills and whether they’re external or internal candidates, which further expands the organization’s qualified talent network.

Banks “are now competing with entire ecosystems of tech organizations for the same pool of talent,” observed Eightfold President Kamal AhluwaliaI. “Future-thinking institutions must scale their investments in talent in order to maintain their strategic advantage.”

To develop the report, Eightfold leveraged its global dataset and considered publicly available profiles from major banking corporations, as well as FinTech companies for benchmarking purposes. The company analyzed approximately 700,000 publicly available profiles from top banks, and benchmarked those findings against approximately 25,000 publicly available FinTech profiles.

Image: iStock

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MojoHire completed beta testing its intelligent talent discovery system and moved it to general availability for the healthcare and technology verticals. The platform sits atop the HR tech stack, offering talent acquisition teams a unified view of people across systems. The idea is to help them easily discover internal and external talent, build teams and generate increased value from earlier technology investments.

DriverReach, a recruiting and compliance management system, closed a $7.5 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Fulcrum Equity Partners, with participation from CreativeCo Capital. The company said it will use the funds for research and product development with an eye toward expanding its features to enable more compliance and reporting functionality and more integration with job boards and other lead generation partners and to add approximately 60 individuals over the next three years, with an emphasis on sales and marketing.

While 80% of employed American adults consider professional development and training an important consideration when accepting a new job, only 39% say their current employer is helping them improve their current skills or gain new skills to do their job better, according to results the American Staffing Association Workforce Monitor. Many said they aren’t receiving the skills training needed to maintain or grow their careers.

Demand for DEI leaders is growing as more consumers, employees and even investors demand change in corporate America. In fact, says Business Insider, Diversity and inclusion manager ranked second on LinkedIn’s Jobs on the Rise 2022 report, which was released Tuesday.

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So, it’s not surprising that recruiters are busier than ever – and in demand as candidates.

As the Great Resignation gained momentum, the number of job postings for recruiters more than doubled, says The Wall Street Journal. Recruiting firms say it’s become more difficult to fill their own jobs, even when less-experienced recruiters can earn compensation in the low six figures.

“There are not remotely enough recruiters to fill the demand that’s out there,” said John Arbolino, managing director at financial recruiter Boothroyd & Co. “Everyone and their mother out there in corporate America wants recruiters.”

According to ZipRecruiter, the average number of monthly U.S. job postings for recruiters has more than doubled since February 2020, to nearly 148,000 this past September. That’s led to a number of efforts to fill the pipeline with recruiters-candidates who can, one way or another, do the job.

For example, Recruit Rise is a nine-week remote training program to train technology recruiters, who are in particularly heavy demand. Run by a former tech recruiter, the program educates budding recruiters from all sorts of industries about tech roles, buzzwords, strategies and poaching. Tech recruiters can earn between $75,000 and $115,000 annually, the Journal said, higher than a year ago.

New Recruiting Teams

Many recruiting firms say they’re struggling to meet client demand for new hires, while others say they’ve been successful at increasing their headcount. For candidates, the strong market is opening up new paths into the business.

A number of companies are building up their own in-house recruiting teams as a way of avoiding the 20% to 30% in fees recruiters charge on a new hire’s first-year salary. As a result the value of experienced recruiters has increased, the Journal said, while the value of novices has been limited.

Many of the skills recruiters need can be found throughout the business world, Keith Wolf, managing director of recruiting firm Murray Resources, told the Journal. He mentioned strong communication and organizational skills, persistence and “just being talkative.”

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Research by the Boston Consulting Group and recruitment website group the Network, found  that work-life balance is the most valued aspect of their jobs, continuing previous trends. At the same time, financial compensation, including long-term incentives like stock options and shares, has gained ground. It rose from fifth to third place since the survey was previously conducted in 2018.

Diversity and inclusion and environmental issues have also increased in importance over the last year for 61% of digital employees. Fifty percent said they wouldn’t work for companies that don’t share their thinking on D&I, and 48% say the same thing about environmental policies.

‘An Overheated Market’

“Workers in digital roles emerged from the COVID crisis relatively unscathed and are now entering an overheated talent market with many options,” said Orsolya Kovács-Ondrejkovic, an associate director at BCG and coauthor of the report. “As companies across all industries digitize, salaries for tech talent have skyrocketed to a level where few employers can compete.”

The good news, Kovács-Ondrejkovic said, is that “our research shows that money isn’t everything — employers can still be attractive to digital talent with the right workplace culture and values.”

Although the pandemic didn’t impact technology employees’ working patterns to the same extent as the general workforce, fully remote work increased significantly, reaching as high as 76% by the end of 2020. That compares with 41% in 2018.

Meanwhile, 95% of respondents want to retain some flexibility by working at least one day a week from home, although only a quarter want to work fully remotely. That means 75% prefer to work fully or partially flexible hours.

Pierre Antebi, co–managing director of the Network and a coauthor of the report, said it’s “a must” to develop a strategy to recruit and keep digital talent. And, said, “creating an ecosystem of contractors, gig workers and agencies is an additional valuable tool for sourcing talent in this highly competitive market.”

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Jason Pyle, president and managing director of Harvey Nash USA, said digital employers are “committed to increasing headcount and investing in technology talent.” At the same time, they’ve recognized that “building a productive, successful and satisfied workforce takes a new approach to broadening skillsets, increasing mental wellbeing and committing to diversity and inclusion initiatives.”

Among the factors impacting the growth of the U.S. tech sector, said the report:

• Record Tech Investment and Headcount: The number of digital leaders in the U.S. planning to boost their technology investment and headcount reached record levels, 30% and 36% respectively.
• Impact of Skills Crisis on Business Growth: More than two-thirds, or 69%, of digital leaders are unable to keep pace with change because of they can’t find the talent they need.
• Where Skills Shortages are Most Acute: Cybersecurity (43%) is the most in-demand tech skill, up by 11% in the last 12 months. It was followed by DevOps (39%) and big data/analytics (38%).
• The Shortage of Developers is Rising: The shortage of developers (39%) saw the biggest increase compared with previous years. The shortage correlates with the report’s finding that companies are focused on creating new products and services, and need developers to do the necessary work.

In addition, the report found that post-pandemic life priorities are complicating digital leaders’ ability to match technology investment goals with talent. Eight in 10 said this mindset shift is making retention more difficult, and just four in 10 believe they can retain employees in key roles for as long as they’d like. Yet despite these retention challenges, only one in three organizations (29%) have redesigned their employee offers to make them more attractive.

Bridging the Gap

In response to these skills shortages, executives aim to broaden the skillsets of their tech teams. Over half (54%) plan to cross-train people in other parts of their organization. Also, the number of apprenticeships is expected to rise this year, with 28% of digital leaders saying they would be offering more internships in the months ahead.

Almost half (45%) of digital leaders have widened their geographical net to source new talent as hybrid working becomes more commonplace.

DEI Aids Quality of Hire

The report also revealed what’s working and what’s not when it comes to building a diverse technology workforce. Training, communication and support networks are key and are all part of the most successful approach.

The research found that six in 10 respondents believe their approach to D&I is improving the quality of their hires. They noted that the most successful strategy for promoting diversity involved creating the right culture rather than mandating shortlists or quotas.

This year, 21% of digital leaders identified as female, compared to 13% in 2020. The average proportion of women within the technology team is 28%, which shows promise for the leadership of the future.

In the meantime, mental wellbeing, staff engagement, collaboration and inclusivity have suffered, even though remote work has massively improved work-life balance and productivity. Over half (54%) of digital leaders reported a decrease in their tech team’s mental wellness. In response, 27% have increased their investment in health and well-being programs.

Finally, businesses are emerging from the pandemic with employees in disparate locations, more technology embedded within the cloud and their supply chains diffused. This makes it harder to delineate the ‘boundary’ of an organization and presents a new challenge for all digital leaders, the report said.

Harvey Nash compiles the report in collaboration with CIONET and Massachusetts Institute of Technology CISR.

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Welcome to part two of a three-part series written to help you shift into high-speed recruiting in a candidate’s market.

In the first piece of this trilogy, we discussed prioritization and the steps needed to put recruiting at the top of your team’s list. “Executive leadership must declare that recruiting takes precedence for both the short-term and long-term ability to meet customer needs and company growth demands.”

Here, we’ll focus on the small adjustments that can be done to maintain recruiting velocity and improve candidate experience and throughput.

Part Two: Agility

Agile. This means the ability to adjust to current market conditions and customer demands in real-time in order to deliver results quickly while maintaining quality and service standards.

In other words, turn on a dime for the sake of satisfying customer demand, even if that means abandoning prior processes and so-called “best practices.” These pointers can seem like common sense in an agile mindset and are simple to initiate. However, they can feel like major overhauls to organizations married to the structure.

Keep these concepts in mind:

Goldilocks Syndrome

This one’s too tall. That one’s too small. This one’s too high. That one’s just right.

Like Goldilocks, companies are looking for a perfect fit for culture and skills. Let’s face it ­­— not everyone in the workforce is “A” talent, but that does not mean that every position at every level has to be filled by an “A” candidate to perform the job’s duties.

Companies spend a disproportionate amount of money and time compared to their return on these methods of evaluation. In this market, don’t expect to see an endless tunnel of candidates. Too often, amply qualified candidates are lost while employers wait for more applicants and directly sourced prospects. Either they possess the skills and experience to perform the duties of the position, or they don’t.

If they do, hire them.

What You Say Matters

Job postings, correspondences during the interview process and even rejection letters matter — a lot. What a candidate perceives defines your company.

Cluttered job postings with biased language, jargon and industry clichés can drive off the most talented and diverse individuals. Bias is real, and though you might not overtly say anything inappropriate or mean-spirited, your tone, innuendo and nonverbal communication on a Zoom interview can be just as loud.

Having a clear and concise job posting that has been checked for bias will encourage a better quality of candidates to apply and reduce the number of non-qualified candidates, each of which has to be reviewed and rejected by a recruiter.

A requisition that gets several hundred applicants can take hours to read through. These are hours that can be spent sourcing or giving a candidate more of a concierge’s level of service.

On the other end of the process, no one loves rejection letters, but wording such as “have decided not to move forward” seems finite and discourages applicants from applying again — ever. Instead, leave the door open and invite them to keep looking. “We found someone who was ideally qualified for this opening, but keep looking. Chances are at some point there will be an opening ideally suited for you,” is an honest but open-ended approach to letting a candidate know they are no longer being considered for a particular role they applied for.

Concierge Service for Candidates

A candidate-driven market means that companies no longer call the shots. It is estimated that most professionals in tech are getting 10-15 recruiter touches each week. That’s as many as 60 per month. When you think about it this way, you’ll understand why we are addressing maintaining velocity in the process.

Every day that passes allows at least one or more new opportunities to be presented to your applicant.

They will also want to know why they should work for your company. If this is not addressed throughout the entire interview process, those companies that do present well will win over the talent.

We have to make candidates feel as important as they are. If the hiring manager wants to draw in a prospect, have them reach out early in the sourcing outreaches. In a candidate-driven market, interviews for all candidates should take on a sales feel more than a traditional grilling over every possible aspect of the job.

Suppose the impression is that the environment is hypercritical or presents as elitist. That will repel a variety of talent groups and personas who are exceptionally skilled but overly critical of their own work.

Expand Your Perimeters

The shift toward working at home permanently has opened entirely new pockets of talent to be explored all over the world.

In the U.S. many tech companies were huddled around a few cities, often higher cost of living areas, offering higher comp and incentives to be competitive. But there are highly skilled professionals in other areas of the country that are not as expensive, such as Raleigh, Charlotte, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, to name a few.

Even more remote locations like Bloomington, IN, or Binghamton, NY, have pockets of talent to feed giants like IBM. The Global market is the same, opening talent pools outside of the high-cost cities of Paris and London and the competitiveness of Bucharest and parts of Asia.

Fresh applicant pools mean less competition for more motivated, equally skilled, less expensive talent, increasing the throughput and velocity.

Stay Fresh

Deeper talent pools, personalized care for your candidates, not only watching but actively eliminating bias and staying open-minded to fit will all strengthen the agility of your hiring process. When considering velocity, agility will help push your team forward during The Great Recession and beyond.

Stay tuned next week for the third part of this three-piece series, where we’ll discuss how to shift and adapt with more complex situations.

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It’s not going away anytime soon, either. A Microsoft report earlier this year stated “tech-oriented” jobs would increase from 41 million in 2020 to over 140 million by 2025.

There has not been a higher requirement for tech professionals since the 1990s web boom. And with more companies adopting work-from-home and hybrid models, talent is on the move. Some estimate that 30% of the entire tech workforce will change jobs in the next year.

This will create chaos but, simultaneously, an opportunity to snag new talent fresh on the market. The competition in this candidate-driven market is fierce, forcing companies to rethink how to put the candidate experience first, how they recruit and who they hire, sometimes turning to training and apprenticeship programs.

Agile organizations who are willing to part with legacy processes and adopt new, candidate-focused recruiting and hiring practices will surely reap the benefits.

Velocity means just that; how long it takes a candidate to pass through any single step will directly affect how many actually complete the interview process and even get to an offer stage.

This is the first of a three-part series that will help you shift into high-speed recruiting.

Part One: Prioritize

Executive leadership must declare that recruiting takes precedence for both the short-term and long-term ability to meet customer needs and company growth demands.

Put these policies in action:

Adopt a 24-48 Hour Response Time

We’re all busy, and it’s easy for work to pile up. Before we know it, we are a page of email behind. But when a position goes unfilled, a full inbox can become a tsunami and affect overall productivity and customer satisfaction.

Adopting an agreement between all persons involved in the interview to agree to 24-48 hours of hiring process reduces bottlenecks.

It’s up to managers to enforce this and practice it, as well. Candidate reviews should be returned to the recruiter in that 48-hour timeframe. Any delay means another company has a legitimate shot at snagging a potentially great prospect.

Show Up and Stay Engaged

Recruiters, hiring managers and interview panel members should equally understand that if they reschedule, they lose time and velocity. Plus, a candidate may perceive that they’re not a top contender and move along because, well, they have options.

Keeping your appointments and making people feel valuable and important during the interview process is critical. But in a candidate-driven market, we must allow flexibility to make sure we don’t spend a week waiting for an available time slot.

Candidate engagement is crucial. Hiring manager outreach is an effective ice breaker because it allows a high-level, low-key assessment of the individual. It also allows the applicant to communicate on a deeper level and gather enough insight to ask detailed questions about the position, which could spark more interest or shift them to withdraw earlier in the process.

Prepare Offers and Negotiations

A real offer is often the first time your candidate will stop and weigh their options. Give the recruiter a little power to negotiate so time is not wasted in the approval process.

In this heated race, don’t be surprised if four or five offers hit a candidate at once and stall acceptance. Sign-on bonuses for key roles can help solidify more urgent offers. Even consider offering to double the sign-on amount if they accept on the spot and show up the first day of work.

You’re Optional

No one likes to hear those words, but it is the harsh reality of a candidate-driven, tech recruiting market. Much like any other relationship, prioritizing and staying considerate of your candidates’ time, interest, attention and value helps create confidence and a better candidate experience. To say that this dynamic is critical now more than ever is an understatement.

Stay tuned for part two of this three-part series, where we’ll discuss agility, bias, demographics and more.

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Clear Talent will bring nearly 40 technical recruiters, sourcers and HR professionals to Patreon, the company said. Clear Talent CEO Rockman Ha will join the company as head of talent acquisition. Chief People Officer Tiffany Stevenson told Reuters that Clear Talent’s employees will quadruple the size of Patreon’s current recruiting team.

Patreon said the acquisition is “a critical investment” as it continues to develops itself as a platform that helps creators build their businesses and connect with their audience.

“Clear Talent brings an impressive track record of recruiting top technical talent along with strong alignment with Patreon’s core company values,” said Stevenson.

The acquisition is the latest development for Patreon after a year of growth and investment in its platform. In April, the company announced that it had raised a Series F financing round of $155 million, bringing its total valuation to $4 billion. On the product side, the company launched support for a series of new languages and currencies, along with updates to creators’ income dashboards.

Founded in 2013, the company pioneered development the “creator economy,” allowing videographers, podcasters and other creative types to earn money directly from their audiences.

In the months ahead, Patreon plans to expand its platform’s capabilities on desktop and mobile devices, increase international offerings and create new content consumption tools.

As creators harness a range of new apps to bring in money, Patreon is transforming itself into a platform that helps users manage their business in single place, Julian Gutman, the company’s chief product officer, told Reuters. “We’re in a growth phase,” he said. “We need to build a much bigger team than we have right now, he said.”

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In this article, we will discuss what has caused and continues to cause the IT developers shortage, as well as how to manage to entice the best talents in your company despite the recruitment challenges.

How Many Developers Are There in the World?

According to the Statista report, the IT expert population has grown from 23.0 million in 2018 to 23.9 million in 2019, and it is expected to hit up to 29 million of IT professionals by 2024.  

According to the State of European Tech 2020 report, there’s a large share of tech jobs that are hard to fill by European country per year, with Belgium and Germany having an even bigger percentage of tech vacancies to fill by October 2020 compared to October 2019. Notably that last year, the Netherlands reached a drastic 60% of the tech jobs with no IT expert to take on. This proves that in Europe, the IT talent shortage also poses a huge challenge.

Here’s also an interesting chart that shows the share of programmers with different years of experience per country:

Why the IT Talent Shortage Remains a Problem?

While it may seem that despite the immense number of IT specialists, the demand for tech specialists is also increasing day by day? In fact, the need for highly skilled coders, especially full-stack developers, is skyrocketing. So, why with such a large number of developers, companies face the problem to fill the tech roles?

• The demand for local programmers creates high competition in local IT markets. Nowadays, businesses in any industry need a website and most likely an app as well, so the need for specialists with relevant tech skills is not decreasing over time. However, the local IT market is limited, and not all companies are ready to consider beneficial outsourcing and staff augmentation option.

• The lifespan of the technology used and the software developed is limited, while projects are getting more complex. Programming is not a task-based job anymore. The project does not get finished as soon as software is created, as there is a constant need for maintenance, monitoring, optimizing, upgrading, and improving. This, in turn, involves a larger number of IT experts needed.
• COVID-19 only sped up the digitalization and forced all companies to go digital, which created an even higher demand for IT specialists that can create customized IT solutions.
• There is a huge gap between experienced and entry-level specialists. It’s getting harder to hire an experienced full-stack engineer, and fewer companies want to invest in educating junior IT specialists, which leads to the growing IT talent shortage.

What Talent Companies Are Looking for When Hiring IT Experts?

This Indeed survey showed that for more than 80% of recruiters, it’s a daunting task to hire Senior programmers and full-stack engineers. Here’s why talent companies are struggling with filling tech vacancies:

• Limited local IT talent pool (no relevant tech skills, industry knowledge, experience, etc.);
• A demand for Senior-level programmers (with the IT market full of entry-level IT experts);
• A demand for specific technologies and programming languages (which may not be widespread in a particular city/country);
• No relevant educational background (some companies are looking for IT specialists with at least a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or similar field, not just 2-month IT course graduates);
• Tight competition on the market (it gets harder and harder to recruit an experienced coder who’s job offer requirements grow with each received offer).

IT Talent Shortage Is Visible in All Tech Companies Around The Globe

To sum up, the IT talent shortage is not a one-country or one-industry problem, but a global issue that remains unaddressed. Businesses all over the world are still facing the same problem with finding highly skilled IT experts with the relevant tech knowledge, sufficient experience in the field, and salary rates that will fit the company’s budget.

At the same time, even the current growing number of IT specialists can’t keep up with the skyrocketing demand for highly experienced programmers, especially full-stack developers, as many experts don’t have the opportunity to gain the experience needed to meet the growing requirements.

Conclusion

Hiring seasoned IT experts and building dedicated full-stack development teams became a real challenge for most recruiters around the world. Finding the IT specialist that can fill the position perfectly is now requiring a vast amount of time, resources, and maybe even some luck.

That is why for companies in need of top-tier IT experts, it may be beneficial to consider outsourcing and staff augmentation as a solution to the local IT shortage issue and work with a reputable IT services provider that can assist in building a dedicated full stack development team shortly.

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The partnership will leverage Randstad’s national hiring infrastructure and offer a network of technology professionals who may not have previously considered work in the $118 billion business.

“The gaming industry is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world and it needs a pipeline of talent to help fuel this growth,” said Josh Vesely, Randstad’s enterprise and integrated talent solutions leader. “To capitalize on this moment and close a worsening skills gap, the industry needs to expand its talent base and consider new, alternative methods of hiring.”

Riding the Wave

The partnership comes as video games surge in demand. At the height of the pandemic, 55% of American consumers turned to video games for entertainment, boosting global sales by 20% and creating almost 20,000 jobs, Randstad said. The unemployment rate for professionals with gaming development and design skills is near zero.

Employment in the industry has been steadily growing over the last decade. About 124,000 people worked in gaming in 2010, according to Statista. By 2020, the number of employees was 241,000.

Gamesmith Founder Alex Churchill said the partnership with Randstad will provide “new opportunities for the community’s members. “Traditional hiring practices have changed during Covid-19 and partnering with Randstad allows our community to benefit from their experience,” he said.

The industry is gearing up for product and technology changes this year, according to media reports. Augmented and virtual reality, console upgrades, incorporating more diversity into game narratives, and new mobile games are among the areas expected to add momentum, said the consulting firm Linchpin. Some analysts also expect Gaming as a Service to gain traction, as well.

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As it has with other recent product announcements, Dice emphasized its ability to connect candidates and tech employers through its new capabilities. “Dice’s career marketplace is designed to help employers and recruiters build credibility and trust with top tech talent in order to make their next great hire,” said Christian Dwyer, chief product officer of Dice parent company DHI Group.

When it launched Instant Messaging, Dice said it wanted to facilitate communications between candidates and employers from within the job board’s platform. Its anonymous email feature allowed users to keep their identity private until they were ready to reveal their identity, and its Recruiter Profiles enabled employers and recruiters to create profiles and link them to posted jobs.

Now add the new Candidate Profile to the mix, which encourages tech professionals to keep their profiles updated their with new skills, experiences and preferred jobs.

Dice CEO Art Zeile said the company has “created a platform that allows for end-to-end engagement between recruiters and technologists, ultimately speeding up the vetting process, reducing time-to-hire and establishing trust while building a talent pipeline for current and future roles.”

The platform attempts to eliminate common frustrations on both sides of the hiring relationship by driving quality over quantity in terms of matches, getting the right roles in front of the right candidates and opening lines of communication between professionals and employers, the company said.

In March, Dice partnered with recruiting technology provider Humantelligence to offer candidates access to self-assessment tools that look at a user’s motivators, behaviors and ideal work styles.

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