The State of Tech Recruiting in 2017

There’s a war for talent brewing in the tech industry today which is becoming more far reaching and obvious with each passing year. At the heart of this battle is the fact that every company needs tech talent today, irrespective of their industry or history. This grants more power in the hands of the talent who are more informed, advanced and proactive than ever before.

With 40% of India’s population falling into the employable workforce , and around 1.5 million engineers released into the market every year , the numbers here are not ignorable. However, 60% of these new graduates remain unemployed in the tech sector . Along with other related causes, this has led to a 22% drop in engineering enrollments over the last 3 years , thus increasing the talent gap even further.

While different companies have varied expectations from the people they hire, tech talent around the world today has one thing in common – they want to know the grand vision of their organization and have a clear definition of their own role in this vision. Rather than focusing solely on the salaries they draw, employees today want to see balance sheets and want to know about the technologies being used, the coding languages in play, the work culture, scope of work, and growth prospects to determine the attractiveness of the companies they join. As has been found, 80% of employee turnover can be attributed to poor hiring decisions , so making the right call while hiring people is vital.

Skill-Based Hiring - Tech Companies’ New Age Mantra
Today, highly specific and specialized tech skills have come to the forefront when it comes to hiring the most suitable candidates. So employers cannot afford to neglect this focus area over traditional parameters of potential candidates such as their resumes and work experience.

With AI, Predictive Analytics and competitive programming platforms also playing a prominent role in the recruitment space, things are changing completely and existing models are being thrown out the window. 38% of companies say that in 2017 – “The Year of the Algorithm” – they would definitely invest in better sourcing and screening tools if money were not a constraint, while 53% say employer branding would be their key focus area. These new automation tools are simplifying the sourcing, selection and retention of employees and recruiters must use these tools to find the best people at the right time, whether they are actively or passively looking for a job.

Adopting effective skill-based hiring with the help of competitive programming platforms is worth the time and money investment for recruiters though. It has been found that around 250 resumes are screened for an open position, and this brings through approximately 4-6 worthy applications. So for a recruiter who needs to finalize 8-12 hires a month, this translates to the physical screening of close to 2000 resumes a month, on the lower side. Thanks to platforms that provide recruiters with candidates who are proficient in the specific skills that they require, this lengthy process can be made faster, simpler and cheaper.

Long gone are the days when recruiters working in tech acquisition had all the power in their hands and could take their pick of the best candidates from premier institutions. Today’s tech recruiting market is driven by candidates more than ever so recruiters need to stand out as a desirable place to work. For this, they need to utilize employer branding strategies and be more transparent about their salaries, benefits and growth trajectories. Massive changes in campus recruiting and lateral recruiting strategies revolving around social recruiting have materialized as a result, and these are affecting the state of the tech recruiting market more than ever.

Tech recruiters will however, need to get used to the new world order of acquisition and adopt the following strategies:
1) Back recruitment results up with concrete data or face lowered budgets
2) Present the direct dollar impact of skill-based hiring on strategic business goals
3) Focus on optimizing new innovations and platforms in the recruitment space
4) Merge modern data driven recruiting tools with tested traditional processes

Another area where recruiters in India are falling behind and need to focus on improvement is the usage of mobile recruitment tools. As per the latest Korn Ferry Futurestep Survey , 4 out of 5 talent acquisition leaders do not use recruiting tools. So while more job seekers are applying through smartphones, recruiters need to do more to leverage this space and opportunity. Additionally:
1) 53% of Indian recruiters use applicant tracking systems and video interviewing. This is much higher than the global average.
2) Only 10% of recruiters use employer branding services offered by Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) agencies.

The 3-R’s That Tech Candidates Need to Follow
For tech candidates, simply knowing how to code is not enough anymore. Their jobs entail much more so they need to keep upgrading and evolving their capabilities to stay ahead. With all the political and technological changes around us, here are three key areas that tech candidates should be looking at.

Reskill – Tech candidates need to familiarize themselves with and master new skills that are in demand. Tech products and the market are continuously evolving, so people also need to. This includes learning new tools, platforms and processes. Vital to the reskilling process is also showcasing their work and new learnings to a broad developer audience. Some of the biggest tech companies in India are now realizing the value of reskilling as well.

1) Infosys offered 2000 learning courses under its ‘Competency Development Programme’ to train 2.12 million people in new skills in 2016 .
2) In Q1 2017, Wipro launched ‘TopGear’ – a crowdsourcing initiative to give employees global hands-on experience with high demand skills
3) NASSCOM Foundation and Aricent partnered to provide employable skills to more than 3400 graduates from 16 colleges through ‘ARISE’ .

Relearn – For tech candidates to make themselves invaluable, they need to broaden their horizons and learn new things. This means picking up skills and knowing things beyond their job description. By doing so, they can make a lasting impact at their workplace. Moreover, traditional resumes are obsolete as candidates rely on social media, personal websites and coding badges to showcase their work. In this candidate-driven market, going beyond the traditional knowledge base is crucial. A Forbes piece on the top technical skills with explosive growth in job demand highlights the key tech skills .

Rehearsing – The acute talent shortage in the market dictates that tech candidates constantly need to rehearse and revisit the skills that they already have. By honing their existing skillset, candidates can go deeper into their knowledge base and enhance their competency by adapting to an ever changing market scenario. After all, practice makes perfect and this is something that someone looking to build a career in tech development cannot ignore. Competitive programming platforms such as HackerRank provide a platform for this, and the growth of its engineer pool from 1 million in early 2016 to 2.1 million today is proof of that.

Conclusion
At the end of the day all companies want one thing – to hire tech talent that can make a difference and add value. Skill-based hiring ensures that companies find the right people to fit specific roles but finding that talent is easier said than done. So as the power of choice increasingly shifts towards candidates today, recruiters will also need to up their game and utilize data-based decision models, employer branding, candidate personas and on-demand sourcing tools for best results.

(The article has been authored by Harishankaran Karunanidhi, a Computer Science Graduate from National Institute of Technology, Trichy. After a short stint with IBM, Hari co-founded HackerRank, which became the first company from India to be chosen for the prestigious incubator program at Y Combinator. Over the last 3 years, HackerRank has empowered over 1000 companies worldwide, including some of the biggest names in the technology industry, to hire quality programmers efficiently.)