The post-pandemic ‘new normal’ has completely changed the way many people
work and feel about their future. The COVID times can be described in three main
flows: The Great Resignation, labor shortages, and the anti-work movement. Back
in 2020, global IT spending went 5,4% down because many professionals quit their
jobs due to the lockdown and many other prejudices. At first, it looked like a
catastrophe but by 2021, the industry has begun to recover. The situation has
forced almost all companies to digitize everything that can be digitized, and this
has become the main reason for the huge gap between supply and demand when it comes to hiring technical talent. A lot has already been said about digitalization and it would be right to admit that the demand for IT specialists has grown like never before.
A market for technical talent became hyper-competitive due to the intense need for IT specialists to support digitalization initiatives which makes it more difficult to hire and retain employees. Staff turnover, talent shortage, difficulties with rapid
and efficient scaling, and struggles in finding and retaining top specialists in the
company are the main issues that a lot of companies are now facing. It turned out
that the biggest challenge so far is the time to find and hire quality talent which is
caused by the lack of team leads and time zone differences. On average, it takes
more than 7 weeks to hire developers and 64% of executives revealed that the
talent shortage is the main thing that created a big barrier for their businesses.
However, it is possible to combat these challenges with a smart outsourcing
strategy. The companies that decided to follow the trend of outsourcing, realized
that the current situation opened new opportunities for them to hire talents all
around the globe. Over time, unprecedented growth in staff productivity has been discovered, which created 2022 trends. More remote work, a need and opportunity to quickly attract skilled outsourcers, big demand for capacity and speed, coaching and knowledge model development, more digitally enabled and flexible workforce, all these things are trending in a tech talent area.
Both IT professionals and HR leaders have realized the benefits of remote work,
because not only has the productivity of employees increased but it has also been
seen as an opportunity to save money, improve team communication and expand
the talent pool.
Thus, trends like IT talent shortage, remote development teams, and global hiring
migrated to 2023, and will just deepen and experience further development.
According to several studies, software development outsourcing will continue to
grow and could reach up to 70% in 2023. For instance, in 2021, only 17% of
software development was outsourced, however, in 2022 the number increased to
21% and it is expected to grow in 2023 up to 36% if trends continue to hold.
However, the talent shortage will also continue to worsen, with 85 million jobs
likely to remain unfilled by 2030. This may be mainly because many workers have
felt the freedom to work remotely, but also due to the fact that many employees
think that companies are more focused on bringing in new team members than
investing in employees who are already working for them.
To solve the shortage problem, many companies will have to use non-traditional
hiring methods, meaning that more and more companies will be open to hiring
talents without any academic background. The trend will see tech giants, and
others, give self-taught individuals a chance. Plus, many companies are already
eager to train newcomers by sharing their experiences.
As for the new trends of 2023, the directions like Soft Skills, automation of routine
tasks, cybersecurity, cloud-native technologies, cloud computing, AI, AR, IoT
(Internet of Things), and Microservices Architecture will find their way to rapid
adoption. But new trends always come with new challenges such as lack of tech
talent, cybersecurity issues, building and managing multiple clouds, retaining new talents, insufficient expertise, private cloud building issues, cost management issues, compliance, etc.
While new rules and challenges may seem insurmountable, most of us have
survived the so-called ‘post-COVID shock’ and it will be easier to adapt and
integrate this much technology into our everyday life. The trends will only expand
but it is also a great opportunity for both, tech talents and companies to learn how to deal with any vulnerabilities and grow.
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