COVID-19 impacted the job market in 2020, however one section of this market that did continued to do well was – tech hiring. The positive sentiment and demand for tech jobs continues in 2021, with vaccine drives in sight, a ready shift towards remote work, and general positivity among employers.
Software and technology jobs make up for the highest number of total remote jobs posted online with 29.2% of the total remote jobs posted from the IT industry.
Here’s our take on tech hiring in the post-pandemic world.
Tech hiring will stay remote
The computer/information technology industry ranks 2nd in embracing the remote work culture. Companies have become more open to working from home and are fine with hiring more employees who will work remotely. They are also keen on reaching out to candidates beyond their immediate location in a bid to find top talent, who will be based remotely. A lot of top tech companies like Facebook, Twitter have already announced that they will be staying remote for a foreseeable part of 2021 and in near future will be making some part of their workforce entirely remote.
All this roughly translates as remote hiring is here to stay and will be a big part of recruitment in general.
Some tech roles will remain in high demand
As the world moved to remote work en masse, demand for certain tech jobs increased. Companies had to hire network engineers and system engineers in 2020 to build, maintain and secure the remote working networks for their teams.
These roles are set to grow and evolve in the next few years as remote work becomes more common-place. With the rise in remote tech jobs, and companies moving to a hybrid work model, we will see a rise in location-agnostic salaries. (employees in the same role make the same amount regardless of where they live)
Companies will rethink their recruiting technology
Studies show that around 47% of recruiters have started using virtual assessment tools after the pandemic, showing a distinct shift in using and adopting technology for candidate assessment. We will see a definite spike in skill-based assessments, over pedigree.
With all candidate interactions going remote, recruiters will be on the lookout for technology that helps them assess candidates whilst eliminating biases in their hiring processes.
Diversity will take center stage
Gender diversity in tech has been a long-standing issue. While it’s changing slowly, the picture is still far from ideal. Tech recruiting is set to beat biases towards women in tech hiring this year (e.g. higher proportion of women in software testing jobs vis-à-vis coding jobs, as they are often assigned low complexity projects).
A recent study said that 16.75% called out unconscious bias as a key issue during sourcing, which shows that they are aware of the problem and are actively working towards tackling it. Recruiters will turn towards technology to help eliminate these unconscious biases and become gender-neutral in their hiring outlook. Companies will start dabbling in the use of AI (Artificial intelligence) in boosting diverse hires, as machines can be programmed to focus solely on skills and experience and be inherently unbiased.
Soft skills will become important
The past year has emphasized the need for soft skills given that we worked in remote, distributed teams, thanks to the pandemic. Soft skills have proven to be important when it comes to building teams, motivating employees and co-workers especially when we can’t be together in the same room.
Companies are looking for communicators who can get the message across clearly while conveying thoughts to clients, and internal teams.
Recruiters will be keen on evaluating tech candidates for soft skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication, in particular. They will be using behavioral interview questions to probe and evaluate these soft skills.
We hope this gives you some insights into how tech hiring will look like this year.
