In this article, we will be examining five employment trends that are expected to be popular in 2023, as well as the five that are becoming less popular, and how businesses are modifying their recruitment practices in the present year.
Finding qualified data specialists in 2023 will involve dealing with an unpredictable economic situation, the consequences of numerous tech business redundancies, and job seekers who prefer to work for a company with a mission and corporate culture that match their values, including diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Leaders in data suggest the optimal method is to concentrate on adaptability. Businesses that want to stay innovative and expand despite changing workforce numbers are looking to internal staff to acquire new abilities, promote their organization's advantages to potential job applicants, and enlarge their pool of possible hires from unconventional sources.
The topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion are currently being discussed in great detail.
Nijah Barley, head of IT at McKissack & McKissack, states that the most promising trend that he is noticing, arises from companies that are progressive in terms of hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. According to Barley, "Recruiters are making it possible for a range of individuals with different genders, educational backgrounds, nationalities, and beliefs to be hired. Diversity in the workplace should be a standard criterion."
Michelle Skoor, chief workforce officer at Bitwise Industries, concurs, noting that "More businesses are now taking action in terms of inclusion, not only during the hiring process but also in terms of ensuring that their employees are staying and developing their career paths."
Rajan Kumar, vice president and CIO at Intuit, points out the need to reduce prejudice in the interviewing method to evaluate potential candidates objectively. He says, "One of the solutions we have implemented is allowing candidates to demonstrate their problem-solving skills in a similar way they would at work and then present their approach to a small team that assesses their capacity to think innovatively and strategically."
Recruitment can be succinctly described as taking place in cold conditions.
According to Lily Mok, the vice president and analyst of Gartner, the need for IT roles has diminished as 2022 comes to an end. About 40% of CIOs have decelerated hiring and 30% have put a halt to recruitment due to economic uncertainty. Mok believes that the layoffs from digital firms will make the talent challenge more manageable, however, the amount of data personnel available has only increased marginally.
Dan Zimmerman, chief product and information officer of TreviPay, states that the competition for data talent in 2022 was so intense that salaries were rising faster than the rate of inflation. There is a silver lining, Zimmerman states, as he thinks salaries will be more reasonable in the year 2023 as a result of the numerous layoffs and hiring freezes that have happened over the past couple of months. Furthermore, he believes that this will make recruiting easier and reduce the rate of salary inflation in the first half of 2023.
Encouraging employees to move up the ranks within the company.
According to CIO Fariha Rizwan of Z2C Limited, it is more likely for external hires to resign within a few years of joining a new job. Wise hiring managers should focus on the internal staff, as she suggests those promoted from within will stay for a longer period. Rizwan argues that in the six months it requires for recruiting, orienting, and instructing a new employee, an existing member of the team could be educated for the position instead. This way, the business retains a proficient worker who would have departed without the chance to progress. Internal training initiatives and well-defined career paths reveal to personnel that their employer believes in them and is willing to invest in them.
Recruiting top-notch personnel
According to Dru Kirk, VP of Talent Acquisition for Marqeta, the uncertainty of the market has made the recruitment process much more difficult than expected. Kirk claims that the toughest competition for the best employees is their current employer. She states that we have moved away from a period of people quitting their jobs easily, to a period of hiring freezes, rescinded offers and redundancies. As a result, it has become more difficult for people to leave their job when they feel safe in the company. Companies are trying to keep their top talent, which has caused a shift from the previous year when there were more market opportunities in new companies.
Utilizing an extensive search approach
Rizwan points out that more recruiters in the technology industry are beginning to hire personnel from non-technical backgrounds, particularly ones with a history of revenue generation. He further states that this has been effective in getting a novel outlook on the problem, and for diversifying the hiring pool. Additionally, there is also a new trend of recruiting product managers who have shown proficiency in turning creative ideas into money.
JT Scott, VP of Global Finance Technology and Innovation for Walmart Global Tech, mentions that he has noticed a rise in unconventional ways of getting tech employment, like coding boot camps or businesses paying for upskilling. Investing in these non-traditional routes is widening the talent pool, and is of benefit to both the job-seekers and employers.
Cold temperatures require specialised behaviour and activities in order to survive.
Mike Bechtel, the head futurist of Deloitte Consulting, has declared that the most sought-after skill is flexibility, as per their recent studies. He said that the life expectancy of any new technology is no more than 2.5 years, so looking for a 10x engineer would be a pointless effort, or worse, a costly exercise of recruiting a deep expert whose capabilities may not be relevant in a few years. Therefore, the trend is to recruit people with high aptitude and a positive attitude who can become proficient in a new technology for a few years and then switch to something else would be far better.
A Deloitte report on tech trends claims that AI will replace many of the low-level data tasks, and the solution for organizations is to focus on being adaptive. To meet the talent goals, organizations should strive to sharpen their humanities, because AI technology will be enough to do most of the tasks which data teams are currently handling.
Thomas Vick, regional director for Robert Half's technology practice group, has mentioned that demand for quality assurance engineers and level 1 help desk work has decreased. On the other hand, jobs related to automation, AI and digitalization are now in higher demand, whereas manual or siloed roles have become less popular.
Generating prospect accounts
According to Barley from McKissack & McKissack, employers are no longer just checking off boxes to see if a candidate has the right technical abilities. Companies nowadays are forming profiles of potential employees that take into account the necessary soft skills. He states that using pre-employment testing and distinctive interview questions can evaluate a hopeful not only for their current job skills but also for adaptability, problem-solving, and communication competencies. This information can then be used to determine the criteria for hiring somebody for the role.
Establishing connections with people in a chilly atmosphere.
According to Vick, the chances of tech pros finding jobs based on their location have decreased as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. He states that personal meetings have become less common, replaced by online events and online discussion forums. He mentions that the few in-person events that are still taking place are usually connected to some kind of certification, and the opportunity to build connections is not what it used to be.
Pay attention to how well a person fits in with the existing culture.
According to Andrey Ivashin, CIO at Dyninno Group, both job seekers and employers are in search of a workplace that is a good cultural fit and that they share similar values in order to be successful. Ivashin believes that competitive pay and interesting job opportunities are no longer the only important factors, as there is now a greater emphasis on having meaningful values, being socially responsible, and having an inclusive work culture. He further emphasizes the importance of employer branding, saying that applicants are researching the organizations they are considering to make sure their values align. Additionally, Ivashin notes that people are now becoming more aware of their prospective managers and forming opinions on them before deciding whether to take a job with the company.
Identifying skilled workers in areas where they are difficult to locate
According to Gartner's Mok, despite the reduction in demand for data roles in December, the most difficult vacancies to fill are for AI and machine learning engineers, cloud architects, cybersecurity analysts/engineers, solution architects, IT systems engineers and full-stack developers. CIOs need to employ these challenging-to-find personnel to reach their 2023 objectives, such as in the areas of cybersecurity, cloud platforms, analytics/business intelligence/data science and project management.
Despite the layoffs from digital companies, the quantity of data professionals only increased slightly. Talent supply in data science, software engineering and security functions remain as tight or tighter than before. Based on Randstad Technologies, there has been a shift in the demand for what used to be unique roles that are now mainstream, for instance, postings for data scientists have escalated more than 3,000% since 2012 and for data engineers have augmented by 2,000% in the same period.