Companies hiring tech talent are coming face to face with a new reality—economic issues are placing pressure on them to do more with fewer workers, but technology is evolving faster than their talent pipelines often can.
Our recent report explores how companies are responding to investment cuts by focusing their teams on specialized skills in high-growth areas. The problem is these emerging fields are so new that academic programs can’t generate enough new workers. AI roles in data science and machine learning have grown by 80% and 250%, for example—a rate that businesses just can’t keep up with.
As such, a growing number of companies are competing for a small pool of skills. In fact, this skills gap could impact 90% of organizations by 2026, leading to around $5.5 trillion in losses.
So what’s the solution? To find the specialized skills they need, companies need to broaden their talent pools, and to hire in a more stable way in this volatile market, they need to hire with flexibility-first.
Make a flexible, global approach to hiring work
Companies are introducing flexibility at three stages of talent acquisition.
1. Focus on skills-based hiring
The traditional hiring model built on qualifications and years of experience just doesn’t fit with fast-evolving technologies. Fields such as data science and generative AI, for example, are so new that academic institutions struggle to create programs with the practical experience companies need.
This means companies are forced to be more flexible in their hiring strategies, broadening their talent pools by focusing on real-world skills. Organizations are increasingly building their teams around the pockets of autonomous, ownership-driven talent that are common in these fields and using assessments to determine hands-on experience.
2. Stay on top of emerging talent hubs
Pockets of self-grown talent exist all over the world; though India has long been the go-to place to get software engineers, hubs are emerging across regions such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. By hiring in these areas, you can expect not only to find specialized skills with less competition but also more favorable costs.
The inherent changeability of the global talent marketplace means global hiring can never be a simple “set and forget” activity. Businesses need to be flexible enough to continually adapt their hiring strategies in line with shifting talent trends.
An employer of record service is another additional step in this move toward flexible, global hiring. With competition so fierce, companies need to be able to enter new markets without the hassles of setting up a local entity.
3. Build a dynamic talent acquisition strategy
A dynamic talent acquisition strategy allows companies to scale up and down their workforce in line with internal needs and market changes. Our report shows that increasing numbers of companies are hiring freelancers, likely filling short-term project needs with specialized talent. By balancing this with full-term or temp-to-perm hires, companies can upskill workers and build a stable workforce while continually meeting changing demands.
Win the war for talent, now and into the future
The tech talent crunch doesn’t need to be a source of panic. Being flexible about where your talent is from, how they’ve gained their skills, and in which capacity they work with your company allows you to adapt and keep adapting. And, if recent years tell us anything, it’s that the future of the tech job market is one where agility will define success.
Sagar Khatri is CEO and cofounder of Multiplier.
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