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Tech Talent Has Never Been More Important
Today’s business runs on tech innovation—99% of businesses use at least one SaaS solution, and 80% of companies rely solely on SaaS applications to run their businesses.
The U.S. has approximately 17,000 SaaS companies serving 59 billion customers worldwide. Competition for customers is fierce, with tech companies constantly having to add new features and functionalities to keep customers happy. The result? Innovation has become the norm—today’s consumers expect a steady stream of upgrades from their tech platforms, and tech companies plan to keep their customers delighted.
80% of tech organizations are moving quickly on new development initiatives designed to keep them competitive, and 83% of tech executives foresee an increased need for new products and services to keep customers happy.
However, There's a Tech-Talent Shortage
The roadblock to today’s tech innovation is our current tech-talent shortage. The need for tech roles is growing much faster than there are individuals to fill them.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts tech jobs to grow 13% between 2020 and 2030, 667,600 new jobs faster than the average of all occupations.
- By 2030, more than 85 million jobs could go unfilled because of talent shortages, with tech talent particularly hard to find.
- Gartner finds there are five jobs for every software developer, and talent shortages are the most significant barrier to adopting new technologies.
- 86% of organizations believe a lack of tech talent is a crucial barrier to achieving their planned business outcomes.
- 61% of U.S. recruiters said hiring developers was one of their biggest challenges.
How, then, can tech companies meaningfully up their ante and attract the quality tech talent that will keep them innovative and competitive? We’re sharing our insights as both a leader in the private label PaaS space and a tech company that has steadily grown our own tech workforce during this challenging hiring climate.
Actionable Tips for Combatting the Tech-Talent Shortage
- Market to Top Tech Talent
- Expand Your Parameters
- Invest in Potential
- Take Advantage of Technology
- Use External Services to Acquire New Tech Solutions
Market to Top Tech Talent
If you’ve been marketing to tech talent the same way you’ve been doing since pre-pandemic times, you’re doing yourself a significant disservice. Today’s talent has more options than ever—you could safely assume that anyone you offer a position to is fielding simultaneous offers—and could afford to be choosy about companies that provide the values and lifestyle they seek. You’ll need to market yourself to top tech talent and potentially make some changes to accommodate what they desire.
Meaningful DEI
Meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are essential to today’s tech job seekers—76% of job candidates won’t consider working for a company with no DEI initiatives. However, 68% of business leaders feel a lack of diversity in their tech workforce.
Want to increase your DEI efforts but don’t know where to start? We’ve created The HiringThing Guide to DEI Recruiting to help you out.
Respect for Time
Gone are the days when candidates should feel blessed to get an interview. Today’s tech talent knows their worth and wants companies that respect their time and resources. An overly drawn-out hiring process with too many interviews and hoops to jump through can deter candidates who feel their time is being wasted.
Additionally, we’re in a tech-talent shortage if you didn’t remember—drawing out the hiring process puts you at risk of losing quality candidates to faster competitors.
Learning and Development
Today’s top reason for switching careers is career advancement. Prominently advertise in your tech talent job postings that you prioritize professional development and internal mobility—show concrete examples if possible.
Remote Work
LinkedIn found that while remote job posts accounted for only 19.4% of their posts, they attracted 50.1% of all applications and 45.1% of views. You can’t deny that data. Today’s talent, especially tech talent who can legitimately do their jobs from anywhere, are seeking remote work. Nearly two-thirds of IT employees reported the inability to work remotely as a job deal-breaker.
A bonus is that remote work can significantly increase your pool of candidates.
Expand Your Parameters
We just mentioned how 68% of business leaders feel a lack of diversity in their tech workforce. That’s a relatively easy problem to solve if you reexamine the parameters you’ve set for who makes your “ideal” job candidate and expand it to make a more diverse candidate pool. This will also widen and increase the types of people applying for posts, making you more competitive in your search for high-quality tech talent.
HiringThing has expanded our candidate parameters by adopting a culture-add mentality and eschewing college-degree requirements.
Invest in Potential
Tech has always been a super competitive market, and traditionally, a high value has been placed on industry experience. While this is true of all industries, the tech space has relied on previous experience instead of job candidates' potential.
Here at HiringThing, we consider experience but make an effort to also invest in candidates who demonstrate the right mix of passion and potential, which we have found to be a successful approach to finding high-quality tech talent.
Take Advantage of Technology
When it comes to finding tech talent, it’s not just about filling the role with anyone but finding the right fit. Technology can help here. Applicant tracking systems (ATS)—recruiting software that optimizes and automates the hiring process—have been shown to help companies get better-quality hires. 78% of ATS users told GetApp that ATS use improved the quality of their hires.
Additionally, 86% of ATS users say the software has helped them hire faster, which we’ve established is crucial in this competitive hiring climate.
Check out ten additional reasons all hiring managers can benefit from ATS usage.
Use External Services to Build New Tech Solutions
Despite how challenging finding good talent is, many tech companies found it necessary to make cuts to their highly-paid tech recently. Over 42,000 tech workers were laid off in 2022. Even though these workers are more essential than ever, hiring tech talent is expensive—the average developer's salary is $110,140 (not accounting for hiring costs—inflation has forced tech companies to make tough choices).
Many companies are finding outsourcing new tech solutions to be the salve for the lack of tech talent (whether from shortages or personnel cuts). 59% of businesses outsource in some capacity to cut costs, and software outsourcing is projected to be on a 10-year growth spurt through 2025.
While outsourcing is often associated with finding cheap talent in other countries, often with dubious results, it simply means using external services to build your new tech solutions. We suggest going the private label route.
Private label software is purchased from a SaaS or PaaS provider and customized with the branding and bespoke workflows the purchaser requires. Instead of draining internal resources, researching, and building additional software, private label purchasers work with private label providers as a mutually beneficial partnership versus the traditional buyer/client relationship. Since end-users aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes partnership, it strengthens the brand and scope of the private label purchaser’s product offerings.
While tech companies can absolutely “outsource” by purchasing out-of-the-box tech solutions, that doesn’t work for most competitive tech companies trying to impress and retain customers with proprietary functionalities. Private labeling allows companies to present new solutions as proprietary features which can be customized to fit their specific needs, both crucial value-adds for competitive PaaS and SaaS organizations.
Private labeling is a good tool for companies looking to grow because it allows them to quickly and cost-efficiently add new solutions, go to market fast, and expand the bandwidth of an organization’s team without adding any additional tech talent or overburdening their existing tech workforce.
Here at HiringThing, we produce the premier Private Label Applicant Tracking System on the market, so we have created The Ultimate Guide to Establishing a White Label Partnership for anyone looking for alternatives to expanding their tech offerings without the need for additional tech talent.
Related Resources
- Tips for HR Tech Startup Survival
- Create a Competitive Edge for SaaS Companies With This Innovative Move
- Innovative Strategies to Improve Recruiting and Retention
- Talent Migration: The New Recruiting Reality
About HiringThing
HiringThing is a modern recruiting platform as a service that creates seamless hiring experiences. Their private label applicant tracking system and open API enables technology and service providers to add hiring capabilities to their solution. Approachable and adaptable, their platform empowers anyone, anywhere, to hire their dream team.
