IT Hiring Trends That Are Hard to Ignore in 2022

The 2021 Gartner report found that talent shortage is the biggest hurdle for companies to adopt the latest technologies. The survey found that 64% of the respondents cite this shortage as their biggest challenge, as compared to just 29% who cited implementation costs. Yinuo Geng of Gartner says, “the ongoing push toward remote work and the acceleration of hiring plans in 2021 has exacerbated IT talent scarcity.”

To put it simply, the ongoing talent shortage is directly impacting IT hiring in 2022. HR teams in technology companies are more “hard-pressed” to fill technical job roles with the right talent. In the current circumstances, hiring teams can no longer afford “bad hires,” nor can they let go of the “good candidates” looking to switch their jobs. 

Each of these factors can be expensive and demotivating for other employees. On the other hand, a correct assessment of the new hires at an early stage of the recruitment process can determine the best candidates for the job role.

What are the various hiring trends that we are likely to see in IT companies in the year 2022? Let us look at some of them.

7 Trends in IT hiring for 2022

Here is a look at 7 trends that are likely to dominate hiring in the global IT sector in 2022:

1. Candidate experience

According to Recruiting Brief, 80-90% of surveyed talent can change their decision about joining a company based on their positive or negative experience. For the current job market in 2022, technology companies need to focus on “candidate experience.”

As part of their recruitment process, companies need to assess the candidate’s technical skills while providing a good experience. For example, gamified assessments are now preferred by application developers as compared to paper-based assessments. Additionally, the emergence of remote working means that IT companies need to deploy online tools to assess the candidate’s technical skills.

2. Use of AI and machine learning

In recent years, IT recruiters are leveraging Artificial Intelligence or AI capabilities for advertising jobs, attracting new talent, and predicting their job performance. Aaron Rieke of Upturn technology group explains that “just like with the rest of the world’s digital advertisement, AI is helping target who sees what job descriptions [and] who sees what job marketing.”

On their part, AI and Machine Learning (ML) technologies are expected to gain more ground in technical hiring and grow in 2022. With the explosion of data, AI tools can automate the decision-making process in technical hiring, thus making it easier and more accurate.

3. Bias-free recruitment

Typically, any hiring process involves subjective assessments of the applicants that include considerations such as.

• Are they a good fit for the existing project team?
• Do they have good interpersonal skills?
• How engaged or enthusiastic are they with this job role?

Subjective assessments can often result in an “unconscious bias” towards selected candidates, which can harm the hiring process. Unconscious bias can be driven by multiple types of “stereotypes” based on appearance, age, gender, race, and many other factors. Too often, hiring managers base their decisions on their “opinion” instead of looking at the factual “information.”

Technology companies need a more objective and bias-free approach in their recruitment process. To tap into the best talent, companies need a diverse pool of candidates with a range of technical skills to pick from to fill their positions. Further, they can reduce unconscious bias through diversity training and the use of digital tools like patented AI algorithms.

4. Hybrid work

As more knowledge workers get used to remote working, they will be expected to split time between working at home or office. Hybrid work is projected to be the new normal, as explained in this new PwC report.

The hybrid model of working is now being used by 63% of the top growing companies. A May 2021 survey found that 44% of employees are in favor of hybrid working arrangements. In the wake of the pandemic, we have entered the era where hybrid work is considered a normal business practice.

The convenience of hybrid work is also prompting technology workers to search for jobs over a wider geographical base. With the right technology tools, companies can even offer a 100% remote working facility to their employees and further widen their talent pool. 

As noted by Dr. Denize Caglar of PwC, hybrid working will have no impact on the organizational culture. He says, “your culture is not your office; it’s what you do as an organization, how you work together. What you do does not change because you’re working virtually.”

5. Internal mobility

Employee reskilling and upskilling is also expected to fill up job positions in tech companies in 2022. The 2020 McKinsey survey found that 68% of companies are investing in employee upskilling and reskilling, while 65% are training employees on emerging technologies.

Instead of relying solely on the external pool of resources, technology companies are encouraging internal mobility that allows existing employees to grow within the organizations using new or higher skill sets. To reduce the skill shortage, companies are converging talent acquisition and internal mobility to identify technical skills that are fit for open positions.

6. The Gig economy

Along with hybrid work, technology companies are looking to engage with more freelance technology workers in 2022. While the “gig” economy has been prevailing for some time now, the 2020 pandemic has accelerated the push towards remote-working freelancers and contract workers. 

Adam Ozimek of Upwork believes that “the rapid adoption of remote work over the last year and a half has sparked fundamental changes for businesses far beyond where their workforce is located.” Following the pandemic, 53% of business enterprises have said that the shift to remote working has increased their chances of using freelancers.

7. Automation in recruitment

Among the growing hiring trends this decade, automation tools and technologies are expected to impact IT hiring practices in 2022. According to Glassdoor research, it takes approximately 24 days to successfully recruit a technology worker in the U.S.

The use of automation in recruitment can cut down the hiring time and deliver a better candidate experience. Technology companies can leverage the capabilities of automation tools to:

• Match the job requirements to the candidate’s skillsets.
• Pre-screen the best candidates to evaluate their job skills and cultural fit.
• Schedule candidate interviews that otherwise take time with manual scheduling.

Conclusion

In the face of the growing skill gap in the IT sector, technology companies are looking at innovative ways like hybrid working, objective assessment, and hiring-related automation tools to attract and retain their talent base.

An automated and consolidated hiring platform for tech recruiters can be beneficial in optimizing hiring costs and resources and removing subjective bias from the assessment of any potential job candidate. At X0PA, we have built the “world’s most objective hiring and selection platform.” 

Powered by AI technology, our SaaS-based hiring platform has enabled our customers to automate multiple tasks in their tech hiring process, resulting in faster hires of the right candidates.

Do you want to transform your hiring and selection process? Get in touch with us.