The IT field stands still for no business. Be certain the company handling your IT staffing needs knows about and is prepared to reckon with these three urgent issues.
Heading into the home stretch of 2016, information technology experts are able to identify several trends that have shaped the year in IT staffing. Three of them seem particularly pressing.
These developments aren’t outliers or blips on the radar. They’re shifts in priority and practice you must be certain your IT staffing firm understands and adopts when helping your enterprise meet its IT staffing needs.
How is your IT staffing company helping your business address these three urgent trends from the year so far?
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- Coping with a Shrinking Pool of Quality Candidates
The news from U.S. colleges and universities is not encouraging: They’re graduating fewer students with computer and information technology skills than they were a decade ago, even as demand for such graduates in the marketplace continues to rise.
In 2012, for example, over 13,500 fewer students earned IT degrees—but the U.S. added over 300,000 IT-related jobs (just over a 13% increase from 2003).
Currently, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 12% growth of computer and IT occupations by 2024—some 4.4 million jobs, faster than the average of all other careers. But the American workforce’s supply of IT professionals isn’t keeping pace with demand.
Given these conditions, your company can’t afford to use an IT staffing firm unable to produce educated, qualified and experienced IT professionals when you need them. If your staffing firm’s pool of talent isn’t deep, you can bet it hasn’t adapted successfully to America’s current IT reality.
- Coping with a Shrinking Pool of Quality Candidates
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- Recruiting “Passive” IT Job Candidates
The best IT staffing companies today seek out first-rate candidates where the candidates are. These firms don’t wait for talent to come calling, resume and references in hand; rather, the firms treat them as “passive” job seekers and go knocking on their virtual doors instead.
LinkedIn has emerged as an increasingly important venue for locating quality IT professionals. The wise IT staffing firm has multiple levels of LinkedIn membership, and monitors them all for IT workers who fit the profile their clients have outlined. Yet data from LinkedIn itself shows that only 22% of IT staffing companies do so!
Does your company’s IT staffing firm keep a steady eye on LinkedIn—as well as internet user groups and social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus? There’s simply no reason they can’t or shouldn’t, especially given the powerful automated solutions that are available.
Top-notch IT talent is scarcer than it once was, but it is still out there, waiting to be found. You must be confident your staffing firm will find it first.
- Recruiting “Passive” IT Job Candidates
- Taking Advantage of Mobile Recruiting Methods
Smartphones and tablets have penetrated the personal computing marketplace to the point that the desktop may be an endangered species. The year-on-year decline in worldwide PC shipments seen in 2015’s fourth quarter—10.6%—was the biggest in history. While PC sales in the U.S. have shown some small improvement in 2016, their global downward trend continues.This trend’s implication for IT staffing is clear: solution providers must be agile enough to connect with candidates on the go. Phone screenings, Skype interviews, and mobile device-friendly applications are musts in modern IT staffing solutions.
LinkedIn once again provides some pertinent data. They report that 72% of mobile job seekers have used smartphones or other mobile devices to find job openings, and 45% have used those phones and devices to apply for those jobs. Amazingly, however, about half of talent acquisition leaders say mobile recruiting just isn’t a top priority for their firms.
Mobile devices are so prevalent in the U.S. and worldwide, The Economist cheekily dubbed the human race “Phono sapiens.” If your IT staffing firm doesn’t use mobile recruiting methods, your company will likely miss out on the talent you need.
Evoke Technologies: Your Trendsetting IT Staffing Firm
We at Evoke Technologies do more than follow IT staffing trends. We help set them. Our customer-centric, innovative IT staffing solutions are the standard to which others aspire.
Whether you’re looking to hire full-time IT staff members or need to augment your team for a specific project or heavy workload period, we’ll make sure you have the high caliber IT talent you need.
Contact Evoke Technologies today at (937) 202-4161, and learn how our staffing practice can help you stay on top of—and ahead of—the trends, too.
Related Tags: IT Staffing Firm Trends in 2016 | Evoke Technologies
