Every year, studies are conducted that give people in the tech industry a look into what the next year may hold. The pandemic in 2020 is likely to significantly impact previous numbers between 2020 and 2021. As most businesses are re-adopting in-person work, how is the tech industry likely to change?
How the Return of In-Person Jobs Will Affect the Industry
Entering a ‘post-COVID’ stage, the number of businesses going back to purely in-person, remaining remote only, or developing a hybrid system will continue to change. In 2020, less than five percent of people in the tech industry worked solely from home. However, this jumped to just under fifty percent in 2021.
Finding Exceptional Developers May Still Be a Struggle
The corporate chaos in 2020 made finding developers who were exceedingly good at their job much more difficult. All the industries struggled to keep and employ people due to health and financial issues. Developers that were able to thrive (or at least maintain their jobs) were highly valued…and may continue to be valued through the end of 2021 as well.
Remote Positions Equal More Available Talent
Nearshore and offshore outsourcing saw a big leap in hiring statistics. Outsourcing to developers in areas where the standard of living is lower (therefore costing less money for quality work) is still a desired tactic in the tech industry. Studies on outsourcing for 2020 and moving into 2021 generally reveal that about half of potential candidates underwent at least a partially remote process.
Education Statistics Are Surprising
While educational experience has previously been included in required criteria during the hiring process, it is slowly becoming less important. Around forty percent of developers reported being self-taught instead of possessing some kind of education background in a relevant field. Surprisingly, eighty percent of hiring managers and recruiters claimed they had hired developers with no such knowledge.
Job Boards Still Take the Cake
The combination of remote positions, physical restrictions, and convenience of the online application process means sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, Unicorn.io, and so on are used constantly. At the top of the most used job hunting platforms sits LinkedIn. A little over seventy-five percent of job seekers and recruiters claim it as their first choice for the job posting. Other high-ranking sites include StackOverflow, Careers.sh, Whoishiring.sh and GitHub.
Remote vs. In-Person Interviewing
2020 saw a transition to purely remote interviewing procedures as a result of the pandemic. Vaccinations and a return to in-person functionality are likely to affect the hiring process once again. It’s currently hard to say how much of an impact it will have, but recruiters expressed a preference for in-person interviews.
In the tech industry, developers showed an interest in some of the remote tools recruiters adopted. This includes live coding and programming assessments and challenges that helped recruiters gauge skill levels.
Summary
There is a good mix of recruiters and developers who lean toward the in-person or remote aspects of the tech industry. Nonetheless, though the industry is always changing, the rest of 2021—and possibly into upcoming years—may continue to see some hybrid form of in-person and remote hiring.
