The Changing Face of IT and Tech Hiring Trends

Despite news of layoffs at major technology, SaaS, and media companies in the late months of 2022 and early months of 2023, it’s still the case that the list of IT skills in demand continues to grow—and the net demand for talent is increasing due to wider tech hiring trends across the industry. 

The digital transformation of all workplaces is proceeding at a record pace, and as a result, over 90% of technology managers have stated that they intend to hire but are struggling to connect with candidates that possess the specialisms they need. 

In this guide to the tech hiring trends of 2023, we’ll discover how technological advances and economic conditions are reshaping IT skills in demand. This state of affairs is opening up lucrative opportunities for candidates with robust competencies but also means that hiring managers must keep up to date with the latest developments across the industry to ensure that they’re able to attract, retain, and support employees. 

We’ll also discuss the tech hiring trends of 2023 and what they might forecast for the coming year before we explore how recruitment process outsourcing can assist you in meeting your tech and IT hiring needs.

How Technological Advances Have Shaped the IT Skills In Demand

From the early days of the IT industry, advances in hardware and software, alongside the development of new languages and programming methodologies, have driven tech hiring trends. 

Whilst many of these historic languages continue to provide lucrative, if hard-to-find opportunities—we’re all aware of the tales of how COBOL and consultants well-versed in the language continue to drive the financial sector—realistically, it’s the latest developments that will dictate the kind of skills you’ll be on the lookout for as a hiring manager. 

So, what are these advances, and how are they driving recruiting trends within the sector at large? Let’s take a closer look at the five most impactful developments and learn more about how they’re reshaping the list of IT skills in demand in 2023: 

• Automation and Digitalization: Doing More with Less

As far as tech hiring trends go, it’s likely that automation and the digital transformation of the workplace will be the most disruptive force in 2023.  Automation continues to be the buzzword within the media when it comes to discussing technological advances, and for good reason, too: as businesses come face-to-face with rocky economic outlooks, many will be looking to streamline existing processes and do more with the personnel and resources they currently have access to. 

As it stands, 24% of organizations surveyed by McKinsey & Company are investing in automation as a means of cutting operational expenses.

As a result of this demand for automation talent, recruiting trends within the IT sector continue to be focused on a strong foundation of engineering skills—coding, the expert use of command-line tools, and the ability to manipulate and leverage external APIs. 

Alongside this, however, there is a commensurate demand for competencies that are more often found on the helpdesk, such as familiarity with issue-tracking, log management, and event management systems, meaning that automation offers employees that gain these skills in a first or second-line support role the ability for career mobility. 

• Hybrid Work: Adding Communication to the List of IT Skills In Demand

Whilst we’re all now familiar with the shift towards hybrid and remote ways of working, the impact of this development for the list of IT skills in demand in 2023 can’t be understated. The world of work has changed immeasurably since the beginning of the decade, and one result of this is that soft skills are more important for tech professionals to possess than ever before. 

With project managers needing to be aware of what their colleagues are doing, tech hiring trends are showing that the skills that facilitate and streamline teamwork are a high priority. Almost all HR professionals highlight that soft skills are vital to career success, with a report published by LinkedIn noting that 89% of bad hires typically lack these now-core competencies.

So, whilst it might not seem—at first glance—to be a technological innovation, the transition towards a “geographically-distributed” workplace is indeed driving recruiting trends within the sector. Managers’ lists of IT skills in demand are increasingly coming to include the ability to utilize communications and scheduling software to manage and meet deadlines and stay abreast of wider personnel availability, particularly as the shift towards more flexible models of work becomes popular.

• Data Analysis: Driving Business Success

Knowledge is power, or so the saying goes—and big data provides businesses the ability to better understand their key accounts and prospective leads, diagnose and combat inefficiencies, and increase profitability and productivity. As a result, data analysis has quickly become one of the most in-demand IT skills to drive tech hiring trends in 2023. 

From the telecommunications and finance sectors to advertising and marketing, healthcare, retail, and fast-moving consumer goods, employers are looking for candidates who can visualize and report on data and carry out the tasks that enable those activities. 

Tech hiring trends are showing that employers across all of the aforementioned industries are seeking out candidates that are comfortable with the process of data mining, as well as possess the ability to clean erroneous or incorrect information, identify trends or patterns in large data sets, and understand the programming languages and development environments that ensure the smooth running of data analysis tasks, from Python to R and MATLAB. 

• DevOps: Reshaping IT Skills In Demand, from Planning to Deployment

Whilst the DevOps methodology—and the philosophy of continuous integration/continuous delivery—has a storied history, with the first DevOps conference held in 2009 in Belgium, this flexible software development strategy continues to shape the skills that hiring managers want to see in 2023. 

DevOps engineers are found among the top three most in-demand IT specialists, with the expectation that they’ll be familiar with methods of streamlining development cycles and ensuring the delivery of robust, high-quality products and services, whether these are achieved through competencies in automation, configuration management, or infrastructure provisioning. 

The emphasis on frequent, smaller updates—such as is the case with many SaaS products—means that DevOps engineers need to know their way around software such as Git and Jenkins, as well as tools that enhance the observability of their software, such as OpenTelemetry. 

Alongside these increasingly core competencies, businesses continue to embrace DevSecOps—the meeting of DevOps and cybersecurity—meaning that hiring managers are often searching for a candidate to spot and mend the common security mistakes and vulnerabilities that can harm their clients. 

• Machine Learning: Market Expansion Offers Lucrative Opportunities

It’s clear that machine learning has already reconfigured many workplaces, with tech-forward industries such as software development, marketing, and infrastructure all benefiting from the productivity and quality improvements offered by tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, GitHub’s Copilot and video creation platform Lumen5. As a result, the wider machine-learning market is forecasted to grow to a global value of $209bn by 2030. 

From programming languages such as Python, R, and Java to an understanding of data science and algorithms, demand for machine learning expertise is helping to reshape recruiting trends, with hiring managers often looking for candidates with knowledge of not only the technical intricacies of the role but also the ability to exhibit mathematical and statistical skills.

As the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report states, 97 million AI and machine learning-related jobs are expected to have been created by 2025, meaning that employers across all manner of specialties will be looking to acquire candidates that are familiar with the latest research, languages, tools, and libraries that will enable them to achieve their business goals.

Hiring managers’ lists of IT skills in demand for the most cutting-edge roles are always evolving, and this shift in recruiting trends isn’t solely limited to the tech sector, either. From healthcare and finance to eCommerce and the creative industries, organizations are on the lookout for experienced, talented candidates with skills in the areas we’ve explored above. 

Staying abreast of these developments can help you understand where you might be able to innovate in your own business and support your hiring activities by highlighting what competitive rates of pay and reasonable job descriptions look like, helping you to effectively attract and retain employees.

What are the Tech Hiring Trends of 2023?

Now that we’ve seen the IT skills in demand with employers across all industries, we can explore the top tech hiring trends of 2023. Whether organizations are choosing to conduct their own search for talent or they’re using a recruitment process outsourcing provider to flexibly deliver candidates at times of need, the advances we explored in the previous section have meant that hiring managers and recruitment consultants alike are evolving their practices. 

First and foremost is the focus on early-career talent. Whilst developing many of the in-demand skills that we explored in the first section requires professionals to work on some of the complex challenges in computer and data science, it’s increasingly the case that companies are looking to support younger candidates and those looking to change careers by helping them to develop their skills whilst on the job.  

This shift towards a learning and development-focused workplace doesn’t only benefit the new starters, either. LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report states that 94% of employees claim that they’re more engaged and less likely to leave a role when their employer invests in their professional development through targeted courses of study, internships, apprenticeships, or other methods. 

As we’ve already mentioned, despite the news of historic layoffs at the FAANG giants, the IT and tech job market continues to grow on a wider scale. As businesses across all sectors look towards IT professionals to drive their digital transformation initiatives, business leaders, recruiters, and hiring managers will need to focus on ensuring that they’re on the lookout for the skills that candidates will be focused on learning and improving. 

Programming stacks and methodologies are constantly in flux, so getting the right talent on your team to solve a specific problem requires you to drill down on your desires and ensure they’re communicated effectively via the job description and person specification. 

Alongside the continued growth of IT roles, there’s also a commensurate focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion within the industry, especially targeted at bringing women and individuals from underrepresented backgrounds into the sector. Only 22% of tech workers are ethnic minorities, and women only comprise a quarter of IT jobs. Whilst there’s still progress to be made, many business leaders recognize that a diverse workforce can lead to financial success, especially when those candidates feel supported to bring fresh perspectives and unique ideas to the problems they face when they’re carrying out their duties. 

Beyond early-career candidates, the market for middle and late-career professionals is also strong, with demand for contractors growing across the industry. As Deloitte has shown in its 2023 Technology Industry Outlook, employers struggling to connect with candidates for highly skilled roles must approach their talent needs creatively—and leveraging the services of contractors provides a means of effectively and adaptively meeting internal skills gaps without committing to the long-term professional relationship of filling a permanent position.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing: How To Meet Your IT Hiring Needs

So, how can businesses address these tech hiring trends and ensure that they’re still connecting with the high-quality talent they need to drive business success? Luckily, recruitment process outsourcing providers can help organizations address their skills shortages in a scalable way, offering an adaptable solution that can help them to meet their urgent and anticipated needs. RPO services enable businesses to rapidly grow or shrink their hiring teams based on the number of candidates they expect to interview, the number of hires they need to make, or financial constraints. Alongside this, recruitment process outsourcing also offers a way to customize your hiring process with an IT recruitment expert who understands the wider talent market and employer branding needs. 

By engaging with RPO services, an organization can access effective recruiting tools and techniques that ensure an efficient and time-conscious hiring exercise, whilst the assistance of a dedicated talent consultant also allows them access to an exclusive network of active and passive candidates, offering a way to quickly acquire talent when deadlines hang in the balance.

If you’re interested in learning more about the impact of layoffs and skills shortages on the wider IT sector and how RPO services can offer you a scalable solution to connecting with the candidates you need, explore the summary and key takeaways of our Guide to Recruitment Process Outsourcing for a deeper dive into the subject.

Wrapping Up

In the fast-paced IT sector, 2023 has emerged as a game-changer when it comes to tech hiring trends, showcasing the need for organizations to leverage cutting-edge technologies whilst making budget-conscious decisions about which areas to focus on when it comes to listing the top IT skills in demand within their business. Despite economic uncertainty and wider industry shake-ups as a result of layoffs at the start of the year, the desire for specialized knowledge remains as strong as it always has. 

As we witness the rise of automation, organizations will continue to focus on acquiring talent that can drive efficiency and productivity gains whilst DevOps, data analysis, and machine learning continue to rewrite the playbook. At the same time, it’s not just about the tech—even when advancements in remote working and cloud collaboration software allow teams to work from just about anywhere in the world, collaboration and communication remain key to success. 

Diving deeper, it’s clear that a rise in contracting is already underway, with recruitment process outsourcing set to play a strategic role in how businesses connect with candidates moving forward. RPO services offer a means of scalably and flexibly addressing urgent and anticipated hiring needs, with internal teams able to take advantage of the expertise of IT hiring experts to ensure they’re attracting the best and brightest. 

Understanding and navigating these tech hiring trends are the keys to acquiring the IT skills you need to continue to provide innovative software and hardware solutions. Staying in the loop isn’t just a choice—it’s a compass that guides you toward achieving your immediate and long-term business goals. 

Helping Companies and Professionals Navigate Recruiting Trends

At Fruition, we’ve been at the forefront of sourcing talent across the IT industry for over ten years. We’re experts in connecting businesses with the best in cybersecurity, DevOps, and technology management, offering tailored talent solutions that allow you to address your urgent business requirements and pave the way for future success. Contact us to discuss your needs with one of our specialist consultants today.