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AI and the evolving tech talent landscape: insights for GCC leaders
AI and the evolving tech talent landscape: insights for GCC leaders

March 5, 2024

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The tech hiring landscape--ranging from what industries are attracting the best engineers to the
impact of AI on GCC hiring--was center stage this year at #NTLF2024. Here’s what GCC
leaders need to know coming out of last month’s event.


Enterprise Companies Attracting Elite Engineering Talent

Large enterprises are seeing more success in attracting elite engineering talent compared to
this time last year. Stable organizations like big banks, retailers, and financial service
companies are replacing startups and big tech companies as the most desired destination for
top software engineers.


This is stemming from a shift in candidate preferences as the global labor reductions of the past
year across the tech sector hit the sense of invincibility and job security that a lot of Big Tech
companies had benefited from.


Candidates are seeing the stability of big banks and enterprise organizations that hired less
aggressively over the past few years and are now laying off fewer people. Bank of America, for
example, publicly declared they would not lay off any employees last year.


The result is a signficiant increase in the quality of new hires over the past year co+mpared to
2022 for enterprises undergoing digital transformation. Big banks (+16%) and retailers (+33%)
all hired greater percentages of top-performing software candidates compared to previous
years. Meanwhile, quality of hire stats for tech industries like SaaS, Fintech, and Gaming
remained flat or down YoY.


Furthermore, The global labor market is very company-friendly right now which has created
more urgency for candidates to secure jobs.


We’ve seen close rates (i.e. the percentage of candidates who accept job offers) climb
dramatically over the past three years. Globally, close rates for strong candidates went from
57% in 2021 to 66% in 2022, all the way up to 80% last year.


The impact of AI

Most large companies are experimenting with AI, but it’s not being deployed in consumer-facing
products. So the impact on hiring and talent strategies has been similarly cautious. In 2023,
data analysts, cloud architects, and data engineers were the three most in-demand roles
according to Engineering Leaders.


Beyond those roles, our research shows us that the most successful hiring companies are more
likely to prioritize generalist roles in their hiring vs specialties that are more geared towards AI
(like machine learning or prompt engineering). The top performing engineering leaders were
almost twice as likely to be looking for full stack developers or software generalists compared to
their lower performing peers.


Challenges


Intense competition for talent poses challenges, exacerbated by lengthy notice periods and
bandwidth constraints for interviews. Moreover, the rapid growth in AI and cloud technologies
necessitates a strategic approach to talent acquisition, focusing on problem-solving skills rather
than niche expertise.


One of the main challenges of hiring engineers in India is that competition to hire in India is
fierce; the rush to hire is now leaving the country without enough talent to meet demand in fields
like AI and data science.


Also, the 60-90-day notice window creates challenges for new employers. Because there are so
many companies hiring right now, some candidates may get better job offers during their notice
period, and organizations may lose out on candidates who had previously agreed to contracts.
The combination of fast-paced hiring and a long notice period means hiring managers need to
be better about following up and engaging with their candidates even after they’ve accepted
offers.

Opportunities

Speed is one of the biggest differentiators in the India job market right now. The Indian talent
market is just so fast paced with such a high volume of jobs and developers. Companies are
interviewing twice as many candidates in India for every open role than they are in the US
because there’s such a high-volume of candidates.


Candidates are also moving faster. In India, the percentage of candidates who completed our
interviews in the first four days climbed from 32% in 2022 to 41% last year. That’s an important
number because we found that candidates who interview in the first four days are more than
twice as likely to result in a hire compared to those who take longer.


Long-term implications

Looking ahead, the tech hiring landscape will continue to evolve, driven by emerging
technologies and shifting candidate preferences. Startups, big tech companies, and large
enterprises must adapt by prioritizing agility, fostering a culture of learning, and nurturing talent
with versatile skill sets.


Yes, some organizations need specific talent to accelerate their transformations or implement
new technologies, but the best leaders are looking for people with strong problem solving skills.
Having an engineer who can demonstrate a good approach to solving problems is going to be
someone you can insert into a lot of roles as the needs of your business shift. This is true in a
world with or without AI, so our hiring and interviewing focus is on identifying these problem
solving skills in whatever environment you’re using.


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Arun
Karat Sr. Director

Hey there! I work closely with tech and talent leaders from GCCs in India to help them with their tech hiring challenges. I'm based out of Seattle, Washington. Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin!

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