Tech Hiring Tips in 2021

We are nearing the 1st anniversary of Covid entering our lives and clearly, a lot has changed. At Pira, we live and breathe staffing 8-10 hours per day and have noticed some trends over the last 12 months. So we thought we would share tech hiring tips for 2021 from our vantage point.

When the s**t hit the fan in March 2020, we had several clients make immediate changes to their staff, hiring practices, etc. In that one week alone (week of St Patrick’s Day of 2020), we had multiple job offers rescinded by our clients…undeniably costing those individuals a job that they thought they were preparing to start. Several other clients pulled the plug on their present hiring efforts, and other clients started laying off both contract-based employees and permanent employees. That’s not fun…for anyone involved!

From that day forward, the market flipped from a candidate’s market to an employer’s market. We live in the same supply and demand world as everyone else, and that plays out pretty simply in the staffing industry. There are only two possible scenarios….either more people than jobs or more jobs than people.

Since then it’s been an employer’s market, due to unemployment being relatively high and the number of available jobs being relatively low. There was an influx of candidates interviewing and competing for the same job, and they often needed to take a lower salary to simply land their dream position.

Recently, however, that has started to shift.

Our Senior Recruiters have been consistently telling stories of our candidates having multiple job requirements to consider, interviewing for multiple jobs at a time, or even having multiple job offers at a time. That means our clients (hiring managers and employers) are having to compete for these highly-skilled, technical professionals….something that wasn’t exactly needed since Covid started!

Does that automatically mean that we are out of the Covid woods?

Not necessarily but it’s certainly a damn good sign. We’ve started spending additional time to educate our customers on the likelihood that they can lose candidates now, and fast, presuming a decision isn’t made quickly.

Here are a few tips for the candidates on how to best navigate this dynamic, ever-changing environment.

Be open and honest with your recruiter(s). But also be open and honest with the hiring managers or Human Resources at the companies you are interviewing with. By telling them all of the options available to you, as well as your timeline, will hopefully encourage them to make you an offer. Never exaggerate your circumstances, simply be communicative. That way, if you are both interested in each other and it is a good match, they will hopefully move quickly to not lose out on an ideal candidate.

Don’t worry about sharing this information with your Recruiter contacts either. We ask questions about what positions you are considering so that we can effectively sell you to our clients, not to get leads or to ruin your chances elsewhere like some people fear we do. 😊

Stack rank the positions you are considering. This is important as an interviewee so you know where your true interest lies. That way, if you receive an offer and it’s for your top-ranked position, you can easily and swiftly accept or start negotiations.

Also, there is nothing wrong with canceling a pre-scheduled interview if you have received and accepted a different job offer. All too often we have candidates who wish to avoid canceling an interview because of the optics. While your heart may be in the right place, it is nicer to spare the interviewer the time of interviewing you if you are accepting a different offer.

At the risk of sounding redundant, communicate!!!

A recruiter’s main goal is to help you fill your open role with the best candidate. With that being said, it’s almost impossible to do that without timely feedback on candidates that are submitted for review or candidates that have already interviewed. We would rather hear a no (and so would our candidates) than to hear nothing at all. Silence, or lack of communication, is a recruiter’s nightmare.

Time kills all deals. While you may be handcuffed by a hiring process at your corporation, and that you want the best candidate, not just a warm body, a lengthy interview process will position you to lose great candidates. The great candidates (the ones you want) are in ever-increasingly high demand. They are getting offers, good offers, from companies who may be able to move quicker. Take a look at your process and talk internally before hiring for tech roles.

• Are there any steps that can be streamlined or removed altogether?
• Can you reduce the number of people who need to sign-off on the candidate?
• Are you crystal clear on what are your “must-haves” versus your “wants”?

Anything that can position you to interview promptly and make a decision swiftly (once you found the right candidate) will position you to gain talent that you may have otherwise missed out on.

A candidate-market means you are not in the best position to delay or negotiate to the same degree as if it were an employer-market. These candidates are interviewing for multiple roles and sometimes you have to compete for top talent instead of letting them come to you. If you aren’t sure about the current state of the market, ask! Our salespeople geek out on discussing this and we always have a pulse on where the market stands.