When Scarcity of Global Tech Talent Hits All Times High Embrace Yourself! Crowdsourcing is the Only Solution!
When
Scarcity of Global Tech Talent Hits All Times High Embrace Yourself! Crowdsourcing
is the Only Solution!
I have been noticing in the recent past the growing number of startups in the Recruitment space. Most of them like are focused on discovering “the magical formula for sourcing” or “The algorithm” that will eliminate the need for recruitment agencies and let the Client who is hiring to gain full control. Does such a thing exist? And most importantly, are these solutions focused on solving “the real problem”? Or it is just another business model focused on making some money by using illegal social data to provide some insightful results?
For those of you who are not much familiar with the numbers, let me give you some background information here.
According to a research done by the Manpower group few years back, globally we are facing a massive shortage of skilled ICT professionals. That means that Europe, which has about 8 million ICT professionals has an average of almost 1 million unfulfilled jobs at any given point. That is a current gap of 10%. When the estimates were made, it was not even considering the fast-growing demand for Mobile App developers (expected to hit 4 million in 2018 vs 1.6 million in 2015), Data Scientists and Analytics professionals (in the Netherlands only the demand is expected to hit 10,000 Data Scientists in 2018 vs 1500 in 2016).
In India, the numbers are even less rosy. Many of us know that in the past 10-15 years, India has made a major leap from a “copy paste” and BPO outsourcing destination to a place where you outsource “real knowledge” to. Let’s take for example Bangalore as a great example of being called “the Second Silicon Valley “in the World. Because of this wild hunt for skills and knowledge in the IT industry, India is struggling to cope with the immense spike in demand.
Almost all funded startups (especially after their Series A funding) prefer to hire Engineers from Tier 1 colleges. So do quite a few multinationals companies there too. In addition to that multinationals, due to their struggles to hire talent for specific skills in the US and Europe, started offshoring their R&D centres, Data Science and Analytics as well as Mobile development departments to India. Hence the demand for skilled professionals with the combination: solid education (Tier 1 and well known Tier 2 colleges) and solid experience (mainly between 3-10 years of relevant work experience) is shooting up sky high.
Bottom line is: Globally and in India we are facing a massive demand for Tech talent, who keeps pushing the salary limits beyond all possible boundaries.
Because of that, Tech guys demand “unheard of” hikes, change jobs every 8-12 months and keep shopping around for the highest bidder.
In such a case, how does a “smart “sourcing algorithm will help you find and hire the right candidates for your company?
Especially if you are a company without a well-known brand. How would an algorithm help you solve your problem?
I strongly believe the only solution for this every growing issue will be crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing? What on Earth is that?
Crowdsourcing means that you do not use the old fashioned “one recruitment agency” and job posting to find and recruit people. Through crowdsourcing your job is shared with as many recruitment agencies as possible and allow them 24h to deliver the candidate that you need. Because of the short time frame for sourcing agencies will tap only their immediate network, existing database and check the available resources they have. According to some limited data, officially there are 4000 recruitment agencies in India. And I’m sure this number does not include freelancers and 5 people big agencies. The largest agencies will most probably be mainly focused on mass hiring. The small ones more on niche and quality hires, since they can’t handle the volume hiring. The bottom line is, the candidate that you are looking for might be delivered through the most unexpected agency.
Whether you believe it or not, a recruitment agency does play an important role in the hiring, especially if the recruiters are doing their job right. The agency recruiter is the ambassador of the opportunity at your company. He is not only a source for identifying the candidate but also a medium to follow up and ensure the chances that the candidate joins your company are as high as possible.
And we all know that sourcing the candidate is half the solution. Making sure he joins your company is the other half of the solution that “an algorithm can’t offer”.
You as a company that needs resources to grow has the hiring as means to an end. For the recruitment agency, the sourcing and ensuring the candidate joins your company is its core business, the means for existence.
Therefore, I believe that in a world where technology plays a critical role and we face a scarcity of the right resources, we need to find new ways to source and follow-up talent. I believe that, the new way I’m talking about is tapping into the networks and resources of thousands of agencies who inevitably will deliver the right resource and make your life very easy. I strongly believe in the power of the crowd, the power of crowdsourcing.
