Skills Expectations Are Unrealistic for Many Tech Jobs

These market forces are resulting in somewhat unrealistic expectations from employers about the technology skills currently available in the market. Certain tech skills simply aren’t prevalent in the market, given they’ve only just come off the shelf.

The fact is that you can’t expect someone to have three years of experience with hyper-converged storage solutions, or various software-defined data centre technologies, as they’re only new to the market.

Hiring people with core technical skills and a proven ability to pick up new technologies quickly would expand the talent pool greatly, even for work that involves more mainstream tech.

Just because someone has had an opportunity to get their hands on the latest ‘technology X’, that doesn’t mean they’re particularly good at it or are better than someone who is able to learn it quickly.

Learning from Past Periods of Skills Transition

Many markers throughout the average technologist’s career prove their ability to pick up new and emerging technologies. If they haven’t, they’re unlikely to be still sitting in a corner doing the same thing they were 10 years prior.

Consider the progression from VB & Access programming to .Net & SQL development. When .Net arrived, employers were simply forced to give their old VB coders an opportunity to upskill, whether they were permanent or contract employees. This is an instructive example of a sweeping shift in the skill makeup of the tech market.

We can certainly learn from this. As new tech quickly upends job responsibilities and eventually job titles, it’s fair to consider a different approach to building the repository of technical skills within an organisation.

Hiring for Attitude to Overcome Skills Shortages

Whether in Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide or elsewhere, hiring managers should stay attuned to the realities of the candidate market. If you are like the many tech managers we speak to who are struggling to hire a certain skill set, then perhaps you need to think about which aspects of the job description you can compromise on.

Employers can benefit by prioritising attitude and aptitude in candidates, by recognising that technical skills can be acquired with the right support and environment. It might be sensible to avoid quickly scanning resumes for a certain buzzword and automatically disqualifying candidates – a jibe often aimed at us recruiters.

If you’re working with a tech recruitment agency that you trust and know has fully screened the ‘softer skills’ of your candidates, test their opinion – allow them to help you take a chance on a candidate with the right attitude and aptitude for learning.

Everyone in the tech industry started somewhere and the skills they have now are not the ones they began with After all, it’s considerably easier to train an individual in a technology or process, assuming they have the aptitude to learn, than to alter a candidate’s personality!

Partner With an Expert Technology Recruitment Agency

We hope the perspectives outlined in this article provide food for thought. While there’s no instant solution to the shortage of certain specific tech skills, shifting perspectives on what defines an ideal candidate is a crucial stride forward. Building a robust workforce that can adapt to changing tech and processes will simply become more difficult if employers remain unwilling to look beyond a fixed list of hard and technical skills.

Investing in skills development is a proven strategy that has previously enabled employers to adapt to changing innovation and economic cycles. Combining training and development with a more expansive recruitment strategy can help employers build a powerhouse workforce that is ready to meet the future.

Here at Emanate Technology, we’re not one of those run-of-the-mill contract recruitment agencies that work transactionally. We take talent acquisition very seriously and have built our reputation on helping employers in Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide make strategic hiring decisions. Contact us today to uncover talent that helps your organisation activate its true potential.