"Personnel hunger" or why IT companies are in constant search of employees

In recent years, there has been an obvious imbalance between supply and demand in the labor market in the IT industry. Everyone needs IT specialists, not only IT companies - this is a fact.



According to experts from the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises, the current demand for specialists with high qualifications and experience is at least 222 thousand people, and by 2024 this figure will increase to 290-300 thousand. At the same time, the focus of attention is not only on developers, but also on testers, business analysts, system engineers, data scientists. There are no best specialists with experience on the open market, and it is becoming more and more difficult to hunt for a suitable candidate for a vacancy in the field of high technologies, vacancies are being closed for long months.



Let's figure out how the market has changed recently, why IT companies are in constant search, which specialists are most in demand, which trends are employers in the IT industry labor market.



How the market has changed



It is unlikely that anyone will find it surprising that the market for IT professions is growing at a steady pace from year to year, and the 2020th "coronagoda" only stimulated growth.



Businesses in all spheres (in the world and in Russia) are faced with a shortage of IT solutions. For example, for remote work with clients and online services in all directions (retail, medicine, banking, etc.). Therefore, the demand for IT talent has skyrocketed - both in large businesses and among startups.



According to statistics from hh.ru, the increase in vacancies in the IT field in January 2021 compared to January 2020 amounted to 26%, while the increase in resume on the site (compared to the same period) was only + 5%, and in February the increase in vacancies was already 38%, against 6% growth in the resume.











According to the Russian Forbes , IT specialists are now "hard hunted", and more and more companies are ready to pay as much as the specialist wants and agree to his terms. Forbes experts believe that this trend will continue for at least two more years.



The main trends in the IT industry labor market



Let's talk about a few key factors:



1. Remote



Remote work has become a "must have" for many IT professions. Now remote work is no longer a privilege, but a basic criterion for some vacancies (for example, for developers for iOS or Android, a significant part of whom are generally ready to start discussing something only if they can work remotely). This format turned out to be optimal for us in Avtomakon , we switched to it long before the pandemic and will continue to work this way after.



2. Exit outside the Moscow Ring Road



The fashion for remote work has generated another interesting phenomenon in the labor market, which has led to the blurring of territorial boundaries and equalization of salaries among developers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. This year, the number of proposals for many IT positions from metropolitan companies to candidates from regions has grown exponentially. Although this is a common practice for us, for 10 years now we have been successfully working with the state from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok.



3. Growth of wages



According to Forbes, in 2021 the level of competition peaked (although we would question it), and companies began to outbid people from each other, in connection with which the growth of salaries accelerated. And some are ready to outbid and pay above the market. It is worth recalling the actively scaling large businesses, large fintech companies, as well as non-IT companies in the stage of active digitalization. As a result, the market is โ€œvacuumedโ€, candidates see vacancies with a fork above the market and their salary expectations rise.



4. Growth of counter-traffickers



Leaving a key employee is a headache and a big expense for any IT company. Hiring a new lead developer takes about three months and costs hundreds of thousands of rubles, a team lead - up to six months and a million rubles. Therefore, employers are trying their best to retain a valuable IT specialist, to interrupt the offered offers. For example, if in 2019 there was an average of one counteroffer for every ten made offers, then by the end of 2020, in our experience, almost every third offer is successfully interrupted by a counteroffer from the current employer.



5. Social. packages and other benefits are already not working well



With regard to social packages, what used to be a good bonus (voluntary medical insurance, fitness, a foreign language, meals in the office, etc.) is becoming a standard today and is poorly motivated in the long term: they are provided to people by default, without a request for them. Hence the low value



6. IT Schnicks Against Bureaucracy



Recently, quite often people leave corporations with high salaries and rich social benefits due to bureaucracy, the inability to see the results of their work, to significantly influence the product, to introduce innovations, due to the lack of timely feedback, and an unhealthy atmosphere of competition in the team.



7. Freedom motivates



Small and medium-sized companies have several advantages over corporations that are important for many IT professionals: the value of each employee's contribution to the product, the ability to talk over any changes with everyone, discuss everything directly, quickly implement new things, and work without unnecessary bureaucracy. For example, at Avtomakon, our teams work on the principle of self-management. We have outlined clear rules, a framework that cannot be exceeded. And then we gave the teams responsibility and empowered them to work effectively. The team decides for itself which approach to the client to apply, so each has its own unique climate.



8. Foreign companies do not sleep



Over the past few years, many new foreign companies have entered the Russian market. As we know, they have been successfully working in distributed teams for a long time + have an undeniable competitive advantage: salary in dollars or euros. Most of their vacancies are aimed at experienced developers with excellent knowledge of technology, a good technical background, pumped up communication skills and knowledge of English. All this raises the salary expectations of candidates.



What kind of specialists are employers looking for?



According to a study by the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, every second vacancy in the distance labor market in IT is associated with programming. The most in-demand remote occupations are Java programmer and data analyst.











The study was conducted as part of the Human Resources for the Digital Economy federal project. The authors of the rating Research analyzed more than 7,500 current vacancies on the resources HeadHunter, Superjob and Career.Habr.



The largest number of developer vacancies in the Java programming language was 11.7% of the total number in โ€œremoteโ€ IT. The first half of the Top 50 ranking also includes developers in such programming languages โ€‹โ€‹as: C # (number 3), PHP (number 4), 1C (number 7), Kotlin (number 8), Python (number 14), Golang (Go ) (number 18), Objective-C (number 22), Ruby (number 24).



Below is a portrait of a potential IT applicant on the hh.ru portal over the past year.







! By the way, just a few days ago the HeadHunter service together with the CNews information portal published a selection of unusual vacancies.in the field of IT. Some job titles simply didn't exist a couple of years ago. The list includes IT professions that are rarely found in the Russian market - for example, a mining farm maintenance engineer, a GPR integration engineer, a microcontroller programmer, a robotics assembler, a master data specialist, as well as positions, even the name of which is often understandable only to narrow specialists. in their field - for example, an algorithmic trader.



If you are currently looking for a job, here you can see the full list of vacancies of our company - hh.ru / our career site



Salaries big and small



According to the online service HeadHunter, at the end of March 2021, Russian job seekers in the IT sector could count on a salary of up to 420 thousand rubles. Most of the highest paying IT jobs are in some way related to programming.



In total, 112 thousand vacancies for IT specialists were published on the HeadHunter portal during this period, of which for 7 thousand vacancies the lower salary level starts from 190 thousand rubles.



High-paying jobs in Moscow with a traditional work format







High-paying jobs with distance work format







Among the highest paid vacancies in April 2021 on the Superjob job search portal are offers for programmers "1C", Java, PHP, etc., the proposed salary level varies from 140 to 300 thousand rubles, depending on the experience of the applicant and the region of the employer.



Total



The coronavirus pandemic has contributed to the development of many niches in IT, an increase in business costs for digitalization of operational processes, as well as an enormous demand for competent IT specialists. There are many tasks, few performers, vacancies are hanging for months ... "Hard" hunting is going on, and its peak has not yet been passed (our expert assessment as one of the players in the IT market).



For example, in Avtomakon over the past year the number of tasks has increased by about a third and continues to grow, respectively, the need for IT specialists is constant. And despite the fact that we try to follow the latest trends and requirements for hiring in IT, we offer really interesting tasks and more than a competitive salary, the task remains difficult.



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