Hired CEO Shares Fall 2023 Tech Hiring Trends: Turnabout

Hiring is steadily coming back; reversing course slightly to focus on the fundamentals

As tech hiring continues to evolve in this dynamic market, we’re here to give recruiting and talent acquisition teams the latest insights. Based on the Hired tech hiring platform activity this quarter, we’re seeing some trends that might surprise you.

Related: Hired CEO Reflects on Tech Hiring in 2023, What’s to Come in 2024 & Hired CEO Shares Winter 2024 Tech Hiring Trends: Road to Recovery

Demand shifts for tech roles and skills – aka ‘back to basics’ for now

We’re seeing a reversal in client demand spanning roles and skills. Our tech recruitment platform indicates a shift back toward more traditionally popular roles, such as backend, frontend, and full-stack engineers. Likewise, demand has risen for more common skills, such as Python, AWS, and Java.

Good news for employers, engineers ready for backend, full stack, and frontend roles are the highest groups added to our platform for the last six weeks. 

What’s driving this change? Most likely, employers are creating positions in smaller, or more niche, markets for onsite and hybrid roles. This fits with Hired 2023 tech salaries survey research indicating employers’ dominant strategy (58%) was to hire in smaller US markets to reduce compensation costs. They’re also likely looking for engineers to work across a variety of projects while emphasizing fundamental skill sets.

My colleague and Hired’s CTO Dave Walters would agree, that these roles generally outweigh (in number) more specialized roles, especially in larger organizations. They may, for example, hire one to three machine learning or DevOps engineers for every 10 backend, frontend, or full-stack engineers. 

“As companies strategically build competencies into their organizations, we’ll see temporary increases in demand for specialized roles, as we’ve seen in late 2022 and early 2023,” said Dave. “Once they meet that need, most companies will return to a focus on the utility of full-stack, frontend, and backend engineers who more broadly support the business.

We’re also seeing a rise in interview requests overall after a dip in October. The candidate acceptance rate is currently averaging over 60%, the highest we’ve seen in candidate interest in the last several years. 

These trends align with recent revisions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported continued growth in tech jobs in early November, with a tech unemployment rate of 2.1% compared to national averages of 3.9%. According to their report, about 20% of job postings offered remote working as an option. 

Hiring cloud or cybersecurity engineers? It’s easier than ever to find candidates on Hired

For those organizations staffing up in these specialized areas, it’s easier to search and filter for candidates for these roles. Cybersecurity is a dedicated subrole of Software Engineering and Cloud Engineer is a subrole under Developer Operations (DevOps). New candidates are added daily and more than 50% have more than six years of experience in their field.

Jobseekers and employers continue to be divided on remote work

Jobseekers and employers are both familiar with the trending shift away from remote roles as RTO mandates increase. Unsurprisingly, hybrid and onsite roles are the most common work styles of employer positions on Hired.

But the tension we explored in The Tech Hiring Tightrope, Hired’s 2023 State of Tech Salaries, remains. While fewer employers embrace remote work these days, tech jobseekers still favor working from home. Lately, jobseekers haven’t been yielding to employer demand for onsite/hybrid work. Hired jobseekers are actually lowering their salary preferences in exchange for remote roles.

As reported in our annual research on tech salaries, jobseeker sentiment leans toward remote work. Although 57% of tech talent currently work in a hybrid environment, 80% said they’d prefer working completely remotely.

Employers continue to lean into hybrid, however, with 45% of the positions listed overall on Hired’s marketplace offering the model. 

Updated features for hiring hybrid roles

To assist employers, new talent marketplace features more specifically identify fully in-office and hybrid roles. Even better, previews of candidate profiles display how many days per week they prefer to work on-site. This helps provide better matches and greater efficiency for both parties. Early reports show 45% of positions are using the hybrid filter. For more details, check out our product release notes or ask your Hired Customer Success Manager. 

Hiring locations activity

The platform shows a majority of sourcing activity concentrated in the US and UK. This follows a surge in cross-border demand last quarter. This also agrees with Hired 2023 tech salaries survey research indicating more than a third of employers planned to hire in EMEA to reduce compensation budgets. Good call, because London, specifically, has consistently been the market with the most candidate growth for the last four weeks. 

For in-person roles, the UK leans more towards hybrid at 53% of roles versus 46% for US companies. More US companies, however, have listed fully on-site roles (28%) compared to the UK (22%) Meanwhile, Mexico remains the global market showing the most demand on Hired.

Related: New! Hired’s 2023 State of UK Tech Salaries

Tech salary offers on the rise

As for salaries overall, employer interview request salaries have been increasing over the last few months on Hired. My colleague and Hired’s SVP People Strategy Sam Friedman says we could attribute the reason to several possibilities: 

• Pay transparency continues to impact salary bands as more companies standardize levels across industries
• Some companies are offering higher salaries to persuade talent to accept in-office and hybrid positions
• Hired survey research from our 2023 Wage Inequality report indicated hiring managers will increase salary offers to close candidates with specialized skills or to close hard-to-fill roles
• Despite a lot of recent compensation studies to the contrary, some may be adjusting salary offers to address recent inflation

As you optimize your hiring strategy for 2024, we hope these insights help you drive forward to attract the best talent to your teams.

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