Tech & Digital Skills: 5 Recruitment Strategies for Closing the Skills Gap

There are a host of new and emerging tech disciplines—the metaverse, blockchain, generative AI, cybersecurity and more—that are changing the way we work and the kind of work we do. Many jobs that were previously done by humans are now done by machines. Many new jobs are emerging that require new and changing skill sets and organizations are struggling to find the talent they need to keep up as tech and digital skills gap grows.  

According to World Economic Forum, it is estimated that by 2030, “approximately 85 million jobs could go unfilled globally because of a lack of applicants with the skills to take them, which could result in $8.5 trillion (USD) in unrealized annual revenues.” 

Skills Shortage: Digital Age or Digital Deficiency? 

Salesforce’s 2022 Global Digital Skills Index surveyed 23,000+ workers across 19 countries and found the global digital skills readiness score is just 33 out of 100. No wonder that 64% of managers don’t think their employees are able to keep pace with future skill needs. Furthermore, 70% of employees say they haven’t even mastered the skills they need for their jobs today. Plus, a third (36%) of HR leaders say their sourcing strategies are insufficient for finding the skills they need. 

As organizations try to reinvent their business models to keep up with change, employers of all stripes—regardless of sector—must prepare their workforce for digital-first employment. By taking a skills-based approach to your talent acquisition strategy, you can move beyond your tired methods to find people with the right skills and competencies regardless of their degree or job history.  

Recruitment Handbook

Recruitment Handbook for Hiring Tech & Digital Talent

Measuring the Tech & Digital Skills Gap 

As an HR or TA leader, you’re probably asking, “Which digital and tech skills should I prioritize?” 

Well, it depends. 

To plan for the future, you must know where you are today. Conduct a skills inventory of current employees, regardless of department. Then, run a technology skills gap analysis, looking at what’s available now and what you’ll need in the future based on your organizational strategy.  

This, combined with external labor market data on the availability of tech and digital skills, you’ll be able to understand which critical skills gaps are in place today, what skills are available in the market and what skills you’ll have to develop internally. 

Only one in four talent analytics teams currently use external market data 

5 Skills-Based Talent Acquisition Strategies for Tech and Digital Talent 

Here are five strategies for closing the skills gap for your tech and digital roles. 

1. Assess for Adjacent Skills 

A crucial part of your skill inventory must be identifying skills adjacent to your critical skills which can be developed to bridge the gap. With the right capability and skills taxonomy in place—both for internal mobility and external hiring—you can tap talent with related skills to fill talent gaps through recruitment and upskilling.  

PeopleScout recently facilitated a reskilling project for a leading bank in the UK. We supported an evaluation of their customer service employees in call centers and bank branches to identify hidden skills. We evaluated hundreds of employees, surfacing many with complementary skills who are now involved in a development program to supply software engineering talent in the future.  

2. Don’t Overlook Candidates with Non-Traditional Backgrounds 

Identifying these complementary skill sets has the additional benefit of helping you surface non-traditional internal and external talent pools. These are candidates who possess the skills necessary to perform a role’s duties but may never have held a position with a tech or digital specific title. By taking a skill-based approach to tech and digital talent acquisition, you don’t limit yourself to a small talent pool with hard-to-find experience. This could also mean relaxing requirements around university degrees. Plus, it’s a great way to achieve diversity and social-mobility goals. 

tech & digital skills

3. Develop Upskilling Opportunities 

Once you’ve found talent with adjacent skills, you’ll need an upskilling program to get them up-to-speed on their target role and for ongoing development of skills as new technology emerges. Learning and development programs are a great way to support cross-functional talent mobility. Plus, it can act as a big draw for recruitment, as more and more candidates say they value growth opportunities when considering a new job. According to the LinkedIn’s Future of Recruiting report, Advancement and Skills Development are in the top five most important priorities for candidates.  

4. Embrace Global Expansion  

With the explosion of remote work, organizations can widen their talent search beyond their office locations. By shifting your focus to talent location and skill set, rather than your business footprint, you benefit from a more diverse talent pool. Leverage labor market data to find emerging tech hubs where demand is still low. For example, several cities in Latin America have a growing supply of digital skills with moderate salary expectations. 

5. Look Outside the IT Department 

Technology advancement means departments across the organization—and across sectors—have become breeding grounds for addressing the IT skills shortage. In fact, according to Gartner, almost 40% of job postings for talent with digital skills come from outside of IT departments. The explosion of FinTech, MarTech and even HRIS means that there’s a plethora of digital talent in finance teams, marketing teams and HR teams. So, instead of looking for a data scientist, why not try tapping a financial analyst to get those much-needed analytical skills? 

How an RPO Partner Can Help You Secure Tech and Digital Skills 

Employers looking to grow their tech and digital workforce can benefit from the services of a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) provider. Your RPO partner can help you adapt your attraction strategy to resonate with candidates with tech and digital skills, ensuring that you are sourcing talent with the required skills and identifying new ways to target candidates who fit these personas. Plus, an experienced RPO provider can assist you in building your talent pool from within your own organization, by consulting to develop an internal reskilling program. 

Get five proven strategies to attract, engage and hire the best tech professionals. Download our Recruitment Handbook for Hiring Tech & Digital Talent. 

PeopleScout Jobs Report Analysis – December 2022

U.S. employers added 223,000 jobs in December, beating analyst expectations. The growth came despite rising interest rates aimed at slowing the job market. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%. Year-over-year wage growth fell to 4.6%.

jobs report infographic

The Numbers

223,000: U.S. employers added 223,000 jobs in December.

3.5%: The unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent.

4.6%: Wages grew 4.6% over the past year.

The Good

December’s jobs report shows evidence the Federal Reserve’s strategy of increasing rates to provide a “soft landing” for the U.S. economy may be working. So, what would look like bad news in almost any other year is actually good news.  

The 223,000 jobs added to the economy is the smallest increase in the past years, as the Wall Street Journal reports, but it is still a healthy pace of job growth. Additionally, year-over-year wage growth slowed to 4.6%. Wage growth has remained stubbornly high over the past two years, and economists feared it could contribute to high inflation. December’s report helped allay some of those concerns.

The Bad

Though December’s job report was generally taken as good news, there are still some signs of unwanted weakness. As MarketWatch reports, layoffs in the technology sector are making an impact in the report. The business and professional services sector, which covers many tech roles, posted a decrease of 6,000 jobs. Additionally, while the labor force participation rate did increase in December, it still remains below prepandemic levels. This continues to contribute to the ongoing labor shortage.

The Unknown

Economists say that the slowing growth in December’s report will likely cause the Federal Reserve to slow the pace of interest rate increases aimed at slowing inflation. As the New York Times reports, the S&P 500 rose 2.3% with the release of the report. Investors have been eager for fewer and smaller interest rate increases. The Federal Reserve meets next on January 31.

PeopleScout Jobs Report Analysis—November 2022

U.S. employers added 263,000 jobs in November, beating analyst expectations. The growth came despite rising interest rates aimed at slowing the job market. The unemployment rate remained at 3.7%. Year-over-year wage growth rose to 5.1%.

jobs report infographic

The Numbers

263,000: U.S. employers added 263,000 jobs in November.

3.7%: The unemployment rate remained at 3.7%.

5.1%: Wages grew 5.1% over the past year

The Good

While the overall jobs number remained higher than expected in November, the growth was not spread evenly across industries. Service-based industries like leisure and hospitality and education grew, while goods-based industries like retail and transportation and warehousing saw jobs losses. As the New York Times reports, these numbers show that while employers are being more cautious, they are still finding reason to expand.

While the U.S. job market has fully recovered the number of jobs lost at the start of COVID-19 pandemic, some industries lag behind their 2019 jobs numbers, like leisure and hospitality. Those industries largely drove November’s growth.

The Bad

As MarketWatch reports, November’s jobs data is not promising when it comes to reducing inflation. Year-over-year wage growth jumped back up to 5.1%—significantly higher than the Federal Reserve’s goal. November alone saw a 0.6% jump in wages, which is more than double what is expected.

The Unknown

The Federal Reserve is set to meet in two weeks, and as the Wall Street Journal reports, November’s jobs numbers make it likely that officials will raise interest rates about 0.5%. This comes after four straight .075% increases. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said that some prices that rose significantly in the past year, like used cars and housing could fall in 2023 but that “despite some promising developments, we have a long way to go” when it comes to inflation. To decrease inflation, experts will watch carefully in the next year to see how high and for how long the Federal Reserve will raise rates.

U.S. Workforce Trends Quarterly Report for Q3 2022

U.S. Workforce Trends Quarterly Report for Q3 2022

To help businesses succeed in navigating the current hiring climate, our Q3 2022 U.S. Workforce Trends Report shares the latest employment numbers along with exclusive jobs data across a variety of industries.

Although the high demand for U.S. workers has cooled a bit since its peak in April 2022 (11.9 million), the number of unfilled jobs remained high as of September 2022, with 10.1 million job openings, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Companies face a mismatch between supply and demand that has left about 1.7 job openings for every available worker, notes BLS data. The mismatch has led to increasing wages, with average hourly earnings up 5% year over year.

To help businesses succeed in navigating the current hiring climate, our U.S. Workforce Trends Quarterly Report for Q3 2022 shares the latest employment numbers along with exclusive jobs data across a variety of industries.

Key information in the report includes:

  • The latest national jobs numbers
  • Wage info for several key industries
  • Breakdown of jobs seeing the most growth
  • Recommended solutions and strategies for dealing with the labor shortage

PeopleScout Jobs Report Analysis—October 2022 

U.S. employers added 261,000 jobs in October, beating analyst expectations. The growth came despite rising interest rates aimed at slowing the job market. The unemployment rate rose to 3.7%. Year-over-year wage growth dropped to 4.7%. 

jobs report infographic

The Numbers  

261,000: Employers added 261,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in October.  

3.7%: The unemployment rate rose to 3.7%. 

4.7%: Wages grew 4.7% over the past year.  

The Good 

The 261,000 jobs added in October demonstrate continued resilience in the U.S. economy, according to the Wall Street Journal. Healthcare and education and business and professional services led the growth. While the leisure and hospitality sector has dropped back from the extremely high jobs numbers we saw during the Great Rehire, there is still sustained growth, led by hotels and other accommodations. 

The Bad  

Like last month, the bad news in October’s jobs report would look like good news at almost any other point. Job growth is strong, but as MarketWatch reports, the strong growth means the current labor shortages are not going anywhere. The Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates in the hopes of slowing the job market. The current labor shortages are driving higher wages, contributing to inflation. In fact, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the labor market is “out of balance” because there are too many job openings and not enough job seekers to fill them. 

The Unknown 

As the New York Times reports, the Federal Reserve is watching these jobs numbers closely, and October’s report suggests that they will be likely to raise rates again. Their next decision is scheduled for December 14. The fact that both hiring and wage growth have cooled slightly shows movement in the right direction, but experts say that it is still happening too slowly. Job postings actually rose again in September after falling in August, demonstrating the stubborn resilience of the job market. 

[On-Demand] Boosting Candidate Engagement with a Comprehensive Talent Strategy

[On-Demand] Boosting Candidate Engagement with a Comprehensive Talent Strategy

The current hiring environment remains a challenge for employers—in the U.S., there are currently 4.3 million more open jobs than there are job seekers. Not only are employers struggling to find enough qualified candidates, keeping them engaged proves even more critical amid rising trends like candidate ghosting and recruitment process drop-out as well as the continued Great Resignation.

To cope, many organizations have added more gig workers, but the market for contingent workers suffers the same challenges. If talent leaders aren’t leveraging a unified strategy for recruiting both full-time employees and gig workers, gaps in their workforce will persist.

So, how can you engage these different types of candidates? Join PeopleScout Global Vice President of Implementation Mark Fita for the newest Talking Talent webinar, Boosting Candidate Engagement with a Comprehensive Talent Strategy, available now on-demand.

In this webinar, Mark will cover:

  • Today’s candidate recruitment process landscape
  • Best practices for optimizing your recruiting process
  • How to expand your employer brand to gig workers
  • The importance of using the right technology to engage candidates
  • And more!

PeopleScout Jobs Report Analysis—September 2022

U.S. employers added 263,000 jobs in September. This came in just below analyst expectations. The unemployment rate fell back to 3.5%. Year-over-year wage growth dropped to 5.0%.

jobs report infographic

The Numbers

263,000: U.S. employers added 263,000 jobs in September.

3.5%: The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%.

5%: Wages rose 5% over the past year.

The Good

The good news in September’s jobs report may seem surprising. The red-hot jobs market is cooling. As MarketWatch reports, the latest report marks the slowest job growth in 17 months as the Federal Reserve continues to raise rates and employers face continuing labor shortages. The Federal Reserve is hoping to slow the unsustainable pace of job growth to avert a potential recession. Wage growth also cooled slightly in September. This is a major focus for policy makers as higher wages can increase inflation.

The Bad

The bad news in September’s report is that the cooling isn’t happening fast enough. While September’s report shows a slower pace of hiring compared to recent years, historically, the 263,000 jobs added demonstrate significant job growth. Labor force participation also dropped slightly and has yet to reach pre-pandemic levels. As the Wall Street Journal reports, this means the Federal Reserve is not meeting its inflation goals and will likely raise rates again in November.

The Unknown

The big question for economists will be whether the Federal Reserve is able to do enough to slow inflation in coming months to avert a recession. As the New York Times reports, the next rate decision is scheduled for Nov. 2, and officials are closely watching the jobs data. There are indications that employers are starting to slow the pace of hiring, as the number of open jobs fell by more than one million in August, and filings for unemployment benefits have slightly increased. However, economists say the economy needs to slow more quickly than the current pace.

Seasonal Hiring: How RPO can Help You Better Source and Hire Seasonal Workers 

Hiring seasonal workers is essential for employers in need of extra talent during the holiday season. If your organization depends on seasonal hiring to augment your workforce, it is vital to efficiently source, recruit, and onboard your seasonal hires to ensure you are staffed during the holidays.

Without a well-designed seasonal hiring program in place, employers risk going understaffed for the holidays, or for other times of the year when a business reaches a peak. In this article, we will walk through how an RPO provider can help you hire talent for the holidays and equip you with tips on building a seasonal hiring pipeline.

What is a Seasonal Worker?

hiring seasonal workers

A seasonal worker or employee is a worker who works for a short period to meet seasonal peaks in demand for an employer. This might coincide with weather seasons or with holiday seasons.

Employers that use seasonal hires typically need assistance at the same time each year, for example as lifeguards or lawn care workers in the summer or ski instructors or snowplow drivers in the winter. When hiring seasonal workers, you can hire them on a part-time or full-time basis depending on your needs.

ebook

9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges

What are the Benefits of Hiring Seasonal Workers?

If your organization experiences seasonal peaks in demand, hiring seasonal workers can be a good solution for staffing issues. Here are some of the benefits:

Extra Hands When You Need Them: When a business reaches its peak season, seasonal workers provide you that extra help fast when you need it, without the expense and time of hiring full-time staff.

Assist Full-Time Staff: Your seasonal employees can help alleviate the load carried by your full-time employees. This can improve morale for your permanent workforce because they have the support they need during peak times.

Low Risk: When you hire a permanent employee, you don’t always know if they’ll be a good fit for the job. Seasonal employees are only hired for a short period. If they aren’t a good fit, you have only made a minimal investment.

Potential full-time employee: On the other hand, if you hire a seasonal employee who works out well, you might be able to offer them a permanent position when one becomes available. It’s a trial run that works as a recruiting method for permanent positions.

Better Seasonal Hiring Begins with Crafting Better Job Descriptions

seasonal hiring

Writing job descriptions for seasonal positions is different from temporary, full- and part-time roles. It is important that your job descriptions accurately reflect the nature of your open positions, so candidates know ahead of time if they should apply.

For example, many seasonal roles are in a warehouse and logistics setting and may require candidates to work in a more physically demanding environment. Major retailers and logistics companies are in serious need of seasonal logistics workers with Walmart looking to fill 20,000 logistics roles while UPS, Kohl’s and Target are in need of 100,000 seasonal warehouse hires each.

To better understand the nature of the seasonal jobs for which you are writing job descriptions consider spending time shadowing workers in the relevant seasonal positions. What’s more, COVID-19 has made many employers became more familiar with video interviewing, however, the idea of leveraging videos to enhance your employment marketing and employer branding is sometimes overlooked.  

Job descriptions can be bolstered with video. A seasonal job posting could include a short video of a hiring manager describing the job and what they are looking for in a seasonal hire. Your video can even include examples of workers performing the most common tasks required to give candidates an accurate idea of the work involved.

How RPO Can Help

RPO providers can help employers conceive of and create a talent attraction strategy that considers both the needs of employers and seasonal hires through a data-driven approach to talent advisory and recruitment marketing making you a seasonal employer of choice.

Sourcing Seasonal Hires

Recruiting seasonal employees begins with mining a verdant source of seasonal workers. Employers should look for candidates such as students and other demographic looking for short-term employment opportunities. For example, recruiting recent graduates who are taking time to figure out what they want to do long-term is one way of sourcing seasonal talent. Often, these candidates prefer the temporary nature of seasonal work compared to a longer-term commitment.

Moreover, hiring candidates with a seasonal work mindset can help you keep them around for the full season or even retain them for next year.

When sourcing seasonal workers, look to hire people who want seasonal work including

  • Retired workers
  • Workers looking for extra work during the holidays
  • Stay-at-home parents who want to work while their kids are in school
  • Students who are on holiday break

How RPO Can Help

Many RPO providers have talent pools and networks they can tap into to source the right candidates for seasonal positions. RPOs also have experience building talent pipelines from the ground up and can assist employers in creating a sustainable seasonal hiring program that delivers year-in-year-out.

RPO partners also offer technology expertise to help you track, measure and optimize your seasonal hiring campaign by showing which channels and recruitment marketing messages are yielding the best candidates. They can help you with recruitment analytics so you can see your recruitment funnel at all your sites in a centralize dashboard.

Managing High-Volume While Hiring Seasonal Workers

seasonal hires

Many employers in need of seasonal hires require a large volume of talent to keep up with peak demand. High-volume hiring at its heart is a problem of scale which requires optimizing your time and recruiting spend. Recruitment automation can help you reduce the manual workload on your recruiting team and hiring managers while keeping your visibility on all of the candidates progressing through different stages of the interview process. Automating certain steps, such as screening and triggering assessments, allows recruiters to focus their time on higher-value, strategic work.

How RPO Can Help

An HR outsourcing solution such as RPO provides employers the ability to scale up seamlessly as seasonal hiring demands shift. With an internal talent acquisition team, it may be difficult to scale up hiring quickly enough to handle a higher number of hires and then scale back down when hiring volumes shrink.  What’s more, recruitment technology platforms such as PeopleScout’s Affinix can help you automate your recruitment program and create great high-volume hiring efficiency.

Never Neglect Your End of-Season Plans

How you end a relationship with seasonal hires can help with next season’s hiring. Here are a few things to keep in mind at the end of the season:

  • Availability: Ask outgoing seasonal employees if they would be interested in returning next season. Some workers design their needs and lifestyle around managing seasonal and temporary jobs, and they may be looking for another opportunity next year.
  • Exit interviews: To learn from successes and drawbacks, hold exit interviews with seasonal employees, regardless of how long they worked with you. Having informative feedback can help streamline next year’s efforts.
  • Permanent talent: Tempting as it may be, you likely won’t have the means or the resources to bring every seasonal employee on full-time. However, keep an eye on exceptional workers whose mix of soft skills and talent would be excellent fit as vacancies come open during other parts of the year.

How RPO Can Help

An RPO provider can help organize your offboarding efforts at the end of the season by assisting in exit interviews, managing your seasonal worker database as well as hiring top performers to permanent positions. An RPO provider’s ability to scale down engagements quickly means the process can be seamlessly executed so that you can resume business as usual.

Are You in Need of a Seasonal Hiring Partner?

seasonal worker

When it comes to maintaining your seasonal operations and providing excellent customer service during your peak months, hiring seasonal employees can help keep your business moving.

Whether you are in need of seasonal recruiting or a permanent talent solution, employers in our new world of work face rising recruitment challenges. An outsourced recruitment solution like PeopleScout’s high-volume RPO and Total Workforce Solutions can help you stay connected with talent and provide hiring resources that will add immediate value to your talent programs.

PeopleScout Jobs Report Analysis—August 2022

U.S. employers added 315,000 jobs in August. This came in slightly below analyst expectations. The unemployment rate rose to 3.7% as more workers entered the labor force. Year-over-year wage growth remained high at 5.2%.

The Numbers

315,000: U.S. employers added 315,000 jobs in August.

3.7%: The unemployment rate rose to 3.7%.

5.2%: Wages rose 5.2% over the past year.

The Good

Though job growth cooled slightly from July, the 315,000 jobs added to the economy are good news. As CNBC reports, August’s jobs report demonstrates that employers are continuing to hire and suggests that the Federal Reserve could avert a recession.

The increased unemployment rate is also good news for economists because the month-over-month 0.2% increase is paired with a 0.3% increase in the labor force participation rate. This means that the economy is strong enough to bring in more workers who were sidelined earlier in the pandemic.

The Bad

Despite the strength of August’s report, experts still spot a few areas of concern. As the Wall Street Journal reports, some minority groups saw either increased unemployment or decreased labor force participation. Fewer Black adults were working or seeking a job in August.

Additionally, some experts believe job growth could continue to cool as the U.S. economy has now recovered all of the jobs lost in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. This means that rehiring will likely be less of a factor in future jobs reports.  

The Unknown

Economists will continue to watch how the economy responds to rate increases by the Federal Reserve. As the New York Times reports, policy-makers at the Federal Reserve believe that the job market is overheated. There are currently twice as many jobs open as there are job seekers, which is driving up prices and contributing to inflation. The hope is that by raising rates, they will be able to cool inflation and slow job growth without allowing unemployment to skyrocket.

PeopleScout Jobs Report Analysis – July 2022

U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July. This beat analyst expectations and marks the point where the U.S. economy has recovered all 22 million jobs lost in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.5%. Year-over-year wage growth increased slightly to 5.2%.

jobs report infographic

The Numbers

528,000: Employers added 528,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in July.

3.5%: The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%.

5.2%: Wages rose 5.2% over the past year

The Good

The headline from July’s jobs report is the news that after 2.5 years, the U.S. economy has recovered all of the jobs lost early in the pandemic. As the Wall Street Journal reports, this marks the fastest job growth at any point after WWII. The strongest growth took place in the leisure and hospitality; business and professional services; and education and health services sectors. The unemployment rate also fell back to the historic low of 3.5% that we saw right before the pandemic.

The Bad

Despite the good news in July’s report, there is one concerning number. The labor participation rate fell again to 62.1%. As MarketWatch reports, experts would expect the labor participation rate to rise in a strong jobs market, as abundant job openings draw more people into the workforce, especially as there are currently more job openings than there are people looking for work. However, most of the decrease is concentrated in the youngest and oldest workers,  those 16-24 and those over 65. This suggests that young workers heading back to school and the retiring baby boomer generation could be behind the drop.

The Unknown

As the New York Times reports, July’s impressive job growth indicates that the U.S. has not entered a recession, despite the fact that the country’s gross domestic product has contracted for the second consecutive quarter. This shows that the economy is withstanding the impact of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate increases. Economists expect job growth to slow down later in the year as interest rate hikes start to make an impact.