Emerging Trends and Challenges of IT Staffing Services Globally

it-staffing-challenges
Comprehending the latest staffing trend is critical to the development of client base, recruiting top talents and boosting business growth. While the key priorities of a business should be adding new clients, hold strategic business partnerships and improve sourcing strategies, focus needs to be given on recruiting best talents too! Businesses need to spend a little more time than usual on building relationships with clients and colleagues.

Latest Trends in IT Staffing

Promote Branding:
2015 saw the growth of staffing and recruiting firms worldwide by 71% which is expected to grow by 91% by the end of 2016. But what exactly is driving this growth?

Majority of the growth is reliant on existing client relationship. Last year businesses reported that revenue was largely incurred through repeat business. Expanding the client base and reaching out to new potential clients was back listed by lower priority levels.

Client base expansion needs to be knocked with a wakeup call. They have to bring new clients into their eco system and to do so; they have to get their brands out there. Leading social media networks and professional connects like LinkedIn will remain the matchless path to promote business, but IT staffing firms will have to up the ante if rising above competition is their ultimate goal. Extensive networking and brand management will remain the top priority for all IT staffing services for years to come!

Flexible Staffing Model:
Sadly, only 22% of CIOs plan to higher full time employees to increase the size of team while other 78% are eager to maintain their existing team size or even reduce it, if possible. But still we see the demand for seasoned professionals continue to grow. So, how does one reconcile the two different objectives in hiring trends today?

Hiring full time employees is expensive but it is imperative to hire new talents as they fuel the growth of technology initiatives in a company and contribute in raising the company above the competition. We see companies welcoming flexible staffing model. Flexible staffing model help companies have full time staff levels for average workloads and hire subject matter experts to augment their existing staff strength during peak workloads and fill skill gaps in teams when required. This approach is highly cost effective while being nimble as technology initiatives pass through typical phases of planning, support and implementation.

Hiring Passive candidates:
No wonder, the best talents in the industry are already employed. Relying on traditional hiring processes leaves IT staffing services wad on a shallow pool of talents. Hiring passive candidates are their ultimate solution. These are those candidates who are not looking for change but if given a chance with better offers will surely leap the opportunity!

Unfortunately, in-house staffing team have no time to identify the passive candidates in the market. According to LinkedIn, only 22% businesses make passive staffing their priority. Hiring Passive Talents seems to emerge with full strength in upcoming years.

Challenges in IT staffing

Strike balance between quality and quantity of resources hired:
While 62% IT staffing companies reported that placement total remained their top revenue driving source, businesses are still failing to identify the gap between quality and quantity of resources being hired. The foremost challenge that IT staffing services face – the lack of quality candidate. Nearly 1 out of 4 businesses report there is an extreme skill shortage in their company because of which they recruit repeatedly for same position year after year.

According to a 2015 report, businesses still struggle to decide on best resources for their positions. A greater focus on data intelligence stemming out of CRM software might help to reduce the concern a bit! It can show which hiring processes are performing well for company growth and the processes which are proving to be non-performing!

Concerns on Employee Retention

A survey conducted by Careerbuilder & Sologig.com suggests 34% employers are concerned on their smaller team size and fear retention of existing employees. Most talented and experienced employees are attracted with better lucrative offers – ever reducing the team size and impacting company’s growth and innovation! This clearly suggests only those who incentivize and scales up salaries regularly are top market players.

Other challenges include:
• 26% businesses agree deficit in implementing new technologies and software to recruit resources effectively and efficiently.
• 8% say more improvements need to be done on implementation of data intelligence and analytics.
• 29% felt the need to increase pipeline quality.
• 30% felt their open positions aren’t been filled with quality.

The 5 Most Popular Articles Among Recruiters This Month

1. How “Blind Recruitment” Works And Why You Should Consider It

Blind recruitment, the practice of removing personally identifiable information from the resumes of applicants including their name, gender, age, education, and even sometimes the number of years of experience, is gaining popularity.

Organizations including Deloitte, HSBC, the BBC, powerhouse law firm Clifford Chance, and cloud-storage firm Compose Inc have committed to the practice.

Blind recruitment is used to overcome unconscious bias and promote diversity in the workforce, and it has gained an increasing foothold in companies after a series of studies showed that people with ethnic names needed to send out 50% more resumes before they got a callback than job hunters with “white”-sounding names. Continue reading…

2. Is Agency recruitment going to be ‘uber-ised’? The answer here.

At least twice a month I am approached by an HR Tech startup with a ‘new’ idea to ‘disrupt’ the recruitment industry. Plenty of these guys (and occasionally, gals) are super-smart, and all are earnest, (sometimes fanatical), in their belief that they have found ‘the holy grail’.

In many cases, indeed I think most cases, it’s very early in the conversation that I am told, ‘we will be the Uber of recruitment’ or perhaps, ‘we plan to uber-ise the defunct agency recruitment model’. Continue reading…

3. Employee Retention and Hiring – “Love the One You’re With” first

These are some of the lyrics to the classic Crosby Stills and Nash tune “Love the One You’re With” – #earworm. I was listening to this sometime over the weekend and it got me thinking about recruiting, HR and one of the pressing concerns we all have in companies large and small around the world – retention. Continue reading…

4. Leaders who are great at hiring do these 3 things

If you’ve never made a hiring mistake then I’d guess you haven’t hired that many people. Despite all the research, experience and so-called tools, ineffective recruitment decisions remain one of the biggest drags on any organisations performance. Continue reading…

5. Should HR rehire ex-employees?

The beauty of boomerang employees (or rehiring former workers) is that they often have a shorter learning curve and require less training, according to Bill Driscoll, district president for the staffing firm Accountemps.

Driscoll added that if an employee resigned to complete further education or training, having them back will potentially bring new skills and ideas to the organisation. Continue reading…