Although tech job hiring surged in 2021, recruiters continue to complain about a dearth of skilled people to hire and the high number of employees who are quitting as part of the Great Resignation, particularly in the tech sector. Human resource professionals are looking to address these difficulties in 2022, and they're going about it in a variety of ways. So if you're looking to get hired, make sure you're drafting off at least some of these trends.
Are Diplomas in the Dumper?
One of the most notable new developments is that many recruiters are now willing to overlook your curriculum vitae (CV), which details your academic background. In Europe, the hiring process often requires a CV as a separate document to be sent in with your resume. On this side of the pond, it's usually at the bottom of the resume. Either way, recruiters are starting to overlook where you went to college and instead focus on skills-based assessments, particularly for developers and IT professionals.
A recent survey by CodinGame queried 14,000 developers and tech recruiters from 131 countries on the current global job market. It asked recruiters whether they had considered putting less emphasis on an applicant's formal education. Surprisingly, 57% of recruiters said they'd be willing to do just that, claiming that the measure would not only open up hiring possibilities for a broader pool of applicants but also ensure that those applicants had the necessary skills to do the job.
In fact, 40% of those recruiters said they had already hired technology professionals who didn't possess formal qualifications in technology—particularly programming. That's good news for a large chunk of CodinGame's professional respondents, who said they didn't learn to program through a formal schooling process. Popular alternatives were tech "bootcamps," self-directed certification training, or simply self-teaching.
The Pop Quiz Interview
So what will recruiters use in place of CVs? When asked how they would structure an alternative process, most of CodinGame's respondents said that live interviews and technical assessments would be better methods to finding qualified candidates. That means you're more likely to be interviewed by someone in the same technology field and to be asked to take a skills exam as part of your hiring process. The questions you're going to be asked will also change from more abstract queries, like "Why do you feel you're qualified?" to more fingers-on-keyboard questions, such as "How do you spin up a server cluster in AWS?" Recruiters want to know you can do the job instead of assuming you can based on your alma mater.
Recruiters also cited diversity as a benefit of CV-less hiring. Many minority tech professionals and startup founders report that academics are a particularly difficult hurdle to overcome when getting hired or garnering VC funding, because they don't have access to the same academic credentials as other applicants, although their experience means they're more qualified. CodinGame's respondents felt the same: 66% of recruiters said that bias was a significant problem in the hiring process. A big reason was an over-reliance on CVs and resumes.
The trend dovetails nicely with some of CodinGame's other findings, particularly around the most important factors of the hiring process right now. Topping that list is candidate experience, for the second year in a row. Talent retention (38.09%), expansion (35%), and diversity (30.13%) were close behind.
So if you're looking to get hired in 2022, these trends can have a marked impact on how you go about it. For one thing, especially for tech jobs, rewrite your resume so you're showcasing your skill sets at least as much as you do your experience. If you're in the technology sector, garnering as many current technology certifications and advertising them on your resume is a much better bet than detailing your college background.
Last, it's good to look inward before looking outside the company. According to CodinGame's research, more than 66% of in-house recruiters report that the applicant shortage has them focusing on "upskilling" and "reskilling" promising in-house candidates instead of looking to outside job seekers only. The survey also showed a healthy segment of developers and IT professionals are unaware of these new resources, which means that HR professionals need to communicate better—and that you should investigate your company's newest benefits portfolio before jumping ship.