Recently, we conducted a survey asking technical recruiting professionals what trends they anticipated for 2020. Read the full coverage on this topic here.
We summarized the top three technical recruiting trends they suggested.
1. Departure From Having Rigid Requirements
Whether it’s requiring a college degree or a computer science degree, many organizations are moving away from having rigid requirements for their open opportunities. Apple, Microsoft, and Google have already moved away from having these types of requirements for their entry level positions. However, this can kind of feel like a PR stunt if companies aren’t careful. You can’t just say this and then pass over high-quality candidates who don’t have pedigree. (That’s why it’s critical to start with a technical skill assessment rather than a resume review in your hiring process!).
Beyond degrees, organizations are also no longer requiring a certain number of years of experience overall or in specific languages.
All of these requirements are proxies for actual abilities and skills. Now that many organizations are making the switch to actually assessing skills, they don’t need to have these rigid requirements.
2. More Distributed Engineering Teams
This trend has been building up for a few years – and 2020 might just be the year of the distributed engineer team.
Distributed engineering teams are different than remote teams. A remote team tends to work in offices around the world while a distributed team works from home or their own office.
There are many signs that distributed teams are growing quickly. From communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to video conferencing like Zoom, all of these tools are rapidly improving make it nearly ubiquitous as working in an office.
All of these collaboration tools make it way easier to connect in the same capacity as being in the office while actually being a distributed team.
Some of the fastest growing technical teams are completely distributed, like Abstract.
With distributed teams, access to talent becomes easier. So does hiring a diverse team. Salary competition is also reduced. Distributed teams just make good business sense!
Beyond the business opportunities, distributed teams also create a high-quality employee experience.
3. Technical Skill Assessments Will Go Digital
While we’re a little biased, the experts agreed. No longer will we do technical interviews via white boarding or as a phone interview.
But, we believe that technical assessments first have to be more wildly adopted before this trend completely takes over. Many organizations hiring engineers, especially non-tech companies, don’t yet have any process for measuring developer skills.
A lot of companies hiring engineers don’t actually know how to hire engineers. That’s not their fault – they’re not technical! But, we do believe that implementing assessments, especially at the very top of the hiring funnel, can help evaluate talent while saving you time.
Because organizations don’t necessarily know how to assess technical abilities, this trend will be outsourced to third parties who are experts in assessing technical abilities.
A technical skill assessment is equivalent to a license or a certification. You wouldn’t let a barber cut your hair or get your nails done by someone unless they’re certified. The same thing should be required for engineers!
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This blog post is based on the thirty-third episode of the data-driven recruiting podcast hosted by CodeSignal co-founders Sophia Baik and Tigran Sloyan. You can find and listen to this specific episode here or check out the video version embedded above.