Tech recruitment slumps as candidates repurpose their skills

April 25th, 2023 | Industry News

From London to China, recruitment agencies are reporting changes in hiring practice as a result of the tech downturn. One tech blog reports that layoffs in the sector so far in 2023 are currently 168,243, which includes Disney planning to lay off 7,000 staffers in three tranches over the year and Amazon cutting 9,000. One place this has really affected is the SAAS industry, including SAAS recruitment agencies, although the impact here has been minimal so far. All industries point to the same macro-economic problems, and many cite the need to develop a more disciplined hiring behaviour as they move towards profitability. While the impact, according to recruitment database software, is not that significant in the UK, the tech sector is proving more dubious about hiring permanent staff so temporary recruitment is experiencing a minor boom. Anecdotally, staffers talk about being laid off one week and re-hired on a short-term contract the week after. this is a reversal of the trend in hiring was a whole, where employers are tending to hire fewer new temporary staff but to extend existing temporary contracts.

When China sneezes, recruitment catches a cold

China’s influence on the recruitment sector can’t be ignored, with workers losing their jobs at Alibaba and TenCent and one in five people under 24 on mainland China currently unemployed. While tech sector layoffs are being talked of as a ‘correction’ after over hiring in 2021/22, there’s no doubt that there is a drift of tech staff from the strictly ‘tech’ industries like Twitter, Meta and Google into other areas, notably financial services which is facing increasing regulation worldwide and is repurposing tech hires into risk and compliance roles. China has an interesting impact here too, with Hong Kong, as a financial centre, engaging recruiting software to assess Chinese applicants for finance based roles.

Finding ways to support tech hires into new jobs

Savvy recruiters are seeing the role of the best recruitment crm to engage tech clients and explore their willingness to enter a new sector alongside highlighting transferable skills. Of course, this tendency is causing uncertainty and stress in the tech industry as a whole, which makes potential candidates nervous about revealing their job search activity, fearing this could make them a target for ‘being let go’. This is where the best recruitment websites can serve to give nervous tech employees the opportunity to explore where they might find their next job without having to expose themselves too overtly as being ready to move on.