The Biggest Challenges and Priorities in hiring IT talent in 2022

I recently had the opportunity to have conversations with John Pinard, VP, IT Operations, Infrastructure & Cybersecurity for DUCA Financial Services Credit Union, and Julia Le, Senior Manager at the Ontario Government’s Cyber Security Centre of Excellence.
In discussing the IT hiring landscape, I saw a lot of commonalities across the private and public sectors in terms of priorities and challenges for both hiring managers and job seekers.

Hiring is a Major Business Concern

No longer relegated as an HR responsibility, talent acquisition has become one of the most significant business challenges in the IT industry. John agreed, “Hiring for specific IT skillsets that complement the organization’s goals is absolutely a top business priority for DUCA”.
At the recent TECHNATION annual general meeting, 36% of members surveyed identified talent acquisition as the primary concern for the next 12-18 months. This was a remarkable finding, given that TechNation is the largest technology association in Canada. Julia affirmed that this was also true for the public sector clients whom TECHNATION members serve, “The Cyber Security Centre of Excellence (CSCOE) has three areas of focus: people, process, and technology. A major priority for us is scaling up and filling the cyber talent gap.”

The Pandemic Has Created Hiring Issues

Both John and Julia noted that the pandemic has significantly accelerated timelines and impacted hiring requirements.
“I’m very aware of the increasing need for senior workers and dwindling opportunities for junior employees, and I’m concerned about the long-term implications of a reduced pipeline for IT workers”, John stated. “For the most part I attribute this trend to organizations now ramping up digital initiatives because of COVID and trying to contend with this sudden acceleration of their roadmap. Budgets are still tight, companies can’t afford to engage both an intermediate and junior hire and they don’t have time for training, so they go straight for a senior hire to start adding value immediately. But this means there is a troubling dearth of opportunities for entry-level IT employees.”
Julia discussed the rapid increase in demand for public services caused by the pandemic, “The onset of COVID required a swift scale-up on digitization that had previously been predicted to be years out. In a short and ambiguous timeframe, the CSCOE had to identify what the broader public sector needed from us and try to leverage the skillsets we already had in-house to meet these demands.”

Cybersecurity is the Most in Demand Skill in the Market

Through a combination of first-hand experience and market research, Millenilink is seeing Cybersecurity, Cloud, and AI as the main tech focuses for organizations with technology as a core part of their business strategy. John and Julia both feel that Cybersecurity skills are the most critical of the three.
“While Cloud isn’t as prevalent for us as it would be for other organizations, due to the data privacy regulations in place for financial institutions, Cybersecurity is the number one concern and being able to utilize data is critical,” John explained. “It’s a shortcoming for a lot of companies; they may focus on data entry and collection, but then don’t have the capacity to do anything with the acquired data or ensure it’s accurate and organized.”
Julia spoke of diversity being a particular concern when it comes to hiring for Cybersecurity, “The CSCOE needs a variety of perspectives and backgrounds for our Cybersecurity programs to be effective. The complexity of the cyber threats we see, coupled with the range of institutions we protect (everything from hospitals and school boards, to municipalities, towns, etc.) necessitates that we recruit people with transferable expertise in various sectors, such as financial services or healthcare, and not just IT industry experience.”

How Job Seekers can Gain an Advantage

John and Julia have highlighted trends that are happening across both the public and private sector. There is an increasing gap in entry level IT opportunities compared to overall demand, companies are grappling with digitization on a much more rapid and in-depth scale than they could have anticipated before the pandemic, Cybersecurity skills are particularly in demand, and diverse, transferable industry experience is becoming increasingly important in the IT industry.
Job seekers would be wise to understand these trends and incorporate this knowledge into their career planning. Increasing your experience (even a little) wherever you can get it will go a long way as employers start to look to new talent pools to address their gaps.
Julia reiterated the benefits of transferable skills and experience. “In terms of scaling up we are increasingly looking at people with diverse skills. Say with Cybersecurity for example, we might look for people who have worked in healthcare with incident protocols and threat protocols. What can they transfer over?” Job seekers may have valuable skills and experience that they haven’t considered as an asset in the IT industry.

How Employers Can Bridge the Gap

I asked John if he thought there might be a way for employers to adjust their expectations in order to widen their pool of candidates. “As I said, I am concerned about the growing lack of a junior pathway, but I understand why it’s happening, and to be honest I’m in the same boat. I need my organizational gaps to be filled with senior people. While we can’t really adjust our evaluation criteria – the skillsets we need are critical and can’t be downgraded – one thing we have considered is reducing the years of experience required to make opportunities more accessible and increase our candidate options.”
In the current landscape, employer branding is increasingly important. John stressed that DUCA’s ethos is what drew him to the organization. “In hiring I emphasize DUCA’s tangible and intangible benefits to sweeten the deal as much as possible. I highlight our low turnover and the longevity of employee tenure, our bonus structure, the room for growth and educational options, all of the peripheral pieces to the role that I know set us apart as an employer.”

Are you a job seeker looking for ways to build up your tech experience, or curious about how your business skills and industry specific experience could be transferrable to the IT sector? Reach out to info@millenilink.ca

Are you hiring and trying to build your employer branding or workforce plan? Millenilink would love to connect. Reach out to info@millenilink.ca.