Local hiring trending upward
In the Phoenix market today, there are literally tons of IT roles available – we are actively recruiting for at least 25 ourselves. The catch is that even though hiring managers appear to have flexibility in the required skills, that still has not translated to the actually pulling the trigger when that candidate appears. The tendency remains to “wait and see” for the even better candidate to walk through their doors. We cannot determine if this is simply hesitancy or a misunderstanding, still, that there are a lot of really qualified IT people looking for new jobs, there aren’t OR if the positions get opened and then go unfilled until money is freed up for the specific role – maybe they decided they would continue to do more with less as we have all been doing.
The skills gap remains.
We have a need for several SAP professionals (consistently in high demand), several Java developers and .NET developers.
The great news is that, in recent weeks, we have seen an increased demand for technology leadership. One reason this is a great indicator, there are many, is that once new leadership is brought on board, we can only assume that this will move the company toward more strategic planning and hiring. If the current leadership has either been stuck in “maintain” mode or concerned with things that are more tactical, they are also sometimes reluctant to hire those who can help “move the ball down the field” so to speak. We have seen quite a bit of this of late.
From what we see – things are changing for the better albeit slowly. There is a deliberate move toward getting things done and growing the teams that we work with. There is a demand for talent and the demand definitely is pent up demand. Dollars are being spent on hiring and the people hired have plenty to do once they join. All great news and we see every indication that it will continue for the long-term.