Heading into the New Year, 75 percent of recruiters anticipate hiring more tech professionals in the first six months of 2015 than the last six months of 2014, an all-time high for Dice’s semi-annual hiring survey.
Demand for tech professionals isn’t slowing down anytime soon, according to nearly 800 tech-focused hiring managers– nearly three quarters (72 percent) of companies are planning to expand by more than 10 percent in early 2015, another record breaker for Dice.
“With an unemployment rate the lowest it’s been since 2008 for technology professionals, big demand for highly skilled talent and many companies across a variety of industries jockeying for the same talent, it’s clear today is a candidates’ market,” Shravan Goli, president of Dice, told eWeek.
Goli said skills that have seen an uptick in job postings right now include security, including cyber, network or information, which he said makes sense when taking into consideration about the number of recent attacks on large companies which store lots of information about its customers, along with propriety data.
Also on the rise and expected to continue into 2015 is big data, which is up 56 percent year over year on Dice, along with open source technologies like puppet, which has seen a 61 percent rise in jobs from last year, he explained.
“One other one to think about is cloud– while we’ve been watching it soar for some time, employers are still looking for talented cloud pros to work on projects in the year ahead,” he said.
Nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) of recruiters anticipated hiring over 10 percent more professionals six months ago, and 65 percent projected such a large-scale hiring push a year ago.
Like the last six months of 2014, hiring managers are particularly interested in the experienced candidates.
The majority (76 percent) are hiring for positions requiring six to 10 years of experience, while four in 10 (40 percent) are hiring for positions requiring more than ten years of experience.
In addition, with high turnover rates, counteroffers are becoming more commonplace—the survey found 43 percent of recruiters are seeing or offering more counteroffers to retain existing staff, a 10-point upturn from six months ago.
“If the candidate is highly skilled and has some of the aforementioned expertise, the beginning of 2015 is up for grabs. Companies are seeing an increase in counteroffers from existing employers during the recruiting process,” Goli said. “My advice to tech professionals today is to use the skills you have to get the ideal position you’ve been looking for. Today’s job market is yours.”
According to 10 percent of recruiters, layoffs are likely in early 2015, a slight tick down from the 12 percent who said this in the mid-year survey.
The survey also revealed time-to-fill open positions has lengthened relative to last year, according to 46 percent of recruiters.
While in large part due to the limited pool of qualified talent, 42 percent also cited increased discernibility as a reason for longer vacancy durations.