An AI-Backed Marketplace for Engineers: Addressing the tech talent shortage

You must have heard about the $8.5 trillion talent shortage. If not, let’s talk about it now. According to the Korn Ferry study, it is reported that almost 85 million jobs will be left unfilled by 2030. The usual and repeated clause that we get to listen to nowadays is “AI is going to take over the world in a few years to come.” But is it really going to happen? As an engineer, the only thing that I know about this is: 

NO! It’s definitely not going to happen anytime soon. Asian countries like China and Japan are on the rise of automating their systems due to the lack of labor that resulted from their 1-child policy. The automation of basic tasks done by humans led to the unemployment of many people but not in the tech world, the tech world only opened more opportunities for skilled people to design these systems and lead an AI-backed economy. 

However, with the technological advancements and the speed at which the world rotates (not literally) people have started to become overwhelmed. Organizations have started to conduct trainee programs to train the talent themselves and reevaluate the education criteria in universities and colleges. 

Countries like Japan, China, Russia, and the USA (the hub of tech talent) are thriving now (in the present). The USA doesn’t produce many local talents so it is always on the lookout for hiring international students who possess great skills. 

The acceleration in digital transformation has exceeded the demand for tech talent and unfortunately, there are not enough people we can offer it. Countries and their economies will be greatly affected by this in the years to come. 

Reasons for tech talent shortage:

A few reasons the world will face a tech talent shortage are:

• Technological advancement: Advancement in the field of technology is like a lightning flash. One day you sleep soundly with your code the next day your code is useless because apparently someone thought of something new! These advancements are growing on a day-to-day basis. Keeping track of this is very difficult for everyone and re-learning and changing all concepts is a complicated task as well. Due to these advancements companies have come forward with developing digital platforms to communicate and interact with them. Even, insurance companies now want a web platform that is only giving rise to new job opportunities with greater difficulty and expectations of the company and not-so-skilled professionals or no professionals for that particular job. In short, demand has exceeded supply!

 

• Extraordinary employer expectations: Tech fields like Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, and Data Science are only in their initial stages and have a lot of room for growth, so expecting your candidate to go over the top is something unrealistic that employers desire. In the field of growth, expecting your employee to grow is also a must. So, many employers in narrowing down professionals lose some potential candidates who could have done the job well but just didn’t meet the standards of the employer.  

 

• Weak education: Universities fail to expose their students to the industry and keep them in the shadow of theory till their final year arrives. Most students suffer with the technical interviews and assessments just because they aren’t given the in-depth and hands-on practice of working on projects outside of their academic curricula. Someone who has just completed a programming course on different platforms like Coursera or Udemy might prove to be more skilled than a CS undergrad. So, this brings about a lot of uncertainty when hiring candidates for designated roles. 

The great resignation:

During the Covid-19 pandemic, employees from many companies realized that they weren’t happy with their jobs and that their jobs did not result them being satisfied, this transformation of thoughts resulted in the Big Quit that is The Great Resignation. April 2021 resulted in a surge of resignations leaving 10.9 million job openings in July 2022. The rate of resigning is very high in the tech industry mostly because employees feel excessive burn-out, dissatisfaction, and very average pay for the work that they do. The pandemic has introduced a digital infrastructure that gives rise to the desire of employees to have a work-life balance hence resigning from their onsite jobs to work from home with good pay and better chances to grow and advance. 

So, organizations must pay heed to this issue. With almost all services being offered online now is the time to uplevel and hire tech enthusiasts from all over the world for remote positions so that employees feel a sense of contentment and satisfaction. 

The effect of falling tech talent:

The world has come to a point where digital services and data are crucially important for a business’s growth and development. To tackle both of them, there is an ever-increasing demand for tech people so that they can analyze business and enterprise data to gain insightful information and trends for their company and also maintain a digital platform to provide a customized experience to users to promote a healthy relationship with the customer. The lack of specialized and trained people will lead to businesses falling apart especially technically and going back days in terms of improvement and growth. This may also lead to businesses losing their clients and customers. So overall this may result in a lot of loss. It is only a smart decision to hire people related to the field that is taking over the world with even more new advancements in the near future. 

Alas!

Final words? There is a huge gap expected in the tech talent as emerging companies and recruiters want over-the-top skilled professionals and potential candidates on the other hand are not going to settle for less. However, companies like Gaper.io are trying to bridge this gap by providing a marketplace for the best software engineers in the world. The tech shortage is here to stay for a while, and it is BIG TIME that companies and recruiters start to take measures to address this problem.