The described trends and salaries are relevant for:
Internet businesses, tech product companies;
Developers, Product Managers, Analysts, Data Scientists;
Experienced experts of senior level and above;
Moscow and candidates who work remotely from anywhere in the world;
Applicants who are not actively looking for work.
Key Hunting Trends in IT
It has become more difficult to hunt experienced experts in the “cold market” due to the increase in the number of counteroffers.
If in 2019 there was, on average, one counteroffer for ten made offers, then by the end of 2020, according to our experience and the experience of colleagues from IT / Internet businesses, almost every third offer is successfully interrupted by a counteroffer from the current employer.
Why is that? Let’s speculate:
The search term for a senior expert can take from 3 months to six months. It is more profitable for an employer to retain an existing specialist than to waste time and money looking for a replacement.
A successful counteroffer does not always depend on the amount. We suggest not taking into account the cases when the value of the expert for the company is so great that the counteroffer is like an atomic bombing, for example, the salary is doubled for a full guarantee. More often than not, we see other successful cases of retention of current employees. For example, due to their general loyalty to the company, when the money rises to the maximum level of the existing offer or even lower. When a candidate is offered a large area of responsibility in terms of tasks or management. Or alternative opportunities, such as: moving within the company, working on another project, with new interesting technologies, etc.
Employee loyalty increases the likelihood of an accepted counteroffer. We often find that candidates are much more willing to accept counterfeiters from employers who behaved ethically and correctly during the coronavirus crisis. For example, the company did not begin to cut salaries and lay off employees even in a difficult economic situation, or at its own expense helped to organize a comfortable workplace for remote work, or organized the payment of compensation.
What if you need expert senior professionals in 2021?
Build longer hiring times than you used to. Or, reconsider your expectations from candidates.
Be prepared that your offers will be rejected more often than before. This, by the way, applies to middle specialists too. To mitigate this risk, we usually recommend companies to be flexible in the formation of offers, taking into account the motivation of candidates. It also makes sense to lay in additional resources (both monetary and other things that may interest the candidate) in case you want to compete for an interesting Expert Advisor. It is better to consider such moments in advance so as not to waste time on additional agreement of conditions within the company.
Reconsider your hiring budgets with your appetites in mind.
Assess what is more important to you in the moment. Close a business need with one experienced but expensive cost expert, say, one and a half middles? Or is the level of complexity of the problem such that you can take a middle-specialist to solve it and continue to develop his expertise within the company?
Remote work has become a “must have” for many IT professions
If for the last two years we have written everywhere about remote work as a good competitive advantage, now even the most conservative IT businesses have organized remote work.
What does this mean in terms of hiring?
Remote employment is almost always a basic criterion for some vacancies (for example, JS programmers or developers for iOS or Android). Most of the candidates from these professions are generally ready to start discussing something only if they can work remotely.
If you plan on hiring experienced product managers or analysts (senior level and above), then the ability to work remotely can be your competitive advantage.
The ability to work remotely is important even for Moscow candidates.
Of course, there are those who are interested in working in the office, but there are fewer of them. But even office fans often prefer the mixed format, when there is an office where you can come, but not sit there full time.
Remote work will not give you the opportunity to save on employee salaries.
The ability to build effective asynchronous teamwork across time zones provides a steep hiring prospect.
What to do?
Learn to build asynchronous workflows. Learn how it works in other companies, spy on ideas, adapt them for yourself.
If you do not have the opportunity to offer your employees full remote work, offer at least partial.
Rebuild your HR processes for distance, if you haven’t already. As always, the most critical thing is onboarding.
Take care of your employees. For example, set aside a budget to help you set up a remote workplace.