For nearly a decade, the IT industry has consistently added more jobs than any other field of work. According to CIO, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has made the prediction that by 2020, the country could generate as many as 4.2 million new jobs in computing and IT. While this is great news for the IT industry, the ongoing tech talent shortage continues to be a problem.
McKinsey and Co. predicts the U.S. could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 workers that are equipped with deep analytical skills and upwards of 1.5 million managers that have effective data-driven decision-making skills. According to Information Weekly, the job posting site Indeed released the results of a survey of over 1,000 hiring managers and recruiters. The survey found that 86 percent of those polled agreed that it is challenging to both find and hire technical talent. Furthermore, 75 percent of HR managers feel that the time it takes to fill IT positions has increased in the past three years.
The current supply of workers isn’t even coming close to meeting the demand, and it’s hurting the bottom line for many businesses. According to the survey, 83 percent of respondents believe the struggle of hiring adequate tech talent has hurt their business either from lost revenue, slow product development, sluggish market expansion or even employee burnout and tension on the IT team.
It’s not just data science that’s lacking talent. According to Fortune, finding workers with skills in software development, data security, cybersecurity and cloud computing has proven to be a difficult task. In addition, project managers and business analysts are also seeing a spike in demand.
What can CIOs and CTOs do in the meantime? Instead of looking internally and to the market for new hires, consider outsourcing a project to a third-party vendor. Custom software development firm Twentyseven Global was was created to resolve the nightmare midsized companies are facing as a result of talent shortage in software development. Twentyseven Global CEO Steve Roatch says, “If you tried to hire a team of 5 .Net developers in this market, it may take you 3 months or more. For them to gel as a team may require another three to six months. We’re able to field a team like that and hit the ground running in 2-4 weeks.” For more information on outsourced software development, check out this blog.
