Winning the Tech Talent War

Andy Nacsin

by Andy Nacsin, Executive Recruiter 

In today’s economic situation, companies are facing multiple new challenges when it comes to staffing.  According to Forrester Research, today’s recruiting growth rate prediction is at 8%.  Many theorists believe that this is because of the looming talent shortage and disconnect between positions open and skills of candidates applying.  Another factor is that companies, while emerging from recession, are still remaining cautious on spending and are very selective when acquiring talent, regardless of their growing need to add headcount.  Our nationwide overall unemployment rate has been hovering around 10%, and yet when we take a closer look within technology these numbers are closer to 4%.  Other considerations that are affecting this climate are employee turnover, Baby Boomers retiring, more restrictive policies on foreign workers, companies resistant to relocation costs, and overall reluctance from employees to change jobs.  So our challenge is how to cope with a growing talent shortage within the high tech and green tech industries.

The battle for top sales people and engineers is extraordinary in Silicon Valley and New York – These are our Talent War battle zones.  The majority of technology growth occurs in these two large geographic regions and they also typically house the greatest number of top tier talent.   (more…)