Top Five Technology Hiring Trends of 2017

2017 has already seen a major hiring freeze in technology trends now that Donald Trump is President. The tech industry is currently the largest hiring entity of foreign workers in the United States. America lacks the necessary technical skills to fill the most demanding technology positions with onshore labor.

Trend #1: Trump Hiring Freeze and Fewer H-1B Visa Holders

Many of the highest-paid first-year employees in the tech industry are from other countries outside the United States. They come to the U.S. most commonly using H-1B Visas. Now that Trump is President and trump is hiring freeze, there is a massive amount of uncertainty in hiring H-1B Visa holders. H-1B hirings have frozen since the election. Organizations are making fewer hires. Purchasing boards are wondering if they will be taxed for employing non-American workers.

Trend #2: Focus on Big Data and Data Security Hiring

In 2017, data security companies like SentinelOne are receiving investments from high-profile venture capitalists. Data security has become a larger topic of interest. The headlines in 2016 were full of embarrassing data breaches from high-profile companies. Because of this, recruiting teams are hiring data security experts at a much higher rate who can navigate securely through mountains of big data and produce meaningful insights.

Trend #3: Higher Ratio of Project Managers: Developers

There are a number of factors that have led to hiring a higher ratio of project managers when creating development teams. In 2017, HR departments are relying more than ever on smaller development teams with a larger focus on project management. Organizations are moving to new hiring models, and there is a larger trend in project managers becoming liaisons with offshore teams in order to keep costs down.

Trend #4: Developers Now Need to Live in the Cloud

Companies like Amazon and Microsoft are in a market race (with Amazon in the lead as of now) and are providing super-secure environments for development teams to stand up applications. More and more, data is being moved to fully-cloud environments, and as such, IT professionals are expected to know the ins and outs of cloud products like Azure and AWS when they are hired.

Trend #5: Diversity and Inclusion – Working with Minorities

According to McKinsey Analysis, companies with high ethnic diversity levels outperform by 35% over non-diverse companies. Ironically (even with the Trump administration looming overhead), the focus on hiring minority workers and working with minority-owned technology partners has never been stronger.

Many organizations are implementing strong supplier diversity and inclusion programs. These programs set a minimum inclusion level in each and every project to include certified minority suppliers (MBEs). Diversity and inclusion programs are an extremely effective way to keep costs down. Minority suppliers are often lower cost and have high levels of expertise.