Demand for IoT talent skyrocketed by 304pc between 2014-17

BANGALORE, INDIA: With the exponential uptick in adoption of IoT and machine learning related activity in India, the demand for IoT talent rocketed by 304%, between 2014 to 2017, according to the Talent Supply Index (TSI) by the predictive outbound hiring platform provider, Belong.

The June 2017 TSI factored more than 1.6 M jobs and over 260,000 candidates based in India. Talent Supply Index (TSI), a benchmark metric to help companies foresee and measure talent acquisition efforts for critical jobs in the technology sector.

The Talent Supply Index (TSI) is based on Belong’s platform data and publicly-available data from a continuously growing array of hiring sources, including traditional job sites, inbound recruiting channels, online communities, tech networks, discussion forums and more.

“While several surveys rank either in-demand jobs or in-demand skills, what talent leaders need today is that one metric that fuses demand and supply sides of the equation to track how competitive the landscape is,” said Vijay Sharma, Co-Founder & CEO of Belong.

“What’s clear is that even in the midst of all the layoffs, it’s solidly a candidate-driven market for the jobs of the future,” said Vijay Sharma. “This trend will only accelerate with more companies investing aggressively in cloud and emerging technologies like AI, while supply struggles to keep pace,” he added.

Here are some key findings of Talent Supply Index June 2017:

Demand vastly outstrips supply for core AI, IoT and Cloud talent: Data Scientists, Devops Engineers, Security Engineers rank 0.8, 0.7, and 0.4 respectively, proving hiring will continue to be a struggle for tech companies in emerging technologies.

Bangalore remains the hotbed of supply and demand for high-value tech talent. While the city accounts for 40% of India’s Data Scientists, it still scores a supply-negative 0.6 for Data Science hiring, indicating the sheer volume of opportunities.

Global In-house Centres drive majority of the demand in emerging technologies: Between 2014 to 2017, demand for IoT talent rocketed by 304%, with companies like Cisco, IBM, Intel and Qualcomm counting as top employers in the segment.

Crunch in the middle layer: Managerial roles like Engineering Managers and Technology Leads score a supply-negative 0.6 on the TSI, indicating companies will struggle to attract leadership talent and scale teams. Grooming from the ranks appears like an obvious strategy.

Mobility for Mobile developers, Python developers, and Data Scientists extremely high: Candidates in these markets move companies faster than any other talent. Compared to Software Architects whose average tenure per company is 5.3 years, Data Scientists, on average, spend less than 1.8 years in a company.

The index can also help businesses plan and gauge hiring costs, efforts and cycles.

The Talent Supply Index measures how competitive the market is for a given job by dividing the total number of people with relevant skills by the total number of active opportunities for that job. For example, if there are 1,000 Data Scientist opportunities against only 800 relevant Data Scientists potentially open to new opportunities, the role scores 0.8 on the TSI. The closer the role tends to zero, the more supply-constrained is the market. In fact, a score of less than 1 indicates the talent market for the job is supply-negative.

Outlining the implications for HR and Talent Acquisition, Kevin Freitas, Human Resources Leader at InMobi, said, “The talent acquisition function is becoming complex and high profile with elements of strategic workforce planning. Incisive high value analytics like the talent supply index helps TA leaders and businesses visualize the intensity of competition for talent much faster, enabling them to act boldly and decisively”

Sarv Sarvanan, Corporate Senior Vice President and General Manager, EMC Corporation, said, “A data-backed view of the evolving talent landscape is essential for businesses building digital transformation capabilities -- be it on the automation, AI, or IOT side -- given that hiring the right talent fast remains a barrier. The question is how can Talent and HR leaders enable businesses to take that view -- and that’s where I see the Talent Supply Index plugging a gap.”