What are the latest hiring trends in data recruitment?

As technology evolves, businesses need to evolve to ensure growth goals at being met. As a result, many organisations need to go through digital transformation by upgrading and taking advantage of the latest technology, which today means running as much as possible in the cloud.

Shifting everything into the cloud requires expertise to drive digital transformation activities. Businesses are all competing for the same limited talent pool. In the past three years, cloud computing skills were among the top three most in-demand skills for employees on LinkedIn.  

The surge of the cloud

While this innovation shift was occurring before the pandemic, the global crisis caused an acceleration in the cloud market. The key reasons for surge include:

• Business resilience – The pandemic required flexible computing power, disaster recovery, lower backup cost, business continuity.
• Evolution of operations – The pandemic increased demand for socially distanced operations.
• Remote working – The pandemic underlined vitality for increased online collaborations.
• Accelerated investment from public sector - Government departments are now seeing renewed interest in cloud adoption.
• Focus on environmental sustainability - Organizations are adopting the cloud to harness the benefits of carbon footprint reduction.

  Businesses have had to change the way they operate as it is much more sustainable and safer to operate on the cloud. A knock-on effect of this shift has been the increase in demand for cloud professionals, I’ve witnessed this increase working as a Principal Consultant for Cybernetic Search, in the past six months alone we’ve seen a 71% increase in data roles. The demand for cloud computing is expected to go higher as organisations commit more money towards modernisation initiatives and digital transformation drives.  

In-demand cloud skills

From my experience, AWS (Amazon) and Azure (Microsoft) are the most in demand skills. Amazon has a major part to play in the development of cloud computing by the introductions of AWS. One of the areas we operate in is Switzerland, recently AWS announced plans to open an infrastructure region in Zurich. Amazon plans to invest up to 5.9 billion Swiss francs from 2022–2036 as they build, maintain, operate, and develop data centres to support the projected growth in demand for AWS technologies. This expansion boosts the growth of the cloud market in this region, so it’s no surprise that additional technical and business professionals are required to dedicate support to Swiss customers.  

The Future of the cloud

I’ve found I’ve been placing a higher number of freelancers this year with clients looking for cloud engineers to join them on long term 6–12month projects and paying 1k-1.5k per day for their services. Using freelancers in tech is not uncommon, but I’ve seen a marked increase in the number of firms looking to freelance and contract resource as their first solution. 

One of the main reasons for the rise of freelancers in the tech stems from the fast-paced nature of the tech industry. Businesses need to hire individuals with niche and specialised skills that can be immediately used to fulfil the needs of the company without having to go through training and onboarding. It’s important for businesses to engage freelancers who can help close the skill gap and work on specific projects rather than training existing staff for a niche project with skills they may never use again.  

Challenges of accelerated cloud adoption

The shift to the cloud and migration of existing infrastructure involves a significant investment, businesses looking to transition to the cloud need to hire the right fit to maximise this investment but finding this skilled talent can be a major challenge.  

Support available

If you need help in sourcing specialised cloud professionals in both contract and permanent roles within Switzerland and Europe, don’t hesitate to reach out. If you’d like to find out more about Cybernetic Search, or to discuss anything I’ve covered in this blog, please get in touch.