What IT leaders need to know about hiring in 2023

This year’s economic outlook is uncertain. But at the same time, the need for digital transformation is putting pressure on IT leaders to act now. So how do you keep pushing the envelope digitally while facing economic headwinds? To find out, Sara Kirk of CIO.com interviewed three Revature leaders for a webinar.

SVP Gaurav Gautam set the scene. He pointed out a recent Gartner report showing that, despite increasingly dire recession warnings, 90% of CEOs planned to maintain or accelerate their digital transformations. Their ability to do so will hinge on their ability to find the right talent strategy.

Gaurav said that such a strategy had three key elements:

• Talent acquisition: i.e. finding the right people for the job and, crucially, reducing the time it takes to hire them.
• Talent enablement: i.e. training new people or upskilling the current workforce to meet the challenges of today.
• Talent retention: i.e. hanging onto talent in a world where attrition from tech roles runs as high as 30% year on year.

Alexa Gilroy, a senior client account director, picked up the first thread, talent acquisition. She offered an example from one of her clients in the financial industry. Alexa was able to fill 16 IT positions with talent custom-trained to the client’s specifications—and all inside two months. The client was so pleased with the result that they commissioned Revature to design an entire custom cohort of staff, due to start work this year.

Talent enablement expert Kevin Burch spoke about his specialty, the Salesforce software platform. He explained that Salesforce is a low-code / no-code platform, meaning that it requires less technical skill to build software. It’s therefore relatively straightforward to upskill employees from any part of an enterprise to contribute to a digital transformation. Kevin has recently done exactly this with 20 Revature associates, all of whom had previously left the workforce. Today, all are certified in Salesforce and providing tremendous value to their organizations.

Gaurav stepped back in to discuss talent retention. Employees, he said, would stay with an organization longer if they felt a sense of career progression. This makes it all the more important to offer upskilling opportunities. For example, Revature is talking to its clients in the retail sector about how to retain talented store employees, who otherwise might enjoy few meaningful promotion prospects, by training them to work in the IT department. Revature, Gaurav said, has a “secret sauce” when it comes to retention: 89% of our associates are still with the company that hires them after three years.

This is just a taste of the full webinar, which is packed with juicy tidbits about tech talent strategy. The bottom line, as all three interviewees pointed out, is that now is the time to plan ahead—especially when it comes to recruiting, enabling, and retaining talent.