What Is Really Happening In BC's Tech Labour Market
December 2022
Corporate Recruiters specializes in building technology companies, and we are at the epicentre of the supply & demand for tech talent in Vancouver. What we read in the news often doesn’t reflect what we see on the ground. We thought you might be interested in hearing about our experiences.
Some Good Talent is Coming onto the Market, But Not as Much as You Might Think
This may sound heartless, but HR analytics software enables companies to measure performance better and prioritize who stays and who can be let go. In the 90s and 2000s, large companies didn’t have the granular detail they have now, and there were a lot of real gems on the market. So don’t expect history to repeat itself – the game has changed.
Hiring Freeze? Maybe – Maybe Not
The BIG 5 tech giants know who they want to keep and who they want to recruit. So even with the announced hiring freezes, we have found that our list of top talent is engaged in multiple competing interviews that include these companies.
War Stories
A local tech company had laid off a significant number of employees and had to rehire about one-third because they couldn’t meet capacity needs.
A US company spent enormous money on hiring a net-new, world-class development team in Vancouver. Unfortunately, they did not close their anticipated financing and released the entire team. However, the team was picked up by a competitor en masse in less than 30 days! We are not exaggerating – that really happened! We have the receipts.
Demand for Tech Talent is Asymmetrical
Pre-pandemic, the tech world was awash in cash, and except for a brief two-month hiatus in April-May 2020, the hiring splurges raged on. Many companies over-hired, and they will have to part with some good people. Startups and midsized tech companies tend to have lean back office and operations teams, so the impact of layoffs is less noticeable on the market. However, there continues to be a need for more people with specific skills and a modest supply for others.
Sales & Marketing
This seems counterintuitive, but we tend to see the sales and marketing teams affected first in a downturn. Also, top performers are rarely let go but tend to be more receptive to opportunities when the economy changes.
Typically, 20%-25% of sales & marketing teams are laid off in a downturn.
The difference from past experience is US companies are hiring remote salespeople for cross-border regions. This is picking up some of the slack.
Sales cycles are growing longer so some top salespeople will miss quotas and may not wait around for incentive bonuses to pay out.
Senior sales & marketing leadership roles are staying open longer as companies stretch budgets. As a result, good sales & marketing people are remaining on the market longer, so there is an opportunity to upgrade your team here.
Technical Product Managers Remain in High Demand.
Product Managers are closely tied to the product lifecycle, so there are fewer layoffs.
Experienced technical product managers are always in high demand. There is never a surplus of talent.
Vancouver’s product management talent pool is growing, and US companies are competing for our talent pool.
Engineering and Development Teams
From our perspective, the top five technical skill sets in demand are ranked as follows:
Senior ML Engineers (not rare but expensive and hard to recruit)
Senior SoC / ASIC engineers (The Chip Bill will juice demand even more)
Engineering Managers with hands-on ML / AI product design experience – (very rare)
Senior Data Engineers with Java & Python
DevOps and SRE engineers
JavaScript engineers (depending on the libraries/framework)
Microsoft ecosystem engineers are fairly plentiful and easier to recruit
Look Beyond the Company Name on the Resume!
Growth strategies for some companies are by acquisition rather than innovation. The Big 5 Tech Giants screen new hires up to ten times to ensure high quality. However, others come in through the back door via acquisition. Not all acquisitions have built viable products or have top talent.
Last Word
If you are looking to get a leg up on the competition and bring in exceptional talent, currently, we are seeing more quality people returning our calls with interest. However, it has never been easier to hire the wrong people without a thorough vetting process.