Technology is not immune from the Great Resignation or reshuffle. The debate on when the labor market will return to pre-pandemic volatility is evident on every viewing medium. Each sector will push through a parallel labor swing depending on industry trends and companies’ response to workers demands. We saw it first with healthcare and hospitality workers citing pandemic burnout as the first to resign and just recently reengaged the workforce. Now, stable sectors such as technology, that have held up stock markets since the lockdown, are experiencing a hiring slowdown as tech staffing M&A is steamrolling ahead.
Silicon Valley located RocketPower, a recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) and talent solution company whose customers are disruptive tech companies announced they are being acquired by Kelly (Nasdaq: KELYA) and will retain their branding. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed
“The pandemic coupled with fluctuating talent acquisition trends are driving tremendous growth in the RPO market now more than ever,” said Tammy Browning, president of KellyOCG. “This acquisition significantly expands KellyOCG’s RPO solution and delivery offering across the globe and enhances our specialty RPO strategy and expertise and provides us with another entry point into the high-tech industry.”
Adding a tech-focused RPO to its already robust talent solution certainly signals outsourced talent acquisition will be a profit center for the time being. Organizations are increasingly realizing the value of expert RPO providers to support their talent acquisition needs. RPO is one of the fastest-growing outsourcing markets in the world experiencing double-digit growth in the past few years. Projections for the 2022 global RPO market are expected to exceed $5 billion surpassing pre-pandemic levels. Even with the news of a tech hiring pause.
According to data released by Information Technology (IT) industry trade group CompTIA, technology companies added 5,300 new workers in Feb., which was considerably down from the past month and just a ¼ of the total 2022 technology hiring gains of 20,600 workers. This was the 15th consecutive month of employment growth for the sector, however the pullback does display a slowdown in tech hiring.
Employer job postings for tech occupations approached nearly 388,000 last month, an increase of more than 50,000 from Jan. and job posting volumes over the past three months exceeded one million.
“The record-level of employer job postings for the month and a pause in actual new tech hires is a clear sign of the ongoing labor supply problem,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “Employers want to hire more tech workers but can only do so when there are workers to hire.”
ContingentWorkforce.com 