90% Tech Recruiters Looking For Developers With New Skills During Lockdown, Most Hiring Developers For Product Development Roles

* TimesJobs’ ‘Developer Hiring Survey 2021’ found 38% Indian tech recruiters would hire a developer for his excellent coding skills v/s relevant experience, educational achievements or past projects

* 32% said women technologists still face a bias when interviewed or recruited for software development roles

* 90% IT recruiters want to hire developers who learnt new skills during the lockdown

Excellent coding skills rank way higher for the Indian tech recruiters when hiring developers, as compared to relevant experience, similar past projects or educational degrees, found a recent TimesJobs survey. TimesJobs’ ‘Developer Hiring Survey 2021’ was conducted among 957 tech recruiters to understand their preferences while hiring developers.

The survey found that most (38%) recruiters would hire a developer with excellent coding skills, overlooking his educational achievements or experience. Over 28% respondents said that a developer’s (relevant) experience would be their sole criterion for hiring. Next 21% said they considered relevant educational qualifications as the only bar when hiring a developer. Remaining 13% said that they would hire a developer basis his performance in interview and skill tests and no other factor would matter.

The respondents of ‘Developer Hiring Survey 2021’ belonged to startups (24%), SMBs(34%) and MNCs(42%). Here are the other takeaways:

Ø  Most firms screen developers for job interviews basis experience in various technologies

Remote talent assessment caught pace in the COVID-19 lockdown when businesses - big and small - turned to AI-driven specialised platforms such as SpeedHire for bias-free, cheating proof, accurate assessment. Such platforms save on a recruiters’ time, effort and are location-agnostic, which is the need of the hour.

The TimesJobs survey asked tech recruiters about how they selected candidates for interviews, here’s what they said:

● 33% reviewed all the technologies that a developer has worked on to make an interview decision

● 28% preferred relevant work experience to call a developer for job interview

● 22% screened developers basis the proficiency of different programming languages

● 10% screened developers basis time spent coding projects

● 7% followed a mixed approach for screening candidates

Ø  Women technologists face gender bias at hiring, strongest bias exists for software development roles

The TimesJobs survey asked if women coders still faced bias from recruiters and firms, and most (82%) respondents said ‘yes’.  Of these, most respondents (57%) agreed that gender bias is the main reason that very few female software developers are eventually hired, whereas 43% disagreed with this statement.

The survey further asked about the job roles where women developers faced most gender bias, here are the responses:

● 32% said women technologists faced most bias in software development roles

● 31% voted for a strong bias in system administrator roles

● 21% claimed women techies faced most bias in product designer roles

● 16% stated most bias existed for software engineering roles

Ø  Most firms hiring developers for product development roles presently 

TimesJobs asked the tech recruiters about the roles for which they were hiring developers, their responses are:

- Most firms (40%) were presently hiring techies for product development roles

- 30% were hiring for tech support roles

- Infrastructure management roles ranked third, as voted by 17% respondents

- Business intelligence got the rest 13% votes

Ø  Most tech recruiters prefer candidates who learnt new skills during lockdown

Upskilling and reskilling are a pertinent need in the IT sector where firms always prefer developers adept in emerging technologies. TimesJobs asked the hiring managers if they preferred developers who had learnt extra skills during the lockdown. The unanimous answer was ‘yes’, stated by 90% respondents. Only 10% said ‘no’, this was not necessary for them.

About TimesJobs:

TimesJobs is a platform to help competent professionals enhance their career growth. With over 25 million registered job seekers across the board and more than 60 million page views every month, it is the most preferred career portal among ambitious and talented professionals who want to make smarter career decisions that accelerate their career progression.