Digitization to Attract Best Technological Talent

In addition to changing the way of life for millions of people around the world, the pandemic has accelerated the digitization processes of companies in all sectors. E-commerce platforms and online stores have become indispensable to maintain the same lifestyle we had before the pandemic. Even banks, a cross-sector that has always had difficulty convincing its customers of the advantages of online banking, have opted for this model to make their customers’ lives easier and to remain competitive. In this context of radical change in perspectives, the recruitment of technological talent has become one of the top priorities of all human resources departments worldwide. “Attracting and retaining technological talent will become a key element for companies to recover their competitiveness. Now is the time to introduce new strategies to promote business digitalization. We have detected that there are very significant talent shortages in the cloud, IA and Big Data,” Juanvi Martinez, from Mercer, a human resources consulting firm explained to HR Press.

The new reality many countries have already entered has forced both companies and headhunters to change the way they attract talent, advocating specifications that before COVID-19 were not considered important for human resource managers. This has led to a battle to hire the best technology talent, a battle whose main problem is one of supply and demand. Companies are creating new technology-related jobs but there are not as many workers available for those jobs. “If this crisis has shown anything, it is that digitalization is a gamble that makes perfect sense, because it provides flexibility, agility and efficiency,” said Valero Marín, Repsol’s CIO, during a forum organized by El País.

The counterpart, however, can be found at the very heart of companies, which are in serious danger of creating two large blocks of employees: analogue and digital. Because of this, training of the least technologically prepared is key to a company's ability to remain competitive in times of pandemic. “It is key to train analog workers to set a trend that can be followed by other smaller companies,” said Francisco Bermúdez, CEO of Capgemini Spain, during the same forum.

It is among SMEs where the biggest adaptation problem can be found. With demand for digital talent growing exponentially, it will be difficult for SMEs to find suitable candidates. In Mexico, it will be especially hard to fill this demand since, according to data from the Senate, SMEs represent 72 percent of the workforce.