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Tech job postings roared back in March—and so did offers of remote work.
Open tech jobs jumped by 197,000 for March, according to CompTIA’s March tech jobs report.
With the spike in open jobs has come a corresponding jump in the number of positions offered out of office. Total open positions currently stand at 316,000, with one in five classified as remote or hybrid, according to CompTIA’s Steven Ostrowski.
The move to remote jobs is a sign of both the need on the part of employers to entice prospective employees, and the broader shift in the IT office.
All part of a plan. Ask Actalent’s Jason DeKoster about the bump in remote work and he’ll point to a number of factors—all revolving around the need to get talent to buy into the workplace. Insisting on an in-office culture could restrict the pool of available workers, and when remote positions aren’t prohibitive, there’s little reason not to offer them to expand the labor possibilities past the realm of local staffers.
DeKoster, who is managing director of strategic recruitment at the firm, breaks seeking out talent into three parts: attraction, retention, and engagement. Offering remote and hybrid work to prospective employees helps with these three aspects by providing them with the convenience to compete for their services.
“In order to get access to as much tech talent, IT talent, engineering talent, scientific talent, companies are changing their openness” to remote work, DeKoster said.
Note of caution. CompTIA chief research officer Tim Herbert told IT Brew that he thinks the number of remote positions is actually undercounted because it only targets the postings that specifically mention remote work. But that discounts the employers who may offer hybrid solutions later in the hiring process.
“They are offering remote work for three days [or] two days in the office, but that usually is often teased out once they have a candidate that they’re actually looking to hire,” Herbert said.
Herbert did caution readers not to look too deeply into the remote work spike, at least not yet.
“This is always tough,” Herbert said. “We never want to read too much into any one month; we’ll have to see how things play out.”—EH