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Aussie tech talent wait for opportunities to 'fall into their laps'

Aussie tech talent wait for opportunities to 'fall into their laps'

Around a quarter were actively seeking a new role, a sharp decrease on previous years

Aussie tech talent are sitting back and waiting for the opportunities to come to them, according to IT recruiter Greythorn.

“Over the past two years there has been an increasing trend towards candidates becoming passive job seekers; keeping an eye on the market, but waiting for the right role to find them rather than actively job hunting,” said Suzanne Gerrard, general manager at Greythorn Australia.

Around a quarter (28 per cent) of ICT professionals were actively seeking a new role, a sharp decrease from the 43 per cent job-seeking in 2014, according to the company’s survey of around 2,500 IT workers.

“This year we saw an increase in candidates not feeling the need to actively look for a new role – but waiting for the right role to fall into their laps instead,” Gerrard added.

Greythorn said that more and more Australian companies were transforming their businesses digitally, leading to a skills shortage in the industry, specifically in the areas of digital, development, data analytics and security.

“There has been a surge in both the public and private sectors moving into cloud environments, particularly in the last 12 months, resulting in complex and large IT transformation projects,” said Gerrard.

“Since these projects require specific skills and capabilities, we are finding the talent pool is smaller and candidates’ experience is shorter in duration, pointing to a skill shortage in the industry.”

Although 70 per cent of IT workers surveyed said they were ‘fairly or very satisfied’ with their current roles, 60 per cent intended to change jobs within the next 12 months.

Flexible working arrangements, a good salary and challenging work were the things keeping them in their current roles according to the Job Seeker Market Report 2016-2017.

A lack of interesting, challenging work, poor organisational culture and a lack of career development opportunities were highlighted as the main reasons that people leave.

“This trend, coupled with the current talent shortage we are seeing, will mean employers need to think smarter about how they attract and retain talent,” said Gerrard. “This is becoming more important than ever as the industry continues to grow and mobilise.”

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