IT outsourcing trends globally

Protocol took a look at IT outsourcing dynamics as it relates to overseas outsourcing – including Eastern Europe.   That’s disrupted now by the war in Ukraine, and demand for talent has not slowed.  Pulling liberally from the article:

The IT services market as a whole is now more than a trillion dollars in size, said Gartner Senior Research Director Brett Sparks.

• And although outsourcing has been going on for a long time, the pandemic helped kick-start the “delivery of IT services from remote locations,” said Gartner Research Vice President Alan Stanley.
• And as companies began to spread their nets wider, he said they began to look to new countries to source their IT services.

Demand for European talent, in particular, has increased because of the region’s strength in high-demand IT skills. But as more companies deploy global talent models that increasingly leverage IT employees, from Europe, geopolitical risks like the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine become even more paramount. 

And while I’m thinking about talent, Protocol talks about the “great tech hiring slowdown” – and it’s not as bad as you might think.     While individual companies may be course correcting, both the overall employment landscape and the specific software engineer and cybersecurity professional are strong and favor workers.     Three key indicators – the average number of offers per candidate, how long to get a candidate placed, and the percentage of counter-offers a candidate regularly faces- are all solid… and favor workers.  

A sense of the size of the market is a good data point here.    Trillion Dollars.    While I don’t expect most providers are thinking on the international scale discussed here, I’d offer that the theme of geographic independence is the key takeaway.

I also wanted to highlight the metrics – for many; I suspect they haven’t built professional recruiting organizations.    If you’re doing it yourself for HR, here are your metrics.     And regardless, applicable to all.