Why is the quality of tech recruitment in free fall?

We are living through an incredible digital gold rush. This sector has gradually become both a growth driver and an instrument of power for the countries that host the startups behind it. By posting double-digit growth rates like Facebook with its 50% revenue increase over 5 consecutive quarters, a small startup can quickly become a superpower in its own right.

A market in full explosion

Demand for the most talented tech profiles is exploding. It's estimated to double every four years. The most talented sometimes delete their LinkedIn profile, so heavy are the solicitations of all kinds.

On the scale of the last 20 years, the successive crises of the 2000s artificially slowed the growth of digital, leading us to think we would produce enough software engineers to satisfy demand. What followed proved otherwise.

Software developer: a term that no longer means anything

Our modern applications rely on so many different skills that they can't all be developed by the same people. Moreover, every problem has several solutions, so two identical projects can rest on very different technical environments and therefore require multiple skill sets. The IT skills market is sub-niched.

It can't be worked as a single block but rather by skill clusters and by problems solved. At Bluecoders, we've chosen to specialize the teams in recruiting certain profiles. This makes it possible to develop much deeper expertise, ensure that all skills are covered, and thus achieve a record team-building time.

A market worked backwards

Despite the imbalance between supply and demand, companies still think they represent the supply. The shock for young startups, who think that once the funding round is closed the hiring phase will be easy, is brutal. In reality, building the team is one of the main challenges for a startup looking to grow.

According to a study conducted by training organization The Startup Institute of around a hundred startups in Europe and the United States:

41% of young companies cite the developer shortage as the main cause of their failure.

Yet existing selective recruitment platforms have fully embraced the model of creating a marketplace where a flow of developers is auctioned off to partner companies.

Platforms running out of steam

In the race to scale the business model, players can't keep up the level of quality that tech talent demands. Pushed by their investors, they make the following choice: open the platform to all digital profiles, lower the quality, and accept being outflanked on the technical side. Left wanting more, the most qualified profiles desert these platforms where they feel served up to the highest bidder. On their end, junior developers who don't yet have the keys to read the market may behave like divas to drive bids up.

Economically, this ensures the model's longevity and lets investor confidence hold. To satisfy their growth needs, digital recruitment platforms spend most of their funding on advertising — that way they avoid having to publish content to provide the advice that would actually be useful to users. A single ad message or slogan pushed by €100,000 of advertising over a month, even with a low conversion rate, gets them the traffic they're looking for.

In the end, B2B service quality drops too, because the flow and the level of talent both impoverish.

How do you build and preserve true expertise on the topic of developer recruitment?

Provide a quality service to market players

To maintain a high quality of service, we chose to provide advice to both sides. To give ourselves the legitimacy, we put web technology at the heart of our identity: most of our team comes from engineering schools, and we regularly run internal training on web roles (telecommunications and how the internet works, agile development, technology watch).

On the developer side, we don't operate as the recruiter selling a dream / ideal job. Bluecoders is committed to offering a career-management service that isn't limited to the opportunities we propose.

Bluecoders' recruiters work more like agents or coaches for developers, supporting them in choosing their next club (startup), notably in negotiating their offer — not to push them to sell their skills to the highest bidder, but to bring them a project that will contribute to their professional fulfillment.

On the company side, their role is more that of a team builder, to understand how the company wants to put its team together. As a result, B2B quality goes up because only developers whose career project is aligned with the proposed project are presented to them.