War for Tech Talents: Building Your Dream Team With the Right Recruitment Partner

We’ve all heard of how embracing tech is no longer an option, and this year, it has been a little too real.

It’s undeniable that we’ve been leaning toward technological solutions way before COVID-19 took the world by surprise, but it’s clear that the pandemic has been a huge accelerator for every part of the world, most certainly the working world, to accept and adapt to digital life. 

As reported by Statista, more than half of the global population are internet users worldwide as of April 2022, so it’s only natural and progressive for companies to go after their target market and pursue building tech and tech-enabled business models and offerings, which translates to highly resilient digital hiring, leading us to one harsh truth: the war for tech talent is on. 

The Hiring Hole

A joint report by the Asian Development Bank and LinkedIn entitled “Digital Jobs and Digital Skills: A Shifting Landscape in Asia and the Pacific” stated that demand for digital skills has steadily increased over the past five years. However, as robust as the report’s findings say for Asia and the Pacific, the supply of tech talents in the Philippines hasn’t been in proportion with the demand for such professionals in years. According to Gobi Core’s “State of Talent in Tech 2022” report released November 23, “between 2016-19, the combined number of tech and engineering graduates in the Philippines has remained stagnant,” adding that by estimates, there are even fewer graduates in 2020s due to the pandemic.

On top of the imbalance between the supply and demand of tech professionals, more companies from around the world have been choosing the Philippines for IT offshoring due to lower costs, making it all the more challenging for local companies to attract top talents in the industry. 

“You can call it brain drain, because even if tech talent are not physically leaving the Philippines, but because they can work remotely, the Philippines cannot afford them, and therefore lose them,” said Patt Soyao, the Founder and Director of leading executive search firm Icon Executive Asia, as quoted by Gobi Core in its report.

With this, the challenge is glaring. There is indeed a war for tech talents, a war that can be won with the right professionals, and a war won a number of times by the right recruitment partners at Icon Executive Asia. 

Catering to where there is a need

Icon Executive Asia is a premier executive search firm in the Philippines fulfilling the recruitment needs of legacy businesses and startups. Established before the COVID-19 pandemic presented itself, backed by recruitment executives with decades of experience in the human resources scene and with its lenses made of the company’s mission to “future proof companies through future first talents,” here’s what makes Icon a preferred recruitment partner by numerous startup and digitally forward legacy companies:

Icon Executive Asia has handled a number of senior-level requirements for family or legacy companies before and during the height of the pandemic, and the company has placed professionals in ones they truly fit in. But as digital transformation became the case for many industries, the executive search firm pivoted and catered to startups as well, accepting the challenging mission of finding the right senior-level executives for newly established roles and responsibilities to lead the digital initiatives of newly established companies. With the strategic move to cater to more businesses, Icon Executive Asia became a top-of-mind recruitment partner in the local startup scene. However, more than that, the company has witnessed the changes in the world of recruitment and the way we work, allowing its recruitment executives to garner valuable exposure not only to the pain points of owners and hiring managers in terms of finding digital and tech talents that complement their values, goals, and innovative ideas, but also of the talent experience and stint that candidates must possess in order to fill in specific roles and new occupations.

“The future is digital. Even legacy businesses will eventually transition to digital, and when they finally do, we are ready. Having been a top-of-mind recruitment partner of startup companies ever since the pandemic, we have handled numerous roles that emerged or were created explicitly to drive the digitalization of business models, so you could say we are ahead of the game.”

- Jay Avenida, Executive Director, Icon Executive Asia

Additionally, by working on digital requirements for emerging roles and occupations transformed to fit today’s digital world, Icon learned and created different strategies to attract, reach out to, and endorse sought-after professional profiles today. Without relying solely on candidate experience, Icon can pull out the truths and strengths of talents in managing and leading team, projects, and expectations through an agenda-based recruitment process that draws an in-depth understanding of a professional’s status, goals, direction, and rationale.

On top of that, Icon stays on top of recruitment trends, but more than recruitment, it also boasts of its business sense which it maintains through its team of professionals under its subsidiary dedicated to keeping up with the latest in the business scene. From layoffs to market insights to the workforce’s pulse, Icon can provide calculated insights and effective strategies tailored to fit the industry and requirements at hand.

“Having an innate business operation sense among each member of our team, we’re not merely service providers for our clients. We have insights, and we are after meeting the recruitment needs of our clients, so more than just providers, we act as our clients’ recruitment partners.” 

- Loradel Ang, Executive Director, Icon Executive Asia

With such exposure and know-how, Icon Executive Asia is more than ready to take on the recruitment requirements of legacy companies adapting to digital life, meeting their needs in the middle by providing expert opinions backed by data, experience, and business sense to help them realize what they truly need in a candidate that they expect will lead them toward digital success.

Photo Source: master1305 on Freepik