Salary and compensation, work-life balance and career development are the top considerations for job seekers in the ICT industry, according to new data from the job search platform Seek.
Seek’s survey of 750 ICT job seekers was published as interactive data on the website's Laws of Attraction portal and gives insights into how application drivers differ based on the gender, age and seniority of job-seekers, allowing employers to tailor their ICT recruitment strategies to targeted candidates.
Seek’s research also found the five fastest-growing average salaries for roles earning over $110 thousand in the ICT industry.
They were, in order, infrastructure specialists, quality assurance analysts, success managers, services engineers and quality assurance engineers, all growing on average between 17 to 21 percent year on year.
The data was gathered by Seek and independent US research company Qualtrics by asking Australians either looking for work or considering changing roles in the next two years to rate the importance of factors that drive them to apply for a job.
Salary, work-life balance and career development were rated most important by ICT job seekers
Salary & compensation was the number one driver of attraction with an importance score of 29.4 percent.
“ICT over-indexes on the importance of salary and compensation compared to other industries,” the report found.
“Within salary & compensation, base salary is the most important subdriver with 69 percent of respondents saying it is a must-have, followed by a salary review at 51 percent.”
Work-life balance was rated 21 percent for importance, and the top subdrivers of work-life balance was the ability to work from home or remotely, which respondents rated 46 percent for importance, followed by flexible working hours, which they rated 29 percent.
Career development came third place as a motivating factor at 12.3 percent.
The report found “compared to other industries, ICT under indexes on viewing in-house training programs as a ‘must have’” at 23 percent, whereas on-the-job skill development and coaching is rated higher at 41 percent.
What drivers are IT channel players playing too in their recruitment strategies?
CRN spoke to IT channel partners on whether they found the results surprising and what drivers they have incorporated into their hiring campaigns.
AC3 boss Simon Xistouris, supplied by AC3
Cloud service provider AC3’s boss Simon Xistouris said Seek’s findings on ICT recruitment drivers were a mix of surprising and unsurprising.
"In the past, people placed an emphasis on the colleagues they worked with and the place they worked at whereas now, in the work from home era these things have become largely invisible, simply faces on the other end of a virtual meeting."
"It’s understandable that the priority of these aspects have slipped, while [the] priority of remuneration package has increased; it’s the one constant in any organisation."
"When it comes to factors like work-life balance, flexibility is baked into the way we work and have had some candidates state this as a key reason for joining us."
"We have a state of the art head office located in the newly developed NSW Tech Hub, 3 min from Central Station. We are also incorporating more flexibility in leave policy."
"We are offering advance purchase leave, as well as annual leave cash out"
Xistouris said career development played a big role in how AC3 recruited and retained staff.
"We hire and promote based on attitude, as we believe we can nurture and develop aptitude."
"We are proud to have stories of people who started on reception and are now part of the executive team."
Platinum Technology’s director of sales and operations Joseph Girgis said Seek’s findings were “not surprising at all.”
Girgis said the Baulkham Hills-headquartered managed service provider and had incorporated the factors Seek said ICT employees find attractive to recruits.
Girgis said recruits were guaranteed career development by “putting in place a clear policy of ‘internal promotions first’ before going out to the market.”
Girgis also said the company provided employees with work-life balance “bday day off, a range of additional paid leave benefits, local[s] hired to ensure minimum travel time (improved work/life balance) [and] work from home options in the roles that make sense.”
Few differences in what attracts men and women to ICT jobs
The Seek data showed that women cared only slightly less about salary and career development and only slightly more about work-life balance in ICT jobs.
Women applying for ICT jobs gave salary and compensation an importance rating of 27.1 percent, only three percent lower than men, who rated it 30.1 percent.
Women rated career development 10 percent for importance, only 2.7 percent lower than men, who rated it 12.7 percent for importance.
Women rated work-life balance 23.9 percent for importance, 3.4 percent higher than men, who rated it 20.5 percent.
Millennials in ICT care more about career development and work-life balance than baby boomers
There was a significant difference between the factors millenials (25-41 years) and baby boomers (over 58 years) said were most attractive about an ICT job.
Baby boomers rated career development 2 percent for importance, 13.7 less than millennials who rated it 15.7 percent.
Baby boomers rated work-life balance 14.7 percent for importance, 6.2 less than millennials who rated it 20.9 percent.
However, respondents from both generations valued salary and compensation to near the same degree, with millennials rating it 31.2 percent for importance, 2.5 percent higher than baby boomers who rated it 28.7 percent.
