what are the in demand IT skills for NZ currently? And what is the pomodoro technique?
Over the last few weeks the IT Market has become hot again and there’s been a lot of movement due to redundancies, redeployments and people returning home. This is creating a lot of noise ie we’re getting swamped with lots of candidates so it’s sometimes hard to notice the good ones.
There’s some good people returning from overseas (some are still working for their overseas companies in quarantine & at home) but that’s not quite balancing out the lack of candidates migrating with the NZ borders being closed. The migrants here in NZ are facing significantly longer visa processing times due to Covid too which is making finding a new job for them tricky.
However there’s lot of national movement with more people coming to Christchurch with it being attractive for the lower rent / great value house prices compared to Wellington & Auckland and of course Christchurch has more space - lower population density so it has shorter commutes & now with more flexible working / WFH there are more options to work where ever in the country.
So what are the in demand skills for IT in New Zealand currently that we’re seeing skill shortages?
DevOps
Senior Full Stack Developers
Azure & AWS cloud skills
Front end JavaScript and / or TypeScript development skills in Angular, React & Vue.js
UI/UX design & research skills
Data Science - AI & ML
A few good candidates are getting caught up in redundancies but the ones who aren’t are sometimes being hesitant to move due to uncertainty of Covid and are happy to ‘ride it out’. The new normal has certainly polarised company’s working practices so the modern cultures that have adapted more easily have highlighted some that haven’t, thus people wanting to move to join better, well organised companies embracing flexibility & WFH.
We are seeing some companies expanding their searches for developers globally and this is nothing new but it is more ‘front of mind’ & easier than it’s ever been with modern tools to communicate . Candidates have essentially been able to work for any overseas companies in the world as long as candidates pay tax in New Zealand & the company pays tax where they are located.
A good article from Deloitte on remote working in New Zealand for a foreign company click here
However It’s always come down to trust. With the temptation of high salaries & contract rates there’s some key considerations, just as a normal job hunt there is the need to research: the company, team, technology stack, products or services, people, culture, purpose, reputation, time zone and now WFH culture - how do they run their online teams and how long have they been doing it for? Do you want to give up face-to-face white board time & brain storming with talented colleagues? Is the social aspect important to you? Do you miss out on the water cooler conversations? Does the company fly you over for annual team building events etc? Is it just harder to get things achieved WFH with product development? I hear you say…Co-location (one of the agile principles)?
A lot of feed back we’ve been getting from the IT market is that people want….drum roll….surprise ‘flexibility’ a mix of office & WFH. As it really depends on the individuals needs. Even some hardcore introverts have realised that human connection with their like minded colleagues is really quite nice…occasionally ;-). And what lockdown taught us is that it’s about freedom of choice…being forced to 100% work from home is not fun and neither can be 100% in the office. We now have the modern tools to work from where ever we choose so let’s use these to maximum benefit and look at the research - people are more productive & efficient when given flexibility to deliver outcomes. And hopefully this means happy workers which is the absolute outcome to focus on :-) :-) :-)
An article here on how working from home is more productive from businessnewsdaily.com click here
What is the Pomodoro technique? And how will it help me WFH more efficiently?
Many good devs are in jobs and as the software product development market has got busy and is now running hot, with the whole world being run on software it’s not surprising. It’s still difficult to get good people but there’s some great ones out there too looking for a good balanced company that has embraced the ‘new normal’ & as usual you just have to jump on them when they become available.
I'm Paul, I Iove coffee and I’m Founder & Principal Consultant of Sunstone, an IT Recruitment & HR company specialising in recruiting IT roles within software, web, mobile, blockchain, big data, infrastructure, security & networks in Christchurch, South Island of New Zealand.