A new study has found that a staggering 74% of UK tech businesses neglect to conduct relevant competency tests and one in four candidates (24%) is hired without possessing the required technical skills.
As the UK grapples with a persistent tech skills shortage, a recent survey by Mobilunity sheds light on a broken recruitment process preventing businesses from securing the right tech talent.
The research, conducted among senior decision-makers in UK startups, scaleups, and enterprise businesses, exposes a flawed filtering process for technical roles.
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While the average number of applications per role is healthy, with startups receiving 18 applications per role, the hiring process fails to validate skills effectively.
Surprisingly, 34% of decision-makers admit to lacking a separate recruitment process for technical hires.
The survey also found that 59% of technical hires took over a month and one-fifth required up to 6 months.
Only seven percent of businesses reported that new technical hires can deliver immediate value, while 45% lack essential skills, needing further investment.
Cyril Samovskiy, founder of Mobilunity, comments on the urgency for change: “The results highlight that companies are not utilising technical specialists to validate skillsets, with many bypassing any testing beyond a standard interview and putting an excessive amount of candidates through to the next stage. It’s a broken process costing businesses critical time and money.”
In a time of unpredictable economic conditions, the call for a revamp in hiring processes for technical talent is urgent, as the risk of recruiting the wrong people for the wrong roles looms large.
The technology industry, overall, witnessed over 260,000 job losses in 2023 as reported by the Layoffs.fyi website, which tracks technology industry job cuts.
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By GlobalDataIn the past month alone, nearly 100 tech firms, including Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, TikTok, and Salesforce, have collectively announced 25,000 job cuts.
