Spend Advantage Podcast

How To Find and Hire The Right Technical Talents

March 20, 2024 Varisource Season 1 Episode 58
How To Find and Hire The Right Technical Talents
Spend Advantage Podcast
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Spend Advantage Podcast
How To Find and Hire The Right Technical Talents
Mar 20, 2024 Season 1 Episode 58
Varisource

Welcome to The Spend Advantage™ Podcast by Varisource, the competitive advantage for your spend.   Get access to discounts, rebates, benchmark and renewal savings for 100+ spend categories automatically for your company

We interview amazing people, companies, and solutions, that will help you 10X your bottom line savings and top line growth for your business --- https://www.varisource.com 

Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to The Spend Advantage™ Podcast by Varisource, the competitive advantage for your spend.   Get access to discounts, rebates, benchmark and renewal savings for 100+ spend categories automatically for your company

We interview amazing people, companies, and solutions, that will help you 10X your bottom line savings and top line growth for your business --- https://www.varisource.com 

Welcome to the Spend Advantage podcast by Varisource. Spend advantage is the competitive advantage for your spend across 100+ vendor categories. This podcast is all about interviewing amazing people, company, and solutions that will help you ten x your top line growth as well as bottom line savings for your business. 2.2s 

Hello, everyone. This is Victor with Varisource. Welcome to another episode of the spend Advantage podcast. Today we're very excited to have our first 2024 recording with with one of our new partners, um, dice, we have today, Art Daly, who is a CEO of dice. Dice is where more than half of the US technology professionals come to land their next job. Welcome to the show, Art. 

U2

Thank you. Victor. Great 

U1

to be here. 1.4s Yeah, super excited about our discussions today. Obviously, our podcast is all about helping companies find that spin advantage, right? Um, finding a more cost effective solutions and way to do things. But, uh, yeah, if you don't mind, maybe give the audience a little bit of background about the company and yourself would be great. 

U2

Sure Dice itself as a platform has been around since 1990, which is kind of surprising, but the need for technology professionals has been around for a long time. And so Dice is a platform where we have technology professional profiles. Specifically, we have over 6 million profiles, and we also give our, um, clients the opportunity to post jobs in kind of a traditional job board fashion. But I would say more and more, the necessary engagement is really one of focusing on the technology professional that meets your needs, that that are expressed inside of your job opening or your job posting, and actually targeting them and engaging with them on the platform, either through our email service or our chat, um, service. 2.5s

U1

Yeah. Fantastic. Um, I mean, technology is, uh, one of, you know, obviously it's in every company. It's, uh, one of the key drivers and core, uh, things for every organization. And then you've got to hire the right people and good people to run those technology. So maybe kind of start with a high level kind of question art. So, you know, how come hiring good people or even just finding the right candidates are so difficult? Why do you think that is? Obviously, you've been in the industry for a while. 

U2

Yeah, I think that that summarizes it very well. I would tell you that most people look at our platform and they think that we facilitate the recruitment of technology professionals for the big tech firms like Amazon, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and we and we certainly do. But actually every single sector of the economy requires technology professionals. For the most part, I would say maybe maybe the smaller retail or hospitality businesses don't. Um, they probably do. So kind of tangentially. But most companies require technology initiatives to drive their competitive positioning to drive the business model itself. Why is it difficult? Well, I will tell you that if you looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics associated with the tech workforce, and they started tracking the tech workforce officially in the year 2000, you'd see that the number of technology professionals has increased year over year. There's literally been only a couple of years in the last 24 years where the technology workforce either flattened or went backwards in terms of the number of people that are active in it. So we have become more of a technology oriented society or economy as the United States, and we haven't been able to really, um, keep up with demand. And what I mean by that is that if you looked at the unemployment rate for the technology workforce for the last ten years, it has consistently hovered around 2%, vastly lower than the total United States unemployment rate, even in the pandemic, even in the worst quarter of the pandemic, that unemployment rate only went to 3%. So, again, um, the demand has been high. The supply of people that have these skills is relatively low in certain pockets of the technology workforce. It's close to zero, um, you know, unemployment rate, meaning, um, areas like artificial intelligence and data science and cybersecurity and cloud engineering. The demand is so high, the supply is so low that the unemployment rate is non-existent. So again, it all comes back to supply and demand characteristics of the market. And the United States economy has been moving in the, um, direction of being a much more technologically oriented economy. And technology workers are the building blocks of that economy. 2.1s

U1

Yeah. This really leads to our, um, next question. So. Well, and the next question is actually something I've been, you know, very much looking forward to hearing your, your, um, expertise on obviously, you know, with hiring managers that we work with, uh, a lot of them looking for technical talents. They're using platforms like indeed or maybe LinkedIn. Right. Um, but what challenges limitation do you do they usually face and why? And typically what I hear is there's a lot of noise, right. Like you may post one job, but then you get so much noise and it's just very difficult to find kind of the right candidate who fits the right technology criteria. Uh, but what do you see when, you know, companies maybe look at using tools like indeed or LinkedIn? What challenges would they face with those type of platforms? 

U2

Um great question. Uh, the simple answer is that those platforms work on the paradigm of titles. If you think about what you put into a LinkedIn profile, you put in a title that you had and the date range that you had it. You also hopefully fill in a little bit more about the experience that you had in that career step, but it's all based on titles. If you're a technology recruiter and let's say you're trying to find a Java developer in Denver, if you put in the title of Senior Java developer and Denver as the geography, you would get 5000 hits. You literally have 5000 profiles that had a person who had that title sometime within the last, you know, X number of years. But as a recruiter, you don't want to sort through 5000 resumes profiles. Our system works completely differently. And, you know, despite the fact that there's a lot of focus now on artificial intelligence, we've actually been using artificial intelligence algorithms for the last 15 years embedded inside of Dice. Uh, we even had them patented about three years ago. And what we ask you to do is to take the entire job posting, literally the entire job posting. Copy and paste it into a search box or search field. We strip out the skills that you're asking for, and in an individual job posting. Most CTOs, CIOs, hiring managers are asking for anywhere between um ten and 30 specific skills. Like I need a person that knows Java as a programming language, but they also have to understand, uh, Amazon Web Services and their storage architecture. They also need to understand NoSQL, because that's the type of database that we use. So they're looking for specific skills. What we do after we have stripped out the skills from the job posting, is we match the skills that are being requested against the 6.5 million profiles inside of dice. And then we give you the top 20 candidates that best, best fit those skills that you're looking for. And you know the geography that you're looking for. Now geography is flexed out. Over the last several years. We used to have, um, most of our customers look for a specific city, but now about 35% of our job postings are remote qualified, which means you have a broader range of candidates that you can actually look for. But again, our paradigm is based on looking at technology skills and not titles, because titles are too ambiguous inside of the technology workforce. 1.7s

U1

So when you're a hiring manager or even a recruiter, a lot of times, even if you know developers and those things, you're not going to be as detailed, obviously, as not as technical. So you're not going to know you're going to know some Java and some high level words, but you know, you're not going to be the expert in that space. And so I think, you know, being able to match that really helps, you know, kind of let the AI find the right candidate. And then maybe a follow on question that I'm curious about. So those 6 million or so profiles, obviously they're not all people looking for jobs, right? I mean, especially like you said, the these people might be at other company, but but with your platform, is it correct to understand that the hiring manager can can find people who are the right candidates, they may or may not be in the market, but as a hiring manager, I'm going to have an opportunity to be able to, uh, recruit that that talent. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Is that correct? 

U2

That's exactly right. I mean, I think this is a really key question that you asked, and that is that we've been around for 34 years, and so we've amassed this large number of profiles, uh, a good percentage of the technology workforce in the United States. But we always say anywhere between 80 and 90% of that technology workforce is passive. They might be open to a, um, opportunity, but they're not actively looking. And in fact, the real important, um, kind of motion behavior for our platform is you find the candidate that fits your needs, and then it's your job to vigorously, aggressively engage in a discussion and convince them that you have an opportunity that's worth their time to talk about. Um, just putting a job posting in a job board for a technology position is the equivalent of putting a billboard out in a, you know, 500 person town in North Dakota. You're not going to get the kind of traffic and the right kind of traffic to that job opportunity. So again, the jobs actually chased the candidates in this particular, uh, part of our economy, not the other way around. 1.7s

U1

Yeah, that is such a good, uh, good analogy. Um, no, I mean, I think that's the game changing part. So I'm glad we kind of highlighted that piece. As you know, again, what we call as spend advantage, um, because these are people you're looking to hire. And um, so, uh, kind of going through the next, uh, question kind of follow up on that. So we talked about kind of the difficulty of finding the right candidates. And obviously you guys do it through. I do it through, um, you know, kind of the millions of profiles that you have. But actually this whole process of finding candidates and hiring candidates are very expensive as well. Right? And the quality is also not as good when you're talking with, you know, the other platforms. So, um, how do for if you're speaking to pretend you're speaking to other CEOs, other CFOs who may not be the hiring manager, but they may not be, you know, fully understanding how these tools, uh, other platforms in the market usually charge and why it's a downside for these organizations using these platforms. Can you kind of maybe educate some of the sea level executives? 

U2

Absolutely. So the two prominent business models inside of this recruitment market are a subscription and also a cost per transaction. So LinkedIn and Dice both offer a subscription. We charge roughly $8,000 per, um, company per year to have access to the dice platform. And LinkedIn charges a lot more than that. And on a per recruiter basis, there's a second business model, which is popularized by indeed, and ZipRecruiter, which is you pay per application that you receive, but it's a black box. They don't tell you how much you're paying per application, per apply by the candidate to your job posting. I would say the best way to think about our value proposition is to say that we know an average technology worker in the United States, just absolutely average, uh, is $111,000 in salary that came out of a tech, uh, salary report that we issued, um, less than a month ago. So it's an expensive position relative to most occupations in the United States economy. If you were to go through a recruiter, you would pay between 20 to 30% of that first year salary. So you'd be paying, um, roughly 20 to $30,000 for every person that you hired through a recruiter. If you use the platform, we believe that you can actually source and engage the talent very efficiently. If you have a recruitment team, that recruitment team can go from the original engagement with the candidate all the way to the offer letter, and you're paying a lot less because again, the entry level subscription is $8,000. 2s

U1

So. So I want to break down that math a little bit. Especially again we're talking about spin advantage the competitive advantage for company spend for the CFO, the CEO, the executives who may not be dealing with this day to day. But but these things can incur I mean, people is one of the highest costs in every company, right? So this can really be impactful here. So let's just say on the, you know, some of these platform job boards, the likes of they charge per application. So is it safe to say, you know, if I post a job and let's say 200 people apply, I'm like, that's wonderful. Like so many people are applying, but maybe half, if not 80% of the people aren't even the right people because obviously a lot of people just click like apply, right? They don't even read the whole thing. Possibly. It's not like Google Ads. People just click right and you can't really control it. So you're paying for potentially a lot of people that, again, aren't the right candidates. Um, and you're hoping and praying that the right candidates actually clicked on your and apply for for your job. Um, and so is that kind of part of the challenge, like maybe potential savings, um, not just saving time, but the cost savings you can you can provide. 

U2

Absolutely. I can't tell you the number of, um, clients of ours that are staffing recruiting firms themselves that say that they've turned off, indeed, because they aren't getting qualified applies, but they are paying for every one of those applies. I, myself, as the CEO of Dice, have used indeed as a test, literally taking one of our technology, uh, openings and posting it to. Indeed, I have not received a single qualified application in five years that I've done this test probably about a dozen times. So, uh, obviously a lot of people are aspirational. And in terms of trying to break into a technology employment situation and a technology job, and they don't meet the qualifications, the skills that I described earlier that are part of that job opening. They are literally applying to the job because they're aspirational in terms of hoping to learn those skills. Now, that's not something that you want for risk mitigation as a CEO, CFO, CTO of your business. And again, I've done the test multiple times and have not been able to find, uh, folks that are qualified for our positions and most of our positions are, um, Java developer positions, because that's what we use as a programming language internal to Dice. 1.5s

U1

Yeah. And so here's, um, here's kind of a what I call $1 billion question. We love asking these billion dollar questions, which is, you know, obviously hearing kind of the business model, the financial model, the savings and the value there. Uh, why do you think, you know, as a CEO, maybe dice haven't been that household name similar to it? Indeed. Right. Indeed. Obviously, when you think about hiring, you just have that branding. Sometimes marketing sometimes is branding, you know, and they think of that, uh, they think of that brand, obviously, you know, indeed covers a lot broader, uh, you know, use cases because there are for every, uh, type of type of role, not just technical, but do you think that's the difference or why? Um, you know, from a dice perspective, haven't been that maybe a household name when when it comes to, um, yeah. Finding technical talent. 

U2

Well, I think you nailed it. I mean, indeed works across the entire United States economy. All occupational positions. Uh, most positions in the United States economy are associated with hospitality and retail. So they largely cover that part of the universe extremely well. I'd say that they go an inch deep on technology and the technology workforce. And so we always say, if you want to really find the right skilled professional for your job opening, and it's a technology oriented set of skills, dice is the tool. But if you're looking for other people like warehouse workers or, uh, somebody that's going to be a, a cook or a person in hospitality in general, working for a motel, then indeed in ZipRecruiter are in fact tailored towards that market. But again, we're very specific to the technology market. They are generalists. And because of the fact that they're generalists, they can, you know, buy advertising on TV and the Super Bowl and whatnot. We are very specifically targeting technology recruiters and technology companies using digital campaigns. So we're more of a rifle shot approach to who we're targeting, as opposed to kind of a broad blast and a general, uh, commercial that would hit the entire market of the United States. 1.6s

U1

Sure. Yeah. No, that makes that makes, um, a lot of sense. Um, no, I mean, it's been a great discussion. I love your kind of feedback. You know, coming from the top, uh, kind of seeing behind the curtains. Right. So, so again, as we continue the conversation here, why do you think hiring hiring managers and or even recruiters, uh, struggle with finding technical talent? And again, we kind of mentioned this previously, but I want you to go a little deeper. I want you to go a little deeper into insights that maybe most normal people wouldn't think of or know. Uh, can you kind of maybe educate the audience a little bit? 

U2

So I think we did talk about the fact that there is a very small unemployment rate associated with the technology workforce. Technology professionals know they are in high demand. And so that idea of just posting a job we call a post and pray doesn't work in our environment. I would go one step further and say that technology professionals know that they're in such high demand that they can look at the whole job opportunity, the whole job package, if it, as it were, and can be very selective. So they also look at the mission of the company, they look at the culture of the company, they look at values. They want to see what the company is all about, because they know that they could be a Java developer. For companies that are having great missions and change the world kind of context. Uh, or they can work as a Java developer in another company. They have a multitude of options. I would also say that as a result of the pandemic, it is very, very apparent that technology professionals know that they can be very effective working from home, and they want the option. If there's one piece of advice that I have for hiring managers and recruiters themselves, it's that technology professionals want to have the flexibility around their work environment, meaning that they either want remote or they want hybrid. They want, um, possibly a different time schedule within the day. They could demand these things, and they know that they have so many options that they're getting them right now, we know that two thirds of survey respondents within our population come back telling us they absolutely want a hybrid work environment, meaning they're not forced back to the office every day of the week. 1.4s

U1

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is, um, that actually brought up a really, uh, interesting point because when I look at a lot of the job boards or even LinkedIn, like, you know, the company profiles are very standardized and, you know, you have a banner, you can have some profile meaning as a candidate. I go to every, you know, if I go to every company, it just looks similar. Um, it all looks the same, the format. Right. And so when you talk about technology talent, where there are so many, they can have so many options. They're trying to really find a like you know, they're trying to be inspired. Right? They're trying to say, why? Why should I come, you know, work here versus somewhere else. Are you guys doing anything different? Um, there to help the companies maybe stand out more? Um, you know, compared to just kind of a standard template. I think you guys are doing something unique there. Is that correct? 

U2

Yes, we are. In fact, I would say that we studied what's called corporate branding for a number of years, and we launched our company page product at the beginning of 2023. So roughly a year ago. That company page allows our clients to post pictures, videos really express what their mission, their culture, and their values are all about. But very importantly, it also allows them to identify what's called their tech stack. Their tech stack are the technologies that they're using inside of their environment to, uh, enact their software and their technology initiatives. And as you would suspect, technology workers that are very selective, that have a lot of different opportunities, they're going to go to the tech stack, those technologies that are cutting edge. They want to keep their skills, um, cutting edge and top of the market. And so by exposing the fact that a company is using Java, that they're coding and react, that they have Docker or Kubernetes or container technologies in general, all these skills mean a lot to the technology workforce. You don't want to be going to a company that is using a set of technologies that are ten years old, 20 years old, because you understand that you're not going to be as relevant for the future. And so, again, being able to express your tech stack, those technical technological skills as a company is super important to attracting the technology workers to your job postings and to the engagement to the conversation itself about the job opportunity. 2s

U1

Yeah. I think, um, again, that is super smart. And, um, you know, I think more, uh, platforms should probably do that. But again, especially again, you talked about, you know, especially with, you know, technical, uh, technology talents, they need that extra, uh, believe they need that extra, um, you know, understanding of the mission, like you said. And, uh, so I think that's super smart. Um, but, okay, so we talked about a lot of the challenges that these companies, you know, hiring managers, uh, would typically face. So a lot of times they don't want to deal with these challenges. And so they do outsource to staffing agencies. And you did mention earlier that, you know, recruiting recruiting firms and staffing firms, I'm sure also are potential potential customer for you guys have not even bigger customers, but they're quite expensive, right? Hiring the staffing agencies. And we've seen some crazy margins when you're especially when you're talking about the top staffing firm. And it's very nontransparent we're all about spin advantage, right, for companies and that spin advantages, knowing what you should be paying for the market, you want to pay for the value, you want to pay for quality, but you should also not overpay, uh, for certain services. Right. And so can you kind of maybe educate, um, the audience a little bit around maybe. How do you help? Let's kind of break it this question into two parts. How do you help companies, uh, hiring managers that are, you know, working within a company that maybe don't want to even with the platform, they don't want to deal with it. They don't have time. They have other things to do. They just want somebody to do it. And then two is how would you help potentially staffing agency that they work with, um, in order to improve, you know, the hiring success as well. 1s

U2

So I have to say that we have a number of staffing, recruiting clients on the platform. We have some of the largest ones in the world, including Robert Half, Randstad, Adecco, uh K force. All of these firms are mega firms making billions of dollars each year. I would say that there is a long tail associated with the staffing industry in the United States. We believe that there is about 18,000 staffing firms, of which 50%, uh, deal with technology oriented talent. And so there's a lot of them out there. And to your point, the staffing model is that you are paying for their management fee on top of that actual person's hourly rate. And what are you buying with that management fee? Well, you're buying flexibility. I would say that there's really three scenarios where a staffing firm makes sense. Uh, you're hiring for an extremely specialized position. That's number one. Number two, your team is growing fast. Or number three, you aren't finding the right candidates. But there's a lot of reasons for using a staffing firm. And there's a lot of staffing firms, like I said, in the United States, how do you figure out whether or not you're paying an exorbitant rate or management fee? Well, you can go to our tech salary report and see how each position compares in terms of the title, seniority, skill set and, um, effectively get to an hourly rate and then see what that staffing and recruiting firm is charging you. Uh, K force as one firm that's a public firm actually does broadcast that rate. Their average rate per hour is $90. And that was from the fourth quarter earnings call for last year. So it's relatively recent information. Sometimes you could pick up those signals. But of course you can again look at our tech staffing or I should say tech um salary report. And you can find in a very fine tuned fashion how each position compares in terms of skill sets, geographies, seniority to get to what you should be paying. If you were to hire that person yourself again, you are trading off that management fee for flexibility more than anything else. And so we do help those staffing recruiting firms ourselves to find candidates. They are looking for the same people at the same time as our regular clients. Our non staffing clients are looking for people and they're competing in the same market for that talent. 2s

U1

Yeah. So how can you then compliment maybe a few seconds on? How do you then help compliment the the hiring managers or who doesn't want to use a staffing firm. But they're also kind of, you know, struggling because they don't have the time and they're not finding the right candidate. They can use your platform, but do you offer any other managed service, professional service, to help them take things off the plate as well? Or is it just, hey, use the platform and, you know, make it so much easier and that's it. And they don't need a staffing firm. 

U2

That's a great question. And we have a small division of about 15 people, which we call sourcing services. And it's really geared towards, um, the enterprise clients that are having problems with hiring for a particular position. So I always give the example that you might be a manufacturing firm and you're used to hiring people for the factory floor, but your CTO suddenly shows up at your door and says, I need a data scientist, or I need a machine learning engineer, and you've never, uh, looked for that kind of a position before. It's completely outside of the realm of your, you know, normal recruiting activity. You can go to our sourcing services division again, 15 people, and we work with these really problematic positions. We will find and vet five candidates and bring back those candidates to the recruiting, um, recruiter or the recruiting manager and say we've vetted their skills. So we've figured out and verified that they do have the right artificial intelligence skills and the right seniority. And they're also interested in engaging in a job opportunity discussion. So that really kind of fulfills kind of 70 to 80% of the entire recruitment effort. But it still puts it in the hands of the recruiter or the hiring manager to do the group interviews or the individual interviews, the offer letter, the negotiation of the offer letter. They still have to bring it home. They have to make sure that they get that individual to say yes and to become part of the team. But we do all the sourcing and the vetting, which is a significant amount of work and especially again, for these more problematic positions, that's our sourcing services division. 1.4s

U1

Also it has. So you guys offer, uh, from a um, ROI perspective, the platform, the data. And then you guys also have can can fulfill on that sourcing side as well. Um, kind of end to end. Okay. Uh, yeah. As we kind of wrap up with, um, you know, a couple last questions here. I mean, this has been been great. And again, everything you talked about a lot of times, we're, you know, on these podcasts, we're educating CEO CFOs who are really from the top looking to optimize the business. But they may not be doing these day to day. Right. And they're not experts in HR or in some of these areas. And so I think we try to, um, put in context, especially your CEO, how can you educate others? So maybe the last question as we go through here is, um, you know, again, we talked about people or usually top three spend for every company. What tips would you give other, you know, C-level CEO CFOs to put together a strategy for hiring, you know, technical talents? How should they really what should they really think about? How should they make sure that their team, whether it's a staffing firm or just hiring managers, can save time and money for the business? 

U2

Great question. Okay, so my first tip is to have a standardized process. You should always have a process with the same dates, the same milestones, the same, you know, steps in it. I would say number two would be to move fast and provide constant feedback. I can't tell you the number of clients that I talked to that say that they had a great candidate that was going through the process, but they were given a job and taken from right underneath them. And that's because it is such a competitive environment that it is very easy for these candidates to find alternative opportunities. You have to keep them engaged. You have to give them that feedback. They always complain about not having enough feedback during a recruitment engagement. The third that I would say is that the the technology community, meaning the hiring manager, the CTO, the CIO, they're very adept at assessing technology skills, but less so in evaluating soft skills and culture fit. And I would say most companies find that you have to have both. You have to have the technology skills and you have to have the culture fit. So that person is an effective member of the team. Uh, the last is what I want to reinforce from earlier in the conversation, which is these technology workers know that they have options and therefore they can demand a flexible work environment. I think more and more of them will be demanding a flexible work environment. So if you say a hard no to that question, you're going to find less talent over the course of time. 1.4s

U1

You're dropping so much. Uh, nuggets. I kind of just come up with a couple other questions for you, but, um. So you talked about soft skills, right? Uh, how how can you know these companies or people look for that or better, uh, evaluate that? Or how can you guys help within that, if anything? Um, if that's usually something, you know, harder for the CTO to, um, to identify. 

U2

And so I have to say that this is on our product roadmap, but not for the near term. But I do think that there is a number of tests, like you think about the classic Myers-Briggs test that can give you some indications of soft skills and what the personality is like. I think you have to be very cautious not to go too far in the direction of trying to assess a person's personality, but there has to be some way to judge whether or not they line up with the right kind of cultural and communication values that you have. I have seen some platforms now start to ask a set of standardized questions, and can evaluate your personality and traits based on the answers and how they're analyzed by AI. Ironically. 1.3s

U1

Yeah. So, uh, last question, uh, for you as we wrap up here. Uh, can you give maybe some insights or data points on, you know, what are some of the top three, let's call it, uh, you know, categories or technologies that are being hired? I'm assuming I suddenly in 2023 is one of the hottest, I'm sure, or even data scientist. But based on data, what have you seen as kind of the top three in-demand, um, technical talents, you know, recently? So 

U2

I would say that's a fantastic question. And I've just thought about the top three by volume. The categories would be Java developer, uh, then second cybersecurity professional, then third cloud engineering and kind of shooting Stratospherically right now is I as number four, I think it will supplant one of the top three. Uh, we have seen a ten x increase in the number of job postings for AI related skills in 2023 versus 2022. Just about every, uh, company in the United States knows that AI is a thing. It's like it's it's an important concept, and they don't know how to wrap their head around it, how it's going to affect their business model. But we're already seeing those really forward looking companies hiring for AI professionals. And you could also see it in the trends associated with business consultants. If you looked at IBM, Deloitte, Accenture, McKinsey, they're hiring mass armies of AI engineers because they know that their larger corporate customers are going to be asking them to experiment and pilot AI projects. But again, the top three areas really right now are Java, cyber and cloud engineering, because there are, you know, secular trends associated with the importance of Java, the importance of making sure that you have a safe environment for your company, meaning you know, you're protecting it from a cybersecurity perspective in a constant move of applications from internal data centers to Azure and AWS and Google Cloud. 1.8s

U1

Yeah. I'm not surprised by, um, the security and, uh, the cloud, but I'm a little surprised by the Java. I mean, it's still a very popular platform, but I didn't I didn't think it would be number one. But now this has been a fantastic conversation. Um, you know, I think together with our partners like yourself, it's all about how do we provide, again, we call a spend advantage to these companies. Um, they spend a lot of money on these people and systems and everything that's needed to run the business. And a lot of times they don't have the data and transparency to be able to know, you know, how to achieve that advantage. Right. So, uh, the last, last question we always ask before we leave with every guest, you you've given a lot of great advice today, art, but, um, if you have to think of one advice, personal and or business advice that you would give, um, to the, to the general public, I mean, you know, things that, you know, you really are passionate about doesn't have to be work, but just something you believe in strongly, I guess. What do you think that be? 1.4s

U2

Uh, it is that word, uh, you know, follow your passion. Uh, there is a lot of people that are in positions where they don't believe in what they're doing day to day, and there's plenty of difficult problems to solve in the world. And as long as you're passionate about solving those problems, you will be, uh, well rewarded in terms of compensation. But you'll also be happy. So I always tell people it doesn't matter whether or not you you're looking over your shoulder and somebody is an investment banker and making more money. You should be involved with something that you really, truly love and are passionate about, and then everything else will follow. 1.2s

U1

I, uh, I love that. Uh, no. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Art, 1.1s

U2

thank you, Victor. I thought the questions were excellent. 

U1

That was an amazing episode of the Spin Advantage podcast, where we show you how we can help you 10x your bottom line savings and top line growth for your business. Hope you enjoy the conversation. And if you want to get the best deals from the guest today, make sure to send us a message at sales@varisource.com.