IT employment ticked up in March and there was an increase in tech job postings in the first quarter, organizations are reporting.
The TechServe Alliance reported the US added 800 IT jobs in March — an increase of 0.02% — for a total employment of more than 5.3 million.
“While growth in the last three months has been modest, it does reflect a positive trend after 23 consecutive months of contraction or no growth,” TechServe Alliance CEO Mark Roberts said in a press release. “Growth in IT employment aligns with the strength seen in the overall labor market.”
IT unemployment held steady at 2.4% in the first quarter, Roberts noted. This reflects full employment and further confirms the positive trajectory of IT jobs, he said.
“While there are several economic, political, and geopolitical risk factors that continue to cause some employers to hire cautiously, demand for tech talent in high-demand skill sets such as cybersecurity and AI remains strong,” Roberts said.
Separately, IT job board Dice reported its analysis of data from Lightcast found a 16% increase in tech job postings in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Tech job postings from nonstaffing firms rose 15%, while postings from staffing firms rose 23%.
Tech recruiter job postings also rose 16% in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter.
“It’s encouraging to see companies hiring for tech recruiter positions, especially following the layoffs we’ve seen in the past year and a half,” Dice CEO Art Zeile said.
Zeile also pointed to an analysis recently released by CompTIA that employers added 191,000 new tech job postings in March.
“The uptick in tech job postings is indicative of the tech job market’s resilience and adaptability and paints a picture of strengthening in demand for tech talent across industries,” he said.
In the new gold rush of artificial intelligence, Indeed, the large job aggregation site is infusing fast-emerging technology to make the job search process more efficient and effective. Its new tool, SmartSourcing, strategically integrates various AI technologies to enhance job search features and assist users in finding new job opportunities more easily.
In a phone interview with Raj Mukherjee, executive vice president and general manager at Indeed, he shared the unveiling of the job aggregations site’s AI recruiting and job-matching features.
“Gone are the days of spray and pray for both sides of the equation,” Mukherjee said. “We know that sending an application to hundreds of jobs or sending messages to hundreds of mismatched candidates only prolongs the process of actually finding a job.”
Here’s How It Works
Indeed has utilized AI technology for over two decades and is continuing to leverage machine learning algorithms to create a job-matching system that connects job seekers with on-target, relevant employment opportunities. Once the user creates a profile or uploads a résumé, Indeed extracts relevant information, such as skills, experiences, education levels, and several keywords.
The AI algorithms analyze the job hunter’s profile and résumé data. Identifying the requisite qualifications and areas of expertise will make it easier to match a job seeker with the right opportunity.
“Employers don’t want to sift through hundreds or thousands of résumés, and we want to make sure that we help them find the best-qualified candidates to fill their role—not just the most applicants,” Mukherjee stated
The more your specific qualifications are in concert with the job requirements, the higher you'll rank in search results. Additionally, AI factors in data points such as prior work histories, job responsibilities, preferred locations, past search histories, and other metrics to make a match. Over time, the job-matching process gets more fine-tuned.
According to Mukherjee, Indeed’s AI-driven technology results in employers saving an average of 8.1 hours per week. “With instant matching and personalized recommendations, 95% of employers confirm that 'Smart Sourcing' greatly reduces time-to-hire,” he added.
“Candidate highlights provide an AI-generated summary to help employers easily determine whether candidates are a good fit for their role. For qualified candidates, employers can then use Smart Messages to quickly connect with AI-generated personalized outreach," Mukherjee said about the process.
Other AI Features
There are other relatively new and improved AI features on Indeed to help enhance the job search experience.
- There is an AI-powered work experience writer tool that helps job candidates write better descriptions about their personal work experiences by using suggested relevant keywords and highlighting achievements.
- The platform allows uploading and managing multiple résumés, making it easier to tailor applications to specific job requirements.
- AI-powered candidate summaries provide recruiters with a snapshot of a candidate’s skills and experience extracted from their résumé and profile information.
- Employers can leverage AI to automate the scheduling process, streamlining communication with potential candidates.
- AI-powered smart messaging enables employers to send personalized messages to candidates at scale, potentially improving response rates.
- AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants will be integrated into the platform to guide job seekers during the application process. These bots effectively address queries and offer support as individuals navigate through the job application journey, enhancing user experience and convenience.
AI Recruiting And Job Matching Is Growing
There are several existing startups and large companies that are also leveraging AI to help with different aspects of the job search and hiring process.
LinkedIn, the social media site owned by Microsoft, has utilized AI for years, matching job seekers with opportunities and connecting candidates with recruiters and talent acquisition professionals.
LinkedIn unveiled in October its AI recruiter feature along with a career coaching chatbox. The go-to social media site for job seekers uses AI to match job seekers with job openings based on their skills and experience. It also provides personalized job recommendations and career coaching. Its product—Recruiter 2024—aims to enable recruiters and talent acquisition professionals to find on-target candidates for their jobs faster.
The feature offers a clean interface with a rectangular box in which the recruiter and talent leaders can use natural language and put their hiring goals in their own words. For example, you can write, “I’m searching for a software engineer with 10 years of experience,” and then add some specific skills, background, and experiences pertinent to the role. AI combined with LinkedIn’s massive data can produce the candidates the employer desperately seeks.
Recruiter 2024 frees search professionals from daily rote and repetitive tasks. They can spend more time preparing their candidates for interviews instead of painfully sifting through hundreds of unbefitting résumés. For contingency recruiters, finding the right candidate before their competitors is a race. If they fail to make the placement, the recruiter doesn't get paid for the time and energy they put into the search.
Additionally, LinkedIn offers a career coaching chatbox based, in part, on content built by more than 3,000 career experts. AI-powered coaching in LinkedIn Learning features a chatbot experience offering both real-time bespoke advice tailored to the content and personalized recommendations for your needs, career goals, and questions.
Hired
Hired is a job search platform that uses AI to match job seekers with job openings based on their skills and experience. This is achieved by analyzing job seekers' résumés, cover letters, and other pertinent profile information, as well as the job descriptions of the companies they are interested in.
Hired, backed by the Adecco Group, has over three million tech-related professionals on the site and more than 10,000 companies around the world on its marketplace to match thousands of active and qualified candidates. Talent acquisition professionals save an average of 45 sourcing hours for each role using Hired’s platform, according to CEO Josh Brenner
The site also uses AI to match job seekers' behavioral traits with the attributes that are most likely to be successful in a particular role.
Employers that have joined Hired’s marketplace have a higher demand for specialized engineers, especially for AI applications, such as machine learning, as well as cybersecurity, data, and backend engineers.
Phenom
Phenom uses artificial intelligence to automate tasks and personalize job searches. The technology can predict and guide job seekers to the roles that fit their backgrounds. It also enables employers to match people with the right jobs. This includes finding on-target talent within their organization and promoting them internally. Its software is embedded into an array of job sites with some of the largest companies in the world. The career-tech company has 300 million users and 1 million jobs posted in 130 countries.
Wellfound
Wellfound, a talent job site focused on startups, has an AI-powered sourcing tool called RecruiterCloud. It goes beyond simple keyword matching and aggregates billions of data points to enrich candidate profiles with missing skills and insights about their work experience.
Wellfound, formerly AngelList Talent, provides a centralized platform for recruiters to manage the hiring process. With millions of job seekers using Wellfound's platform, RecruiterCloud has access to a vast talent pool to help recruiters find the best matches for their roles.
The technology integrates with Slack, enabling recruiters to more easily connect with their sources, review candidates, and message their top leads. It also syncs with applicant tracking systems to track candidate progression, avoid duplicate outreach, and maximize their time and efficiency.
MoonHub
Moonhub, backed by investors including Day One Ventures, Alphabet’s GV, Khosla Ventures, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, and former YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki, leverages AI to enable internal corporate talent acquisition teams and outside third-party recruiters to source and screen candidates.
It looks beyond the typical attributes to find candidates who are an excellent fit for any job opportunity. The technology sources potential candidates from across the internet, searching GitHub, StackOverflow, LinkedIn, and other sites.
After identifying candidates, Moonhub screens them through automated assessments to further validate their skills and abilities that match the job description. This helps filter candidates before human review, saving time for recruiters from having to go through hundreds or even thousands of résumés manually.
Human recruiters then manually review the screened candidates to evaluate their experience, portfolios, projects, and other qualifications. The process uniquely combines AI screening along with the human judgment of recruiters.
Allowing AI to do the behind-the-scenes work frees recruiters to focus on the relationship-driven aspects of the hiring process to ensure the match is suitable for both the candidate and the company.
US wage growth returned to 2019 levels, according to data from jobs website Indeed. It found national posted wage growth slowed to year-over-year growth of 3.1% in March, a rate about equal to the average for 2019.
Wage growth is down from 3.3% year over year in February and its recent peak of 9.3% in January 2022.
However, growth is not the same for all sectors with some showing faster growth.
Indeed the legal sector showed the fastest growth in the legal sector with a three-month average growth of 5.7% in the three months ending March 2024 compared to the three months ended September 2023.
Legal was followed by dental and childcare at 4.8% each.
“But while year-over-year wage growth in these sectors is currently the strongest observed among the dozens of sectors analyzed, growth in both has been relatively sedate throughout much of the post-pandemic wage boom — especially compared to a handful of sectors that were growing incredibly fast just a few years ago but have since rapidly come back to earth,” according to Indeed.
A sector with some of the slowest wage growth was the food prep and service sector, which saw an increase of 2.4%, according to Indeed. The sector has posted some of the fastest post-pandemic in January 2022 when it peaked at 15.4%.