The challenge of finding excellent candidates to fill technology roles of all kinds has been well documented. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, employers are now recruiting promising students well before their college graduation in an effort to fill those spots—especially for roles enabling digital transformation. The article cited RPA as one of several industries engaged in this process, as companies compete for relatively few qualified candidates.
“Rapid innovation also is boosting competition by creating IT needs that didn’t exist a few years ago,” the WSJ piece said. “That is shrinking the pool of in-demand workers with unique skills and experience in areas including artificial intelligence, robotic process automation and blockchain.”
According to an IT trade group cited in the report, the number of U.S. tech jobs is expected to grow 13.1 percent by 2026 from 2016, compared with 10.7 percent for all occupations. U.S. employers had more than 320,000 open IT jobs last month, led by software and application developers, the group said.