Georgia technology leaders believe the tech workforce will continue to increase. Most participants (77.54%) indicated employment will increase in the next year and 87% indicated it will increase in the next 5 years.
Key positions this year include applications developers and sales/marketing indicating companies are increasing investment in sales of new solutions. In the next 5 years, machine learning/artificial intelligence experts, cyber security experts and big data modeler/architects will be in greater demand. This signifies tech companies are feeling the pressure to better manage cyber security. Also, more companies are investing in innovative applications of machine learning, AI, and big data.
Technology leaders continue to have challenges attracting and retaining the millennial workforce, managing upskill of the current workforce, and finding qualified talent for open positions.All three were also identified as top challenges in 2017.
Personal connections continue to be the most effective source for finding employment and filling positions as participants ranked personal networking (16.76%), internal referrals (15.74%) and LinkedIn (15%) as top hiring sources.
As more companies are focusing on “big data” and sophisticated analytics for services and operations, artificial intelligence experts, data scientists and big data modelers continue to be the most difficult positions to fill.
