Category: Hiring an IT consultant

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Hiring an IT consultant IT Decision-makers

Choosing the Right Recruiting Partner for Your IT Needs

right recruitment partner

In the rapidly evolving landscape of IT, hiring and retaining top talent continue to pose challenges for modern enterprises. Also, the ongoing skills deficit, exacerbated by the fast-changing technological terrain, necessitates a strategic edge for IT leaders and HR managers. Therefore, choosing the right recruiting partner remains crucial. Explore our updated tips for selecting the ideal partner to address your current IT talent needs.

Need advice on how to start or develop your consulting business in tech or IT? Join Mindquest and get support from our team of experts.


Choosing the Right Recruiting Partner: The impact of technology

Digital transformation permeates every aspect of modern business, including recruiting and human resources. When assessing a staffing firm, pay attention to how it leverages technology to enhance operations and deliver superior service. In today’s context, it’s essential for an IT staffing firm to embrace technology fully.

Consider advancements in AI tools, which now play a pivotal role in expediting the recruitment process. AI enables swift processing of extensive candidate data, including previous roles, areas of expertise, and preferences. In a field where time is critical, the ability to rapidly match candidate profiles with company requirements is a decisive advantage.

Dedicated Support and Expertise: A Dual Perspective

Most staffing firms traditionally combine client management and candidate identification into a single role. However, the best firms take a dual-perspective approach. One team manages client interactions, gathering position details and requirements, while another team focuses on identifying the right candidate. This separation enhances efficiency, speed, and the overall quality of work. It allows both client management and candidate sourcing to offer more personalized, dedicated support to hiring companies.

In the current landscape, with the increasing complexity of roles and the ongoing talent shortage, the need for dedicated expertise has never been more apparent. Specialized skills required for a position can vary significantly based on the field and seniority. To address this, leading staffing firms structure their teams by specialization, ensuring staff members are proficient in the specific areas of expertise required for a given vacancy.

Innovation through Data and Insights: Adapting to the Current Market

The third piece of the puzzle is data. As it happens in any other industry, quality insights are at the heart of a successful IT hiring strategy. Look for recruiters who know how to make the most of the data they come by with and mine.

Moreover, being in permanent contact with organisations and IT professionals allows the best staffing firms to develop a deep and well-rounded understanding of current industry trends. These firms have a good sense of the challenges and needs driving mid- and long-term goals for clients and candidates. In addition to this, data-savvy recruiters can provide you with a more qualitative level of market intelligence – like the skill requirements and salary for a typical position – from which to derive actionable insights. 

Navigating the Dynamic IT Landscape

In conclusion, the challenges of hiring in IT persist, but the strategies for overcoming them have evolved. Choosing a recruiting partner is more critical than ever, with technology, dedicated support, and data-driven insights at the forefront. As the IT landscape continues to shift, selecting a partner who adapts and innovates ensures your organization secures the top-tier talent needed to thrive in the dynamic IT market.

Explore how Mindquest can be your strategic IT recruiting partner.


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Hiring an IT consultant IT Decision-makers

S/4HANA’s Growing Momentum

S4/HANA momentum

German ERP vendor SAP has kick-started the new decade with renewed strength. After undergoing a series of leadership changes in the past year, the company appears set on re-examining its product and strategy roadmaps based on customer feedback and more realistic self-assessment. Not surprisingly, it is S/4HANA – the new iteration of SAP’s core ERP system — the one leading the charge.

The firm was originally scheduled to discontinue support for its current ECC Business Suite in 2025, hoping the deadline would prompt a critical mass of its customers to transition to S/4HANA. However, after sluggish early adoption rates and mounting stakeholder pressure, the new leadership team decided back in February to give customers a much-needed extension.

Under the new roadmap, SAP ensures first-party support for ECC until 2030 – albeit free, general-access maintenance will be discontinued in 2027. At the same time, the company is future-proofing its customers’ investment in S/4HANA by promising platform support until the end of 2040.  

Although it is still early to tell the extent to which this new policy will impact adoption in the coming months, the measures have been well-received among the community. Additionally, the migration to S/4HANA is only poised to keep gaining momentum as digital transformation initiatives across the globe enter a more mature phase.  

Accelerating S/4HANA adoption

A few factors have been holding up widespread adoption of S/4HANA. First of all, there seems to be a generalised confusion around the benefits and specifics capabilities of S/4HANA. A recent study by Resulting IT revealed that SAP consultants are only marginally more knowledgeable in the platform than their clients.

The insight is pretty telling and suggests that SAP could have failed in its past efforts to communicate with its stakeholders and manage change. Thankfully, that problem has a relatively easy solution. The latest changes in leadership and the extension of ECC support signal the company’s awareness of this issue and increase confidence that it will be addressed.

Understanding S/4HANA is crucial for its adoption. This might sound like an obvious requirement for buying into a new product, but it is especially important in S/4HANA. This is not a simple software update that can be installed over the weekend. The next-generation ERP suite implies a profound redesign in terms of architecture that requires companies to invest a lot of resources and re-evaluate internal processes to carry out the migration. On top of that, existing customers who have already invested a lot of money in ECC customizations will have to start from scratch.

Therefore, it is paramount that the decision to embark on a migration project stems from a solid business case if it wants to succeed. It is never easy to convince entire teams and organisations to change their processes, but trying to do so without strong arguments and a clear roadmap can be dangerous. Moving to S/4HANA is not exclusively an IT call. It requires that business leaders across the organisation are involved in the decision-making and willing to implement changes.

Time will tell how SAP’s renewed focus on S/4HANA translates into client adoption. However, recent announcements make us think the company is on the right track and the S/4HANA will only gain momentum from now on.

Is your company planning to move to S/4HANA but is still not sure when? You might want to hurry things up.

If you are a specialist in SAP technologies but still haven’t gotten your feet wet with S/4HANA, here is why and how you should do it.      

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Hiring an IT consultant IT Decision-makers

The rise of tech freelancers

The rise of tech freelancers
Independent IT workers make up a significant part of the workforce with the rise of tech freelancers. And their numbers are growing exponentially.

Not that long ago, freelancing was a somewhat mysterious concept reserved for a few lucky ones and the creative types. Nowadays, independent workers make up a significant part of the workforce with the rise of tech freelancers. And their numbers are growing exponentially. This is especially true in IT, where skill shortages and the constant need for IT professionals across all industries provide the perfect conditions for a freelance lifestyle.   

We take a look at the factors propelling (and hindering) this transformation.  

A new office environment

This rise in freelancing is in large part due to the generational shift in the workplace.

By the end of 2020, millennials will have caught up with Generation X, with each making up 35% of the world’s labour. At the same time, those born after 1997 (Gen Z) will have established a solid foothold in the workplace with 25% of the total.

A recent survey of more than 7,000 freelancers in over 150 countries revealed that a staggering 70% of independent workers are under the age of 35. Those younger than 25 represent 21% of the total.   

This new workforce configuration is introducing important changes, from corporate culture to salary expectations or how teams operate. Considering that, by 2025, millennials will represent three-quarters of all employees and many of them will be in managerial positions, these new standards will have a big impact on recruitment moving forward. Concepts like flexible schedules, hypermobility and freelancing are becoming more ubiquitous and sought after.

Want to become an IT freelancer/contractor?

>>> Careers in Tech and IT: Towards a Freelancisation of Permanent Positions?

>>> IT Job Hunting Done Well: A Step-by-Step Guide

A freelance-friendly scene

Albeit often accompanied by controversy, the emergence of the so-called gig economy has too contributed to the normalisation of the freelance life. While some tout the benefits of this labour model, such as greater flexibility or financial freedom, others consider it a source of precarious employment. Whereas that could be argued when it comes to very specific sectors, the reality is that tech freelancers generally enjoy an advantageous position in comparison to their in-house counterparts.

Yes. Independent workers must deal with limited social protections, fluctuating activity and internal red tape. However, the average daily rate of tech freelancers fluctuates between €350 and €800 – well above the average rate of salaried employees in most countries. They also express a 4-out-of-5 satisfaction with their lifestyle.

Programming and IT make up 29% of the global freelance workforce, sharing the top three with web and graphic design. The fit between IT and a freelance lifestyle is clear. A highly coveted skillset that is relevant to almost all industries gives IT professionals the flexibility and bargaining power required to go independent. IT contractors are also among the best-paid freelancers.

A new regulatory landscape with the rise of tech freelancers

But freelancing faces some roadblocks too. All around the world, new regulations on temporary employment are being put in place in an effort to avoid precariousness and reduce the disparity between permanent and short-term positions. Nonetheless, some of these well-meaning measures can end up doing more damage than good.

A good example of this problem is the UK’s IR35. Set to kick in on April of this year, this piece of legislation plans to increase employment tax costs for those companies who consider a contractor as an employee in all but name. Although the law is intended to discourage companies from abusing temporary contracts for tax-saving purposes, what it could mean in practice is that companies would steer clear of contractors altogether.

Both the freelance community and businesses are pressing for the legislation to be re-examined.  

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