Demand for entry-level IT specialists has grown in Russia

In Russia, an increased demand for entry-level IT specialists (junior) was recorded, reported Kommersant newspaper citing a study of the Skillbox and HeadHunter platforms.

The number of open vacancies for junior-specialists has doubled compared to the number of registered resumes, follows from the data. Also, 72% of employers began to consider employees who have undergone retraining more.

According to the platforms, against the background of the shortage, Russian companies have become more likely to attract employees on a temporary basis, as well as to hire students.

At the same time, Yandex called the demand for junior and senior level specialists “uniform”, and VimpelCom said that higher-level specialists, middle and senior, are in priority. According to Anna Stepanova, director of educational projects and university relations at VK, the number of vacancies for junior programmers remains at the level of 2022.

In August 2022, analysts from HeadHunter and Skypro Online University reportedthat it has become more difficult for graduates of IT courses to get a job. At that time, the interviewed employers said that they began to look for novice specialists less often and that such a crisis could most of all affect workers who changed their specialization.

According to Sergey Ryzhikov, co-founder of the Bitrix-24 service, the increase in risks when hiring graduates of online courses is due to their lack of systematic education. Pavel Kulakov, CEO of the Oxygen cloud service provider, then said that “juniors are used in companies as a talent pool for the future” and such developers “can easily fly to where they were promised a bigger salary” after upgrading their skills to middle- and senior-specialists.

In January, HeadHunter analysts noted a pay cut for IT developers. Then the average salary for a junior specialist was around 100,000 rubles. per month – 13% less than a year earlier. The remuneration of labor for middle-level specialists (middle) also decreased – up to 160,000 rubles. (eleven%). However, the salary of a highly qualified developer (senior) was about 250,000 rubles, which is 4% higher than last year.

A HeadHunter representative suggested that one of the reasons for the correction in the salary expectations of IT specialists was the influx of junior developers. In his opinion, the growth of such specialists may be associated with the spread of online programming courses.