Junior training – Newspaper Kommersant No. 44 (7489) of 03/16/2023

Russian companies are experiencing a shortage of entry-level IT specialists (junior): the number of open vacancies is twice the number of resumes, calculated in Skillbox and HeadHunter. Due to the shortage, businesses began to actively employ students, as well as hire temporary employees more often. Market participants themselves assure that so far the priority is still high and medium-level specialists. But Kommersant’s sources in the IT market confirm that companies are increasingly hiring junior specialists, especially if they are running out of government contracts.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the study of the Skillbox and HeadHunter platforms, dedicated to the dynamics of demand for entry-level IT specialists. It follows from it that during 2022, more than 67 thousand vacancies were opened on the market for IT specialists without work experience (junior) and about 310 thousand for employees with work experience from one to three years. At the same time, the total number of applicants in these categories is 214 thousand people – almost half the demand. In addition, the vast majority of employers (72%) began to actively consider candidates who have undergone retraining for open positions.

Representatives from the energy and financial sectors interviewed by Skillbox and HeadHunter say that their number of vacancies for positions of junior IT specialists has remained at the level of 2021. But industrial enterprises and IT companies confirm that entry-level specialists are needed: according to the survey, the average number of vacancies in this category has increased by 25%. The shortage of personnel forced Russian companies to change their general approach to hiring, HeadHunter notes: almost a third of those surveyed began to attract specialists on a temporary basis, another third began to be more loyal to remote work. A quarter of small businesses responded that they actively employ students.

“Many of our clients and partners have really begun to actively hire junior specialists, as they need to make up for the shortage of personnel due to the departure of middle and senior specialists who have gone abroad,” says Daniil Pilipenko, director of the SymbioWay IT recruitment center, adding that companies are more willing than before to train inexperienced employees within the organization.

But not all market participants agree with analysts’ assessments. The number of vacancies for beginner IT specialists remains at the level of 2022, says Anna Stepanova, Director for Educational Projects and Relations with VK Universities. “Last year, more than 500 young specialists came to work with us, and 67% of them grew to the middle level during the year,” says Ms. Stepanova.

VimpelCom says that for the company, “a priority is given to specialists of a higher level – middle and senior.” In “Yandex” they call the demand for junior and senior level specialists “uniform”.

Some companies may hire junior developers for specific projects. “For example, having won a government contract to develop a solution, they do not have enough experienced employees to implement it. Then they recruit junior-level specialists in order to fulfill their obligations to the customer, ”says the interlocutor of Kommersant in one of the specialized software associations. However, he adds, this does not mean that novice specialists will remain in companies after the implementation of projects: “Many are then weeded out.”

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, Russians became more actively interested in obtaining additional education in the field of IT. In the spring of 2022, educational platforms talked about a multiple increase in demand for courses in programming, data analytics, linking the trend with the desire of Russians to master skills that do not depend on the country of residence (see Kommersant dated April 30, 2022).

But for the most part, such courses are a compilation of information from open sources wrapped in a beautiful shell, says Boris Babushkin, head of the implementation group at CSoft Group (СSoft): “This gives rise to a cautious attitude of IT companies towards candidates who have graduated from such programs.”

Yulia Yurasova, Nikita Korolev