A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives: a curated forum reserved for leaders nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the Construction Tech Review Advisory Board.
Page Executive
Get the Edge on the Digital Revolution
Sam Randall
Digital Transformation is inevitability for every business and understanding how technology can support and develop your company’s business strategy is an essential part of a leader’s skill set. As business and technology continues to intertwine, establishing a tech strategy is increasingly the ultimate responsibility of the CEO.
However, business leaders must ask themselves a simple question: Why are they transforming and what problem are you trying to fix? For any transformation project to be successful, you need to understand where you are, where you want to get to and decide what will be the best way to get you there.
Digital Transformation is changing the Market
In Singapore, technology continues to be on the rise with many large and small organizations focusing on areas such as next generation work spaces, robotic process automation, AI and IoT. We are seeing a number of tech disruptors emerging in HR, legal tech, insurance, telco and banking.
It seems that every company has embarked on their own tech transformation journey, but what does this mean for the recruitment market?
A Candidate Driven Market
Currently, according to a Tech in Asia report the Singapore and Hong Kong start-up market have about 30-35% positions unfilled and open (jobs open / companies registered). The talent crunch has been a challenge for a number of businesses for a quite some time and we don’t necessarily see this improving in the near to mid-term.
Further to this, Temasek and Google recently published a whitepaper predicting that E-commerce is set to triple in size over the next five years. In line with this in SEA, there is a lot of venture capitalist money being funneled into tech start-ups trying to capitalize on how technology is changing consumer behavior. This means that tech professionals today have many options available for them and often don’t need to actively search for new roles.
Companies have a tough time attracting and retaining talent and the recruitment market reflects this as there are more jobs than candidates. The more modern the discipline, the more difficult it is to find the right person.
Digital transformation will produce challenges for many businesses, and there may be some roles which disappear altogether from the market
Consultancies and in-house recruiters can’t hire fast enough to fill all the positions they have on their books.
How are we filling the Skills Gap?
There is an element of up skilling and technology outsourcing in companies to help fill their skills gaps. However, if you are looking for a CTO with knowledge in building a scalable E-commerce platform with different cloud providers, for example, many companies are looking at people with existing skills in this area, rather than for someone to join and up skill.
The Singaporean government is making great strides towards helping identify skill gaps in the population and implement training and up skilling initiatives in some of those areas, however this will take some time to really take effect on the market and may not offer solutions for immediate requirements.
Trending Roles
As companies become more mature and build larger scale offerings, the tech challenge shifts to become more toward how the platform can support a diverse and expansive user base. This involves building scalable, secure platforms where they can sandbox new ideas, and testing viability of new products in a much faster way. However, candidates in this market are in high demand and as such are offered very competitive packages.
Head of Product and Chief Product Officers are vital to any business, as they tie tech and the business together with the aim of monetizing. They have an eye for opportunities in the market, an understanding of the look and feel of what the product should be whilst maintaining a deeply understand their consumer’s needs.
CTOs with experience building scalable platforms across multiple technologies are in high demand, as are sales professionals with deep knowledge of technology solutioning and how their products and services are able to give a competitive edge.
Get the Edge on the Revolution
The good news is that it’s well documented that each previous industrial revolution has created more jobs than it destroyed. My advice to candidates is that it is key to keep up dated with trends and technologies. If you are looking to up skill it is good to focus on something that will give you skills that will survive the upcoming evolution of business. Focus on cloud transformation, process automation, product management, utilizing and understanding data, and other modern tech.
A Trusted Partner Can Help
Digital transformation will produce challenges for many businesses, and there may be some roles which disappear altogether from the market. However, we do not yet know what the landscape will look like coming out the other side of this change. If you are going through a digital transformation it is essential to understand what you are trying to achieve and what this really means for you: you need to define your desired outcome and criteria for success.
Having a trusted and impartial advisor on these matters, whether it is a strong internal technical management team or 3rd party advisor / consultancy, is the best way to keep yourself informed and know that the choices you are making for your business are the right ones. As a candidate, understanding what is going on may also help you stay relevant during the current digital transformation wave.
It is also key to understand the talent market and speaking with an expert recruitment partner, like Page Executive, is a great way to understand the availability of talent. We spend a lot of our time talking to business leaders can be a source of information on how other companies are dealing with the same problem and perhaps some of the common pitfalls that they are facing.
