Sanderson have recently been featured in the Financial Times following new research suggesting that half of UK businesses plan to prioritise investment in artificial intelligence (AI) over hiring staff due to the decision of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ to increase employers’ tax bills.

Commentators have suggested that many companies are beginning to see more of the potential that AI can offer them in terms of productivity, and a recent poll from BCG has even revealed that 44% of responders from the 251 UK businesses surveyed are investing in AI as a priority this year.

Staff with AI skills

This rise in the use of AI has led companies to look for staff with skills related to this technology.

Our data has suggested that demand for AI engineers in the UK jumped in the first half of 2024, despite lay-offs in the wider tech sector over the preceding 18 months.

James Corcoran, head of recruitment in our Government and Defence practice went on to say “AI will replace some jobs, support some jobs and generate some jobs, it will balance itself out.”

To read the full article in the Financial Times, please click here.

If you would like to access more data around the emergence of AI related skillsets, you can download our Tech & Digital Insights Report here.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you would like to discuss the use of AI in your business, or are interested in hiring staff with skills in this area of technology.

Sanderson’s Senior Consultant Abigail Tittley recently attended the Women in Tech Employer Awards in London. As a specialist in the technology recruitment field and a passionate advocate for women working in the technology space, this was an event not to be missed celebrating companies and individuals making a real difference for women in tech.

We sat down with Abigail to hear all about her key takeaways from the evening and learn more about her work in advocating for meaningful industry change by spreading awareness, tackling unconscious bias and providing a platform for women in tech to share their stories. Here is what Abigail had to say.

DE&I in technology

“Diversity and inclusion are increasingly prominent topics across the tech industry, with a number of businesses around the world launching DE&I Initiatives centred around attracting and retaining underrepresented talent. With less than one-third of the world’s technology workforce being women, I believe there is a continued need to tackle gender disparity in the sector, and celebrate the exceptional achievements that support women through their career.

This month I had the opportunity to do just that and join some my network at the Women in Tech Employer Awards in London. The Women in Tech Employer Awards celebrates employers, allies and exceptional women for advancing gender diversity in the tech industry, commemorating initiatives that promote inclusivity and career growth. Held this year at the beautiful Hilton Park Lane Hotel, it’s a wonderful opportunity to celebrate, network and witness outstanding efforts across innovation, recruitment and leadership.

Here are my key takeaways…

The event was managed wonderfully, looking at companies of all sizes that were committed to gender diversity, treating it as an essential and impactful goal. It was brilliant to see larger businesses, like Experian, setting a high standard by introducing market-leading initiatives that can challenge competitors to change, and influence the industry. Equally impressive, was seeing smaller companies, like Synthace, that are embedding DE&I principles from the ground up, ensuring these values are part of their core framework.

Throughout the evening, I had incredible conversations about the efforts being made to advance DE&I, with many companies building programs centred around apprenticeships. Tech apprenticeships can nurture diverse, capable talent, building the talent pipeline of the future through combining academic and practical experience, equipping students with industry-relevant skills from day one.

So what about myself…

I’ve been working to support Women in Tech throughout my time in the permanent technology recruitment team at Sanderson. I’ve been speaking with women at all stages of their career within the tech industry and showcasing their experiences through social media, building a portfolio of role models to help inspire others and highlight what’s possible, as well as what needs to change. My aim is to keep raising awareness on the challenges women face in tech and the wider workplace, being able to offer practical and actionable advice on improving workplace policies. I want to expand this work by connecting with more women and AFAB individuals, advising businesses on creating positive change, and advocating through podcasts, networking events, and other opportunities as they come along.”

If you would like to find out more about Abigail’s work with women in technology, you can reach out to her on [email protected]

To find out more about Sanderson’s Technology team, please click here.

Are we going to start seeing an increase in hiring activity in the Technology & Digital sector as we move into 2025?

With more and more contractors open to permanent roles and the ongoing trend we’re seeing of many companies preferring to fill roles by hiring in external talent and focussing on experience over potential (we’re talking a whopping 80% of tech jobs looking for experienced candidates…!) now may be the time to start making your offer as appealing as possible if you want to snap up the top candidates.

In our brand new Technology & Digital Insights Report we explore current market trends and lay out actionable data to help you get ahead of the hiring game.

With a deep-dive into Data Engineers and the key factors both employers and candidates are looking for, this is one not to be missed.

Download your copy in the link below, and get set for the New Year.

At the end of October this year Sanderson were delighted to once again collaborate with Tech West England Advocates and our colleagues at Sanderson iKas Hong Kong to sponsor Tech Mission to Hong Kong for 2024.

This fantastic event takes place every year and offers founders and scale-ups in the technology industry an unrivalled insight into the tech ecosystem in Hong Kong as a potential destination to set up their business.

Attendees enjoy a jam-packed programme from exploring the vibrant city, meeting with Hong Kong accelerators and incubators as well as the opportunity to pitch at the official ‘UK Tech Founder Showcase Event’ as part of the StartmeupHK Festival.

Adam Kennedy, Country Director for Sanderson i-Kas shared his key takeaways from the week and this year’s mission:

“It has been fantastic to once again get involved with this Mission – the event really is the perfect opportunity to showcase the scale, diversity and quality of the tech community here in Hong Kong. And this year’s Tech Mission was no different! We have been able to show once again that Hong Kong really is pushing the boundary on being the biggest research and innovation hub in Asia, and this year’s delegates were incredibly impressed with all the city had to offer, not just the tech ecosystem, and many are now exploring setting up their businesses here.

The week was hard work for all and packed full of activities and networking, but also lots of fun with some great new connections made. We’re thrilled that it looks like we’ll be seeing strong partnerships forming with some of the businesses looking to set up here, and Sanderson can’t wait to work with them to assist in setting up their teams and filling talent gaps as they grow here.”

We can’t wait to see what next year might bring – so watch this space!

You can find out more about the Mission here.

Did you know that while 39% of the total Java Developer talent pool is based in London, there are other UK cities quickly gaining traction on establishing their own tech presence?

In this new Monthly Spotlight report we shine a light on this software engineering role and from Bristol to Glasgow take a deep dive into where this talent is based, typical salary ranges for the role and explore what a typical career path would be.

Do your salaries stack up to trends in your region? (Sneak peak: the gap is actually shortening between Northern and Southern salaries due to the rise of remote work…)

Sanderson is excited to announce that following the hugely successful inaugural event last year, we are once again collaborating with Tech West England Advocates and our colleagues at Sanderson iKas Hong Kong to sponsor Tech Mission to Hong Kong for 2024 during 21^st-25^th October 2024.

For any founders and scale-ups in the technology industry, including those in the clean tech, health tech, fintech, AI and robotics space, this unique 5-day will offer an unrivalled opportunity to explore the Hong Kong tech ecosystem as a platform to expand your business into.

What does the event involve?

During the Mission to Hong Kong week tech owners and attendees will enjoy a comprehensive programme including being taken on an eye-opening journey through the thriving tech ecosystem and vibrant city of Hong Kong, visit several science parks with accelerators and incubators, meet counterpart Hong Kong founders and investors, foster vital relationships and gain cutting-edge market insight, participate in a reverse pitch investor event and enjoy dinners and networking evenings with partners such as KPMG, Pitchflix and Eaton Club.

Attendees will also have opportunity to pitch at the official ‘UK Tech Founder Showcase Event’ as part of the StartmeupHK Festival. There will be unique networking opportunities with not only your tech founder peers, but potential investors, influential venture capitalists and potential business partners.

Why Hong Kong?

The Hong Kong business market is ripe with opportunities to build long-lasting relationships in the tech space and is renowned for its connectivity and infrastructure, making it a great destination for large and small tech businesses looking for a gateway to opportunities in mainland China and the rest of Asia.

Speaking to Sanderson i-Kas Country Director for Hong Kong Adam Kennedy, he said:

“We are delighted to continue our support to ‘Mission to Hong Kong’ in 2024. Richard and his team did such an amazing job for last year’s mission bringing together some of the UK’s most innovative tech starts ups to Hong Kong. The mission was such a success in showcasing the scale, quality, diversity, and ambition of our tech community in Hong Kong. The mission provides tech founders with the information and connections to successfully scale in Hong Kong. We thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to share our insights as recruiters during the programme of events as well as helping the founders grow their businesses in the past 12 months.”

Register your interest today

Could the Tech Mission to Hong Kong Week be the gateway to the Asia-Pacific you’ve been searching for your business?

Find out more and register your interest to attend here.

An experience not to be missed

As last year’s tech founder attendees will testify, this Mission is a rewarding and memorable market entry experience, that opens a wealth of opportunities for expanding into Asia Pacific, via Hong Kong. Take a look at some of the feedback we received following the 2023 Week:

‘Our team met a huge variety of investors, founders and partners and wouldn’t hesitate to return on a similar mission organised by Hewlett Rand for UK Tech Advocates in the future’ Alex Balderstone, CEO & Co-Founder. Kaiku

‘As a direct result of our participation, we are exploring exciting commercial opportunities and partnerships with those we met and we aim to set up our Hong Kong presence during 2024. MCG highly recommend Tech Founders from Start Up and Scale Ups to make the most of this valuable export opportunity.’ Clinton LIU 劉長亮 Liu, CEO, MCG

‘We have garnered significant interest from potential investors, and discussions are currently underway.’ Hao Pang, CEO, Quantum Science Ltd

Would you like to hear more from Sanderson and learn about the work we do? You can sign up to join our mailing list here for a variety of updates, access to our market leading salary benchmarking data, white papers, reports and blogs PLUS our latest news and event invites.

There is a worrying trend beginning to come into the world of recruitment and that is the proliferation of AI bots doing the filtering. I get it, there is a need for more automation, more sifting, more ability to filter to get to the best candidate. But if you take the human element out of a recruitment process you risk alienating the lifeblood of your business, the thing that makes your organisation tick, and probably a subset of your potential customer base – your people!

The rise and risks of Automation in the interview process

But worse still….the AI bot that is dehumanising the selection process is being counter punched by the AI generated cover letter and CV. These can be cleverly structured in 10 minutes by a large language model on behalf of a candidate who is gaming the application of AI at the other end of the process.

This can even roll over into online interviews. Some interviewers in a quest to reduce time and thinking could look to ask AI to generate a series of interview questions for the job role they are hiring for, only then to also be met by responses that are being real-time generated by AI by the candidate at the other end of the call to deliver the best possible response.

A worrying future of AI in recruitment processes?

Research conducted by Bright Minds indicated that 38% of applicants are now using AI to enhance their applications. Let’s face it – that number is only going to increase as AI becomes more ubiquitous and available.

And whilst my framing may be slightly glib, how far away are we from regular instances where AI assessment bots are assessing AI generated applications as a matter of course. Where does this end?

As I referenced in my previous post the recruitment word has changed. The expectation of feedback on a CV has gone, in fact CV feedback that is richer than an acknowledgement is an absolute rarity. More worrying, increasingly interview feedback is disappearing unless you are successful. And whilst AI can definitely reduce the admin burden on both sides of the process, it should be used to free up more time to be spent on human interaction – not less. And I fear that we are into a worrying cycle of less human interaction.

Breaking the AI cycle

The ultimate impact is that the candidate keeps swiping (much like one might when using popular dating apps, only to apply for jobs); and then more successful interviews end in rejection because something better came along for them.

Meanwhile the client keeps swiping too – letting AI assess more and more candidates. This results in more candidates being ghosted, and so the loop becomes a spiral, and the spiral becomes habit and things just simply get worse – until someone breaks that cycle. I believe we need to re-insert high quality human interaction into critical stages in the recruitment process.

I would say this though, wouldn’t I?! In a specialist, talent scarce, sector where human interaction is critical – many stones must be turned over to find the right person for the roles that we engage on. Yet at the same time we are increasingly being asked to comply with processes that have elements of what I have discussed above – because organisations think this works for volume hires – but for me it’s a slippery slope.

There is no substitute for high quality conversations, the building of relationships irrespective of outcome, and professional engagement at every stage of the process.

At Sanderson Government and Defence, we value building long-term relationships and owning the problem through to completion. We know from over 20 years in the talent solution business that this approach builds better teams and makes for a more resilient and cohesive workforce.

If you’d like to chat more about your recruitment needs and the bespoke solutions we could provide you in your recruitment processes, please do get in touch.

Would you like to hear more from Sanderson and learn about the work we do? You can sign up to join our mailing list here for a variety of updates, access to our market leading salary benchmarking data, white papers, reports and blogs PLUS our latest news and event invites.

With an increase in digital and technology candidate availability this quarter, we’ve been paying special attention to the rise in demand for Artificial Intelligence skills, and with that, the emergence of specialist AI roles such as AI Engineers.

Growth of AI roles

Our data has reported that UK job adverts asking for AI skills have doubled over the past year, with more than 7000 adverts on LinkedIn asking for these in the UK. We have even seen a remarkable 16-fold increase in job adverts asking for generative AI skills in general.

So where does this leave the tech and digital job landscape?

The emerging skillset of AI Engineers

With this rise in the need for AI skills, we have seen the demand for AI Engineers in the UK surge in beginning of 2024, reflecting a broader global trend towards the integration of artificial intelligence across various sectors.

Businesses across the UK are undergoing rapid digital transformation, spurred by the need to remain competitive in an increasingly digital economy. AI technologies are at the forefront of this shift, enabling companies to enhance efficiency, improve customer experiences, and innovate products and services.

No longer confined to tech giants and research labs; AI is being widely adopted across industries such as healthcare, finance, retail, and manufacturing. From automating complex tasks to providing predictive analytics and personalizing user experiences, the applications of AI are vast and growing.

The UK government has even recognised the strategic importance of AI and has invested heavily in AI research and development. Initiatives like the National AI Strategy aim to make the UK a global leader in AI technology. These efforts are stimulating the growth of AI startups and innovation hubs and ultimately leading to an increase in demand for AI Engineers across many industries.

The UK as a hub for AI Engineers

Our data suggests that the UK actually has the largest talent pool of AI Engineers in Europe, boasting 18% of the total talent pool.

This compares to 15% of the talent pool being based in Germany, 13% in France, 8% in Poland and 7% of the talent pool based in Spain.

Where in the UK are AI Engineers based?

When focusing in on the UK, a whopping 79% of this talent pool are based in London.

However, if you’re looking to hire this skillset across other areas of the UK, other significant talent pools include 5.7% of AI Engineers being in Bristol, 5.6% in Edinburgh, 2.8% in Manchester and 2.7% in Glasglow.

Interesting statistics on UK AI Engineers

We’ve rounded up some key stats for you on UK based AI Engineers:

• 7% of these are male
• 8% have been in their current role for less than 2 years
• The most common job titles are now AI Engineer, AI Research Engineer and AI Software Engineer compared to the previously common titles of Data Scientist, Software Engineer and Machine Learning Engineer.

Conclusion

With such appetite in the global market for specialist AI skills, we expect demand to continue its rapid increase to the extent that the AI Engineer job title is widely seen across the tech sector. In the face of this demand, employers will need to hire based on transferable skills until the talent pool matures.

For further information on digital and technology talent trends and predictions for this coming quarter, download our latest Technology and Digital Insight Report today.

If you would like to discuss how best to get hiring and building out your AI skill sets, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Sanderson team. We’re ready to help.

Would you like to hear more from Sanderson and learn about the work we do? You can sign up to join our mailing list here for a variety of updates, access to our market leading salary benchmarking data, white papers, reports and blogs PLUS our latest news and event invites.

Responsible for developing and implementing many business-critical applications and software platforms, Java Developers have for a long time held specialised and essential roles in many defence sector organisations.  

But as we move through Q4, will the demand for security cleared Java Developers still be as strong?  

In this opinion piece, Sanderson’s Head of Recruitment Services for our Government & Defence team James Corcoran gives his thoughts on the current state of the market as well as his projections for the future of Java Developers in the defence sector.  

The current state of the Government & Defence sector job market 

In good news for the government & defence sector, we’re seeing indications that the market is slowly rebounding. This is driven largely by contract demand as security organisations continue to be cautious after a year of rationalisation.  

Certain roles are tending to have more demand than others, and a Java Developer is one of these in demand skill sets. This could account for the 8% increase in salary costs that we saw between Q2 2023 and Q3 2023.  

Software roles in demand 

Java is one of the most popular programming languages used in enterprise companies, yet despite this 8% salary increase, is it set to start losing ground in terms of companies wanting to hire these skills?  

There are several surveys which do actually show a decline starting. In fact StackOverflow’s Developer survey recorded a drop from 33.3% to 30.6%, whilst the TIOBE index in October 2023 showed that Java’s year-on-year rating had dropped by 3.9%. 

What does the future hold for Java Developers and the associated talent pool? 

A big question in my mind is, are we going to see a further decline?  

Certainly, Oracle’s decision to stop all security updates for Java 8 without a support agreement is a warning shot. This coupled with their decision to change their pricing model to a new one that, according to Gartner, could cost organisations from 2 to 5 times more in annual licensing costs, only fuels speculation for Java’s decline. 

In my opinion though, Java is not going anywhere. 

It’s still the fourth in TIOBE’s Programming Index, and combined with the salary increases we’ve seen, it’s a proven, secure, and safe programming language with a significant adoption rate in many organisations.  

Over the next 12-18 months I believe the Java talent pool will skew to the later generations, with more experienced candidates and, as a result, be more contract-driven over the next few years.  

Our talent solution 

If you want to stay ahead of the curve and ensure you’re hiring the right security cleared candidate in the Java Development field for your organisation, we can help.  

As specialists in sourcing hard to find talent we will always solve your talent problems through to completion. You can find out more about our Government & Defence Recruitment services here. 

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch and let me know how I can help you. 

James Corcoran, Head of Recruitment

[email protected], +44 (0) 748 430 0887