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Leadership Advisory

Has there been a Paradigm Shift in Tech Leadership Hiring? Myth or Reality

By August 25, 2021December 7th, 2022No Comments
leadership hiring UAE

The startup landscape has radically evolved transcending boundaries in the last few decades. As of today, we have over 800+ Unicorns globally shifting mainstream startup dialogues across the US, Singapore, India and all over. Funding is paramount and credible investors and VCs are in abundance for businesses cracking the code of solving for essentials and the masses. What was offset by Silicon Valley’s service-based companies, transitioned to the product tech giants like Google, Microsoft. These entities became the forefront solution providers and made Technology ‘cooler’, promising and futuristic.   

Buoyed by their success, more tech product companies mushroomed with the challenge to deliver valuable services and products relevant to their target markets. Regionally diverse predicaments had locally sensitive distinct solutions, all driven by Tech; like Southeast Asia with dense populations areas focussed on digitisation, in Africa the focus on greatly on fintech with varying lending entities while the US, being ahead of their tech curve, has had more B2B and SaaS platforms along with solving deep tech services. Irrespective of regions, it has been the tech that came to the fore in solving critical long-pending issues.

And when pandemic overhauled systems, economies and enterprises, Technology answered large scale solutions with a steady and reliable response. We can comfortably say that Covid19 played the ‘Cupid’ for technology. Going digital, remote operations, virtual presence, education and more became possible with robust and innovative tech-driven solutions. Today, conversations around Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Machine Learning, Blockchain are rooted in startups having real-world applications. They transform industries, change livelihoods and birth new possibilities. 

In the present-day IPO shower, the most noticeable companies going public have had hyperscale growth years fueled by disruptive technology-backed products, services or research. These companies possibly renewed their customer experience, improved their performance metrics, automated, created the right product-market fit, gained accurate insightful analytics and more; all tapping predominantly on Technology. As technology aggressively permeated sectors, the need for effective, able Tech Leaders to frontend tech verticals became paramount. 

And what we have today is an inexorable demand for Tech Leaders. A pre-pandemic study had hinted that by 2023, most firms will hire CTOs for harnessing disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and robotics. But post-pandemic, the demand for CTOs and Tech Leaders exploded. Existing businesses were pivoting tech-first and newer entities are jumping on the tech bandwagon. In the absence of a capable Tech Leader at the helm, firms struggle to consistently innovate, dwindle in competition and lag at emerging technologies.

Businesses are aggressively seeking the most suitable CTOs aboard but the challenge to find Senior Talent who would leverage disruptive technology is very real. Organisations, despite their critical mandates, lack the proper approach towards the Tech Leadership search. A Tech Leader has to be mapped very intelligently. They are responsible for a stake worth of business decisions, scaling teams & operations and front-ending an adroit strategy. Accuracy in profiling the right tech leader is imperative! You have to know the leader, know their trajectory, how much Tech Landscape have they solved, at what point did they solve the Tech problems, recent or in early point of their career, what was the immediate & overall impact, the company fitment and so much more; these are all precisely gauged with smart and thoughtful parameters devised inhouse, by Purple Quarter. Our singular focus is on CTO search with authentic processes to deliver proven and most accurate results. 

While pandemic, despite being the great bane, has invariably pushed the envelope on Senior Tech hiring. Companies are now more flexible to remote hiring and employment. We can conveniently have a veteran talented Tech Leader working out of one timezone with their team and the company that is based on another timezone. The constriction of seeking only region-specific talent is foregone. Companies have easier and wider access to an extensive talent pool and deserving candidates have countless options at hand not bound to limited options of the region. We can adeptly have a company based out of Nigeria looking at a Tech Leader from Israel or even a firm in Egypt sourcing talent pool from India. It has opened newer and wider doors for an inflow of talent. The traditional search process has evolved, it is diverse and mutually beneficial to both parties. More flexibility, agreeable employment terms minus the hassles of relocation, country-specific regulations and permits are on offer.

The scope of senior tech hiring is now boundless, companies have opened up their criteria, candidates have more than enough lucrative avenues, there couldn’t be a better time than now to engage in the perfect Tech Leadership hunt.

Authored by Roopa Kumar, Founder & COO, Purple Quarter