It is a well-known fact that most of the top technology talent in the US is employed, which is why companies need to look for talent outside the country. Fortunately, the US is close to one of the regions with the largest pools of tech talent: Latin America, which also has the advantage of sharing the same time zone with the US.
The types of projects in which Latin American developers have experience are related to the maintenance of systems or legacy code, including in US banks and large corporations. This implies that the programming languages and the versions they are experienced on are not the most recent. And those who do have experience in this are still a minority, but growing by the day.
There are currently 26.9 million developers globally, according to data from Evans Data Corporation (EDC), of which it is estimated that they will increase by around 1 million each year. And Latin America is the region with the second-highest growth of developers globally.
As shown in the graphic below, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia are the largest pools of developers in the region.
The world changed after the COVID-19 pandemic, and the workplace was transformed as well. Remote work became a turning point that revealed a more efficient and friendly way to work. In Mexico, 90.9% of IT professionals want greater flexibility from their company to work from home or to do so in a hybrid model, and 53% of them are on the hunt for a new job.
The accelerated growth of the technology sector in recent years has inevitably increased the demand for the best professionals in the field, not only for tech companies but also for a wide range of sectors that need an IT specialist in their teams. The search for IT professionals can no longer be limited only to our region or home country but must be expanded given the possibilities offered by the power of technology. According to Hireline’s 2022 IT Labor Market Report, in Mexico, 23.5% of the tech vacancies are remote, which opens the possibility for these professionals to work anywhere in the world.
While the recruitment of IT professionals may seem like a monumental task for companies nowadays, some tools can help optimize talent acquisition processes. For example, 94% of Mexican IT professionals use job portals to search for work. Employing in our favor the tools and channels of communication that the talent we are looking for is already using will save us time and resources. It will also help us attract the right professionals for our company without searching from scratch in the market.
According to Lucero Lamas, an Organizational Psychologist specializing in attracting Latin American IT talent to companies in the US and Canada, by opening our field of work to other countries we can acquire a number of significant benefits for our company. For example, companies can benefit from multiple points of view and skills that can solve problems from different angles or perspectives that we had not considered before. Likewise, it is a way for our company to cross borders and for our brand to have a presence in different countries.
While it is important to consider the work scenario, it is also necessary to know what are the needs of IT professionals, as well as what they find attractive in a job opening. For Mexican IT talent, the main factors to consider are the opportunity for job development (77.5%), the professional challenge (64.5%), and the salary range (62.86%).
This data is relevant considering that the main reason why IT workers quit their job is due to the lack of adequate economic compensation (36.05%), as well as the feeling of being undervalued in their workplace (34,32%). It’s not just about the money, it is also about what the company appreciates and values, and how it is communicated to its employees from the recruitment process itself.
A company’s culture should include offering the much sought-after IT professionals constant training to further develop their skills and adopt new ones. These considerations should be at the top of the list for companies looking to attract tech talent. Also, it is highly relevant to offer candidates medical insurance for major expenses and the aforementioned possibility of working remotely.
The Latin American labor market offers innumerable opportunities for candidates and companies who decide to venture and broaden their horizons to new professional challenges. The number of tech talent professionals in this region has not stopped growing in recent years. And according to the data, this is a trend that will continue increasing, especially in this new reality of work that has affected every aspect of our lives.
Check Hireline’s complete recruitment guide here.
Hireline is a recruitment platform specialized in technology profiles. We connect the technological talent of Latin America with the best companies in the world.
