Aotearoa's Got Talent - 5 Insights for Hiring Tech Interns and Grads in 2023

Anyone up-to-date with current affairs would be forgiven for feeling gloomy about the economy, the climate, and the general state of the world. With headcounts shrinking, US banks foreclosing, and the climate emergencies taking over the pandemic emergency parts of our brain, the last thing we’re thinking about is finding and retaining junior staff, right?

Not so fast. Employers are “business as usual” on their intern and grad hires this year, as they balance the ratio of junior and senior staff depending on recruitment availability and budget. Demand for junior staff continues to start earlier in the year.

Although 2023 is predicted to be another challenging year for tech leaders, we’d like to share some myth-busting tips to give you a roadmap for growing and retaining Aotearoa's future tech workforce together.

You might have heard: Demand is high, salaries are going up

ITP’s Techblog covered a recent tech salaries survey, noting Cyber Security and Cloud skills are in hottest demand and that the salary increase rate for these roles in Aotearoa has been 15–20%.

Cyber Security salaries saw an average growth of 20% in the last year, with Data Analytics and Cloud Infrastructure roles also experiencing contract rate growth of 15–20%, says Talent.

In our 2022 programme, we saw these trends reflected. While Software roles remained our largest specialisation, the number of Security roles grew 74%, and Data roles grew 82% in Summer of Tech 2022. We had a constant stream of Security roles recruitment throughout the year. We expect to see Data and Security listings increase again in 2023! We aren’t seeing the same wage growth as senior roles; interns and grad wages have increased 16% since 2019. 

Insight #1: Our emerging talent supply side is healthy

The good news is, alongside the increase in security and data roles, we saw a rise in applications for those roles. But plenty of talented candidates may not click 'apply'—don't let them slip through the cracks. Use our platform to find and contact these candidates proactively.

The not-so-secret superpower behind Summer of Tech’s approach is that employers can actively search for candidates that might not know they’re in the ballpark for a particular job category. We’ve seen some amazing candidates discovered in the early stage of their study, hired into data and security roles they didn’t even know were a possibility for them.

Insight #2: Aotearoa salaries are low vs the global market, including grad salaries

One thing to be super aware of is how remote work has accelerated competition globally, and there is a huge increase in NZ grad recruitment by Australian tech companies. Starting salaries for tech grads in Australia are $80K+, whereas we still see $60-70K in NZ.

What can we do about that? We can’t control global salaries or your team’s productivity or profitability. However, we can help you use internship recruitment to jump the queue on hiring grads. Once you’ve got your intern recruitment, onboarding and retention cranking, you’ll already have trained up and loyal grads—there’s much less to be tempted by over the ditch. With a summer or two, plus some part-time work under their belt, interns will be skilled in your domain, technologies and processes so you can confidently match (or come close to) the Aussie entry-level salaries. 

Our focus is to help you get a return on your investment in your interns. If you’ve got mentoring capacity across your team, it’s a strategic investment to secure your grads as early as possible. We can help with tips to spot potential and cultural fit—you’ll be hiring on attitude and aptitude, not technical skill, experience or grades. It’s a change in mindset but a strategy that yields fantastic high-value employees.

Insight #3: Talent is hiding in plain sight

Smart companies focus on culture and retention, ensuring their employer value proposition is clear, and recruitment and onboarding work for them. Get the environment right to look after your people, then change how you recognise talent. 

Get ready to search differently. Consider really early talent (school leavers? 1st years?), think about non-traditional backgrounds, and inclusive approaches to hiring, onboarding and retention. Are there career switchers with CVs or GPAs you might have overlooked? Or perhaps neurodiverse candidates? Now is the time to think creatively, get used to spotting potential, and shape your onboarding and training processes to make the most of the talented people hiding in plain sight.

Ready for more re-interpreted news?

You might have heard: how tertiary institutions are facing a “New Normal” of low enrolments and scarce budgets. We certainly saw a dip in engagement in 2022, and had to work very hard with campus outreach and communication to get candidates engaged in our events last year. Although our total candidate numbers were slightly down in 2022 vs 2021, the extra outreach and encouragement worked—they showed up. We had a healthy number of applications and employer feedback was positive about candidate quality and quantity.

Insight #4: Rise of non-traditional pathways

The good news is that all these changes in education pathways (and we’re not even talking about ChatGPT here…) mean that new and innovative courses are popping up. We’ve seen a huge increase in candidates and placements through intensive “12-week bootcamp”-style courses, including Dev Academy Aotearoa, Mission Ready HQ, and Developer’s Institute. Micro-credentials are on the rise, and we’ve been working closely with NextWork to provide pathways to industry certifications. Te Pukenga and others are moving quickly to deliver short courses aligned with industry skills gaps.

These new career pathways are a great way to diversify your team, once again hiring on potential and aptitude. Embrace the upside of the “new normal” for tertiary institutions.

Insight #5: Our 2023 YTD trends are different and positive 

One final tip from us: it’s March 2023, and we have more candidates than this time last year. 

Our team is ready to discuss your intern and graduate plans for 2023; contact us and let’s chat.