The Tech Talent Shift: Navigating AI, DEI, and Next-Gen Workforce Demands

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Ann Kuss: We get asked by candidates, how stable is this job? How long is this company planning to have me? A few years ago, that wouldn't be even on the table, so candidates would be choosing where to go and which company to join and when to leave. Nowadays, people are actually looking for stability.

David Rice: Welcome to the People Managing People podcast. We're on a mission to build a better world of work and to help you create happy, healthy, and productive workplaces. I'm your host, David Rice. My guest today is Ann Kuss. She is the CEO of Outstaff Your Team. We're gonna be talking about talent trends in the tech sector on a global scale and how to get ahead of the curve on hiring talent that can help you innovate.

So Ann, welcome!

Ann Kuss: Hi David, and thank you for having me today.

David Rice: My pleasure. So I wanna start by asking a little bit of a goofy, like off the wall question. If tech recruitment were an Olympic sport, what would be your gold medal winning move that no competitor has mastered yet?

Ann Kuss: That's a good one.

Okay. Let's probably start off with a, an obvious form up here. So if I would go to directories, like listings, like clutch or similar, our clients would typically put empathy quality as top advantages when working with us. So that brings me to thinking figure skating would be the sport you're asking about.

And I'll explain it to you, why? Why I think so is because it requires both technical precision plus the artistic part, and we seem to be adapting both into our daily workflow. So on one hand, we have to be super empathetic. On the other hand, we have to be efficient with all our processes, providing high quality candidates and combining that into synergy.

Yeah, just pair skaters that have to be skating in sync together. This is what we do with our clients. We become their partners essentially, and we have to be in sync with their visions, their business goals, and help them achieve those goals with the right talent in place. I guess that would be it.

David Rice: I love that you translated it into figure skating. I didn't see that coming.

Ann Kuss: Neither did I.

David Rice: Shifting more towards, our topic of discussion on the day. We'll start with kinda like how you're seeing things play out internationally in terms of tech when it comes to development of new skills. Especially with AI becoming such a big part of the work that everybody's doing now, it seems which skills are really taking over, which ones are maybe fading from the market, and are you seeing certain areas of the world doing better than others with developing new skills?

Ann Kuss: I think 2025 brings a totally different perspective to the picture when we talk about relevant skills or outdated skills.

We actually, just before joining you this month, we were focusing on collecting and analyzing the data about trends. And what a surprising thing we've uncovered is that there is a parallel reality on the market right now. So if we talk about employers, what affects employers in the first place?

There's two trends. One is economic uncertainty. And of course, we've all seen the layoffs, like with Google Meta, other huge names, and on the other hand, we have AI rocking the boat and bringing in new jobs, new opportunities. At the same time, replacing jobs like T riding, data entry, routine coding, et cetera.

On the other hand, there are candidates and the ones who are getting hot on the market. For the same reasons. So specialists in AI, machine learning, cybersecurity and cloud computing are in short supply, high demand, and that pushes the salaries up naturally. For instance, just this year we had a spike in requests for mell engineers and other AI roles.

So we're really adapting costs, even though we've done them before, but the scale is getting more and more noticeable. On the other hand. What happens with more traditional roles is gradual decline and positions like, again, writing or something around repetitive set of tasks that gets outdated, and then employers have an upper hand, so they dictate the salary cuts for those kind of jobs that are more of a traditional set.

The ones that are connected with AI and trending technologies go up. So this is like a parallel reality, two worlds that we live in. And another thing that you mentioned about the skills is that no matter which position you are entering as a candidate right now is gonna be relevant basically in a year, two or three, or is gonna be changing drastically.

So the idea is that's something that we see with lots of clients. That reskilling and upskilling is coming into the picture heavily. So you are relevant as long as you keep on upskilling all the time. And lastly, another thing that is trending and taking the market swiftly is generation Z. So I think it's no surprise for all of us that we've talked endlessly about flexible work, about better benefits, about different approach to work.

So companies are adjusting to attract this kind of talent. Now, and if we may actually stop here for a second, to give you an example, we have a client. With whom we work for quite a while. I can actually name them because we have this sort of contract that I can name them. So it's a company called Widget.

They are in AI. Essentially they build AI agents within three minutes, so pretty powerful product. They're growing now and they came to us with a request to find them, a growth marketing manager, and their idea is that this person will lead all marketing growth with the help of AI. So instead of, building a digital marketing team with the traditional approach, like you would have a search engine optimization person, PPC, et cetera, et cetera, we are focusing on one strategist that is at the same time able to be a, an expert prompt engineer and actually train an AI model for the company to drive the marketing strategy.

That's an example of where things are going, for instance.

David Rice: Oh wow. I feel for that person 'cause they're gonna be busy. That's interesting. There's been a lot of publicity around tech companies pulling back from DEI and certainly we've covered that here on the podcast, but even the most notable companies are out there saying that they admit they still want cognitive diversity.

And I'm curious because a lot of companies struggle with diversity in tech teams, right? Not just culturally, but in thinking styles as well. How do you approach building cognitive diversity in a team?

Ann Kuss: I must say we don't always have an apprehend when, let's say, proving team members for our clients because their strategy comes into the picture and we have to mind that heavily.

But we advise that's the best what we can do. And but it comes to tech teams. We emphasize that cognitive diversity is the drive of innovation that the clients are after because in the. Context we are in today. That's key for tech companies to go forward. And with my team especially, I think we've been doing that subconsciously in a way or naturally, I don't know because my team is 100% remote.

We work from 11 countries right now and. They speak collectively 15 languages apart from English being their like day to day language. So again, various background skills, et cetera. But if we talk about hiring per se. What we do offer to our clients Right now, we're testing is a tool still in the works, so I can't say much more.

But the idea itself is that based on scientific frameworks such as Myers-Briggs type, vindicator and Ambassador profile, an AI model would analyze the interview with a candidate and give their evaluation and assessment of their cognitive abilities of. Behavior types and et cetera, and all of that is valuable in the scenario when the modal gives you their evaluation before the recruiter does.

The idea is that recruiter doesn't give their own bias to the AI. So this is the way we're trying to approach this to try to be a bit more objective when selecting tech candidates, and this is something that we're having in the works right now in the partnership with one other company. If we talk about talent management and cognitive diversity in the company, I guess the common challenges are that.

Okay. You brought this whole cool and bright people together, but how do you make them work together? Because with different, again, thinking styles and approaches, there might be clashes, conflicts, et cetera. So what we try to do and try to measure it from time to time is that we create a psychological, safe environment.

So whatever idea is expressed, they are encouraged to share them. And we actually have a habit of brainstorms and ideation sessions, which are part of like yearly, half yearly planning, et cetera. And lastly, what I try to do as a leader is bring in some reward component for innovation so people feel a happy moment for bringing something in.

That's in short, it's still a vast field, and I don't think we're even close to being perfect at it. But I guess this is the way to go to combine the AI opportunities with unbiased data. So I guess this is where we can excel.

David Rice: Yeah. It's interesting you mentioned there the Myers-Briggs thing, and I've always been curious about these sort of assessments, 'cause there's a bunch of 'em out there.

You got like the DISC assessment, you got all these other ones. And I'm curious, do you feel that there's one that really works best for tech roles and are they. I guess a good way to support building a diverse team.

Ann Kuss: It's a trial and error right now, so I can't tell you definitively that this is a, one pill for all thing.

But what attracted us in this approach is that there are a few frameworks that are like the foundation for this model and that. We are in constant touch with the developers, so we actually can give their our feedback on what works and what doesn't. Again, I don't know where it's gonna lead us yet.

This is what we're trying. One thing that is important to say is I think companies also should mind the other person on the other side, which is a candidate. We are a strong advocate of a candidate, so what we are trying to do is make it effortless for them. So all of that stuff is like behind the scenes.

They don't feel like they're being tested according to this methodology and so on, because as we know, engineers really despise that. They don't like this hour long tests and so on, and they feel like it's a waste of their life essentially. Yeah. So we're trying to make it effortlessly as well, because we want this to be a great experience.

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Yeah, I've always just found that kind of fascinating, like how people select these things.

I also wanted to talk about there's all this return to office chat. I don't know how that is in the European landscape, but certainly here in the States. And it's not gonna jive when you have people all over the world, right? Unless you have offices all over the world, which not a lot of companies have that luxury.

I'm curious, are you seeing any interest from the tech workforce in going into offices? Like My gut tells me no, but that is a second part of that if I'm right. Does that maybe give smaller companies that are gonna remain remote or hybrid, a leg up in recruiting that maybe they didn't have in the COVID era?

Ann Kuss: I'll be honest with you, I guess 99% of our candidates say they want to work remote.

David Rice: I'm not surprised.

Ann Kuss: And these are really different countries because we work with candidates from really various geographies. So it's not just, US Europe, it's also Latin America, Asia we're talking about.

So it's a global trend. So candidates are pro remote, full remote, and if they could have it, they would do it. Companies, though that's a different story. So we of course, see the efforts because for instance, in Singapore and Germany, there are lots of governmental initiatives of normalizing the hybrid approach.

That's a great thing because governments are recognizing the need for shifting people to more flexible work environments yet, again, we know we're talked about nearly a hundred percent candidates that wanna work remote. And then on the other hand, if we talk about US or Europe. So it's nearly 60 or 65% give or take of companies that are okay with hybrid.

But again, hybrid doesn't mean remote completely. So there's still this misalignment on how it should be if we talk about roles that have emphasis on innovation, on security, compliance and such. Perhaps there's a need to actually meet face-to-face and work in a certain environment like an office.

However, most of the work and jobs that we do actually can be done remotely. And I'll be honest, 96% of our hires are full remote. They never even saw the headquarters of the companies that they work with. Even though they're open to travel and all, but generally that's a statistics I can share with you.

My team is 100% full remote. Yeah.

David Rice: Yeah. Mine too. I don't find that surprising at all. I think a lot of people really valued that as what the developments of the last few years, the flexibility that they've had, and I think that's a global thing. That's not just one place. When we get into hiring, we, in hr we always talk about things like culture fit culture, add, these types of things.

I think maybe that's even more important now in some ways, rather than looking at skill fits. Because as you said before, you get a role, it's going to change drastically over the next three years. We talked to someone recently that said, I think it's 75% of roles have changed almost entirely in the last three years.

I think that's more important. And my first sort of question is, would you say that's true and should employers stop stressing about perfect fit skill wise and start focusing on that culture and potential when hiring tech talent?

Ann Kuss: I think that's your right because in the search for this culture fit, we're losing the big picture.

So instead of tick the boxes I think what we need to be focusing on is values that you are aligning on and the potential that you can reach together. Of course, potential cannot be built just on blind belief. So of course there needs to be a certain skillset that someone brings in to the table when they're joining a company.

What we mean by potential, I personally is that this person can come in to you as let's say, I don't know, again, the same marketing manager and then they can evolve into AI strategists. When it comes to marketing, it's about this kind of transitions and evolutions and about values over the years.

Not just with my current company, but. Positions I held before and the teams I worked before, I always noticed that as long as there is alignment on values, you can do anything together as a team, as an organization, et cetera. So this is the basic foundation. Everything is built on. And another thing, as you said, world is changing.

We're waking up to another, breaking news, so.

David Rice: All the time.

Ann Kuss: So this adaptivity this component of being able to. Move forward and find the next thing to upscale at, to excel at, I think in the next 5, 10, 15 years is key.

David Rice: Yeah. One of the things I think is interesting is like employee priorities or candidate priorities.

I think they've shifted a lot over the last decade. I think about hiring in 2016 and everybody wanted like development opportunities. Some people were like focused on cool office perks pay that could support them pursuing whatever experience they wanted, things like that. I think now that we're seeing people shift towards prioritizing some more like concrete things, stability, pay, benefits, those things.

From your perspective, as someone who's talking to talent all the time, I'm curious, how do you think employee and candidate priorities are shifting and are tech companies doing enough to meet those desires?

Ann Kuss: That's a big one, and I could actually tell you a lot about that. So please pause me if needed, 2016, 2025.

It's been a, it's been a change for sure. The market shifts towards concrete ease for stability. Again we just talked about the world we live at. So what we get asked by candidates, how stable is this job? How long am is this company planning to have me? A few years ago, that wouldn't be even on the table.

So candidates would be choosing where to go and which company to join and when to leave. Nowadays, people are actually looking for stability. The other thing is competitive pay, but. In a more flexible way so they actually understand the progression and what is the added value so we can talk about more flexible bonus models, et cetera.

There is a shift and demand for more comprehensive benefits. Again, with the remote work and different understanding of work life balance, nowadays we hear more and more work life fit. Yeah. So people need personalized benefits and arrangements. Another thing is career growth and development. So if a company can help you on your journey to upscale and become a better professional, then it's an added value for a talent.

And if we sum it all up. The question is where we are with employers, right? So what are companies doing in that direction? And there are good trends when it comes to career growth and leadership development, upskilling and such, because especially in the tech industry, we see that many companies do have programs on how they plan to upskill the key talents that they consider strategic, or again, key.

For instance, we know that Cisco invests about 8.6 hours a week to training and development of key skills on certain positions. So this never existed before. Sure companies had trainings, but nowadays it's more laser focused. And another cool example of wellbeing and flexible benefits part is hybrid 360 concept by Korn Ferry.

So essentially what they do it's their like philosophy. They introduce that they adapt all the benefits to individual needs of a particular person, which is new. And you don't see that much yet, but this means that there is a turn to that direction. And the part about flexibility is a tricky one, just like we talked about remote.

That's, we see that companies are not yet ready to switch to this full remote mode completely. And of course, the stability part is super hard to provide. If we step into the shoes of an average mid-size company out there, 'cause again, within our economic context, within news about markets crash and companies having to cut costs in the next quarter or something like that, I actually suspect that many companies would have to make decisions on removing their operations and we might see new.

Policies on where service should be located and things like that. So that all is gonna impact what happens on the market and where companies want to hire, how they wanna hire, and how much they actually can invest into managing their talent. So stability part is another big question as I see it sadly.

But on the rest, on the career progression, skills, flexibility, and other essential points, we are on the right track. Let's just sum it up.

David Rice: Looking ahead three to five years, I'm curious, which tech roles do you anticipate will become critical, maybe that companies are not at present, adequately planning for, and then which ones are companies maybe overinvesting in right now?

Ann Kuss: The way we see it, again from the trends on the market. There's probably gonna be a demand for AI ethicists, people who are dealing with ethics around AI. We all started adopting it, but it's still such a vague field when it comes to legality of things, how data is processed, how things are working so that, I think it's a huge field that's gonna evolve and grow.

Another field is extended reality. I think it's gonna be relevant for designers and developers when it comes to not just gaming, but extended reality coming into everyday life experiences like education, industrial design, healthcare, et cetera. For instance, I know that there are already great products being done in dentistry with VR in United Arab Emirates because a patient, for instance, may come in and see all their teeth in VR and all their medical history there as well. So this is the next step forward. Another important direction, I think, is cybersecurity, but in the new technologies such as blockchain, cloud, and Internet of things.

Because, yeah, we all know cybersecurity as it is now for our just digital world. But again, since the reality is changing, so is gonna change the cybersecurity part. And lastly, if we talk about things that companies and the tech world is probably over investing right now, that would be, in my mind, enterprise software without AI components.

So I think it's time. We're moving there, I think to invest into the flexible solutions that can be quickly deployed and quickly bring value to the organization. Because if we're talking about two robust systems that the implementation of which takes, I don't know, three, four months, you as a business are lagging behind to get to your business goals.

Again, some companies are lagging behind on AI adoption. That means overspending resources like time or I don't know, again, funds or something into the usual solutions, while they could optimize that into something more cost effective and more forward thinking. Yeah, so that would be the things where. The resources could be optimized on work.

David Rice: That's super interesting. It's funny you mentioned the dentistry thing. I used to cover healthcare for a little while and I went, I remember I went to this conference and they had this, it was like a set of goggles that you put on, and it was for education at the time, but basically they could take an x-ray.

Build a skeleton in front of you and you could like, examine the skeleton and you could touch it and move it and open up different explainers, which I thought was just really interesting. That was probably six years ago now. And I think to myself, man, how has that changed? That's probably so different and all these different uses for it now is so cool.

It's been a pleasure talking to you. I really am glad you came on the show today. Before we go, a couple of things I always like to do. I want, the first thing is I wanna give you a chance to tell people more about where they can connect with you and find out more about what you've got going on.

Ann Kuss: Great. I'm on LinkedIn a lot, so I guess you can probably see that in hundred video in our podcast. And I recently a couple months ago, I started a series of LinkedIn articles called Tech Talent Radar. So they're share everyday challenges for tech companies for looking at tech talent, so things that you might find useful for your talent strategies.

And if you'd like to know more about what we're doing in general, our company website is outstaffyourteam.com.

David Rice: Excellent. As one fellow, regular LinkedIn citizen to another. So the second thing is, we have a little saying here on the podcast that we always do at the end of every episode. Do you get to ask me a question? So I wanna turn it over to you and ask me anything.

Ann Kuss: Wow. So we're turning the, the tide, right? Okay. David, today we talked a lot about how the world is changing and how it's challenging businesses and tech talent. And it might seem it's all doom and gloom, but I'm sure there's something positive out there.

So is there a thing that you feel hopeful about in 2025?

David Rice: Yeah, I think the thing that I kinda came into this year very interested in is with every challenge, right? Something happens that is either an opportunity or just like a blessing, right? And one thing that I think will come out of some of these layoffs and some of the challenges that people face around upskilling is greater community building.

People will find ways to come together because when things get hard for human beings, that's what we do, right? We tend to find ways to come together, work through our problems together, and I think that actually we're in a place where we need to do that pretty badly here in the us. I think that we're a little bit bad at community building at times, and it's a skill that we need to build, and a lot of times you.

You do something like that, you develop a new skill or you get better at something that you're not traditionally good at. Out of necessity, when you're forced to do it, that's when you become, you start to innovate, right? And so I think it's gonna be interesting to see the kind of communities and the kind of dialogue changes that are gonna be happening over the course of 2025.

And I welcome it. 'cause I think that we've gotten to a place where things are either very static or very toxic and there's not a whole lot in between.

Ann Kuss: Yeah. I'm also thinking that it's gonna bring we're gonna break through this loop and something is gonna come out of it innovative and there's gonna be a new way of people connecting together, yeah.

David Rice: Absolutely. Ann, thank you for coming on today. It was a pleasure having you.

Ann Kuss: Same here. Thank you for having me.

David Rice: All right listeners, if you haven't done so already, head on over to peoplemanagingpeople.com/subscribe. Get signed up for the newsletter.

And until next time, to heaten up out there. Enjoy the warm weather.