Sitecore - Growing or Slowing?

Sitecore has been named a Leader within Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management for four years running and back in 2016 Sitecore reported its sixth consecutive year that the company has delivered double-digit growth above 20%.Since the company’s 2001 founding, Sitecore has worked with 4,900 world-renowned brands including Carnival Cruise Lines, easyJet, American Express, and L'Oréal. 

Sitecore has a huge network of more than 900 implementation partners, 11,000 Sitecore certified developers, and 12,000 active members in its developer network worldwide. These were numbers quoted in 2016 and with 50 new MVP’s recognised just from 2017 until 2018 I am positive that all of these above numbers have grown dramatically. So now we know Sitecore is definitely growing, why is finding that next Sitecore hire so difficult? Let's look at the market.

Over the last month

1622 adverts posted worldwide in the last month relating to Sitecore.

Over 70% of these adverts have less than 10 applicants. I would be scared to guess how many of those don’t have any applicants at all.

This is a brief look at the market but from my experience, I can say that this is a fair representation of the market. More and more we are seeing high demand for Sitecore talent and not enough skilled people to do the job, but is that really the truth? In my opinion No! There is lots of talent but we are closing doors to this talent. To realise this we need a change of mindset.

Simply put, the developers are the buyers and your agency/company/project is now the product. Practically every active candidate in the Sitecore market is likely to have multiple opportunities and you need to make you are giving yourself the best chance at hiring. You need to be more desirable than the next. But how do I do that?       

Be Flexible

Don’t just say no to working from home, whether it is a day or a month this makes a difference for many people. Be flexible, do you really need someone in the office five days a week? A remote working arrangement or part remote can greatly increase the number of people interested in working for you.

Pay the full asking price!

Be prepared to pay more than what your standard developer banding says or even what you offered the same skilled person only 6 months ago. Limited numbers usually mean higher costs; we see this in many markets around the world. Sitecore is a highly sought after skill which means it comes at a premium.

Appreciate what the job is

Don’t ask someone to be a black belt in Karate to develop with you. Have you ever heard the saying don’t judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree? This doesn’t apply to all scenarios but applies largely to locations where English isn’t the first language. I understand some circumstances do require language skills but similar to working location try and be as flexible as possible without hurting your culture.Try and look for a work around, don't forget Sitecore is designed to make managing multi-language/culture site easy, you should too. The market agrees also, check out a survey I ran below;

Sponsor work permits or help relocation's

Sponsoring work permits can sound scary, lots of companies are reluctant to do it. This can be the difference between finding the right candidate or not, giving you that edge over your competition. Keep an open mind and explore your options. You might be surprised, a specialist team of lawyers isn't always needed to get someone a work permit.

I’m sorry to say but you won't always find available Sitecore talent close to home, in your post/zip code or even in the same country as you. In the past 12 months, we have worked with lots of great people to help them relocate to United States, Australia, Singapore, Germany, United Kingdom and other locations.

If all else fails you can always look to an external resource like me! (Yep, I self-advertised. Shameless)

In all seriousness, I am always happy to chat with people and share my knowledge about the Sitecore market. I don’t know the meaning of life but if you do have any questions or want to pick my brain on how you can find the right Sitecore talent please don’t hesitate to email me at [email protected]