Tech jobs for Brazilian businesses in demand: but how to get local talent on board?

Work in the tech sector or in IT-related roles is a great opportunity for job candidates in Brazil.?Studies published earlier this year by BizLatin hub in cooperation with other sources like the Retail Insight Network report that the majority of 400K available tech jobs in Brazil remain unfilled despite high employer demand. These positions span multiple sectors. In retail, for example, almost 14% of new roles created in that market segment have a focus on IT. Businesses are aggressively seeking software (including full-stack) and web developers (91.94%); database and network admins (3.91%); information analysts (2.34% - a small share but a 200% increase m/m between March and April 2022); and computer support specialists (0.78%) along with employees with miscellaneous computer skills.?

Competitive salaries needed to make local businesses more attractive

So what’s standing in the way of securing and onboarding new tech hires? There are a number of reasons. Firstly, candidates are not na?ve; they know their value to businesses looking to innovate, grow and pursue digital transformation. So they hold out for salaries competitive with those offered by companies abroad or multinationals operating in Brazil. This suggests that local businesses can also use salaries and financial incentives to their own recruitment benefit. They can "bring employees back home": both literally and figuratively. A large portion of Brazil’s skilled IT talent is actually working remotely (from their houses and flats) in Brazil, albeit for companies in the USA and other more economically developed countries that can afford to pay better salaries. Remuneration in dollars or euros is a big draw for skilled IT engineers and programmers living in a market with a depreciated currency. Bring the good money, get the top talent.

Flexible work regimes and professional development are a big draw in Brazil as well

In addition to issues of monetary compensation, Brazil is also currently experiencing labour market trends that have impacted the entire world since the pandemic arrived in our lives. Having secured contract gigs with a number of multinational companies, Brazilian IT workers know the perks and positive aspects of working in hybrid office set-ups. They no longer want to deal daily with commutes and traffic in busy cities or between towns when they can deliver work assignments from their own homes. On a similar tack, workers are also drawn to new roles in businesses or companies that demonstrably invest in the career development and training of their workers. For tech companies, this can range from upskilling workers through additional courses to improve their knowledge of programming and developer work or database administration. Or there’s the increasingly popular option of reskilling that will help tech-savvy workers in other fields or departments train for, and eventually take on, new IT or tech-adjacent roles where candidates are missing. ?

Problems on other markets are driving foreign businesses to tap Brazil’s talent pool

Even foreign businesses are noticing Brazil has a talent pool ripe for the picking. Take a company like Boeing, for example, which recently launched new programmes to recruit for tech and engineering roles in Brazil. After shuttering its development centre in Moscow, the company moved a number of tech and engineering roles abroad: with India, Brazil and Australia ranking among the top destinations for new operations. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some 600+ jobs moved from Moscow to other geographies, and, according to Boeing reports, 16% of those roles are being shifted to Brazil. The company recently added 350 engineer roles in Sao Paulo. This is just the beginning though. A Map of Industry Work 2022-2025 Study carried out by the National Industry Observatory reckons that businesses in Brazil will need to train 9.6 million workers in industrial jobs (primarily in production chain-related roles) over the next three years due to the adoption of new, Industry 4.0 technologies: 2 million will replace inactive workers or fill new vacancies, while 7.6 million will need reskilling or upskilling to meet the demands of local labour market transformation, specifically as relates to tech skills.

So what is the way forward for meeting growing tech talent demand? Current reality would suggest competitive wages and intensive re-training/reskilling problems might solve everything. However, the needs of Brazil’s workforce are, at the core, no different that those of employees around the globe. Businesses, tech or otherwise, that succeed will be those that put people first and improve quality of life; those that meet employees’ demands for greater work-life balance and career development will secure the best talent in the end.