Your tech career: the future is global
As economies around the world went into lockdown at the beginning of the pandemic, home-working became the norm for many. In the UK alone, the proportion of the population working from home more than doubled in 2020. While workers in some industries are now returning to the office, employers are increasingly seeing the benefits of hiring remote talent. So how will this trend impact your future tech career? We spoke to global talent marketplace, Andela, about the exciting world of opportunities for computer science graduates.
The COVID-19 pandemic saw a global shift in the way we live and work. While remote-working was entirely new for some industries, organisations across all sectors were forced to adapt quickly.
Now, more than 85% of managers surveyed believe that having remote workers will become the new norm for many teams. The UK’s Office for National Statistics found that the number of online job adverts including the phrase ‘homeworking’ were three times higher in May 2021 than in February 2020.
In addition to attracting top talent, offering home working also helps with retention. A US study found that 59% of respondents said they would be more likely to choose an employer who offered remote work and nearly a quarter even said they would accept a 10% pay cut to work from home permanently.
The flexibility to work from anywhere but still have the opportunity to work for different companies and on exciting and challenging projects is unbeatable.
Andela is a global talent marketplace that aims to democratise opportunity and connect talented technologists with employers around the world. They partner with companies ranging from start-ups and SMEs to multi-billion dollar corporates, such as Goldman Sachs, to recruit remote tech talent quickly and at scale. Currently they have applicants from more than 170 countries.
Agnes Muthoni has worked as Director of Talent Partnerships at Andela for four years and says it has been fascinating to see the company grow and accelerate in the last couple of years.
“What’s interesting is even before the pandemic hit, Andela was already working on this remote model. We had already set up remote software engineering teams in countries like Egypt and Ghana. So for us the pandemic has really only accelerated our work and helped us to scale that existing model. We’re seeing a higher number of companies being more open to hiring remote workforces.”
Companies want the best and that doesn’t necessarily mean hiring from your own backyard.
The benefits to their global network of talent are clear, as Agnes describes:
“For a long time, job opportunities have been constrained by arbitrary factors like location. Our mission is simple: we connect brilliance with opportunity. It’s much like the University of London is doing with the BSc Computer Science degree, offering anyone the opportunity for a high-quality education, that they can access from home.
“For our network, the flexibility to work from anywhere but still have the opportunity to work for different companies and on exciting and challenging projects is unbeatable. We recently conducted a survey of our talent and one of the biggest findings was that 74% of respondents said they had a higher quality of life improvement as a result of their work. And 81% of individuals who had a tenure of at least a year reported that their take-home pay had increased.
“But the benefits aren’t just about remuneration. We also know that our engineers really like being able to exchange and connect with other engineers from other countries, sharing knowledge and ideas. That’s a fascinating part of the world we live in today.”
Andrew Morris works in Client Growth at Andela. He says: “For employers there are huge benefits to a distributed workforce model. You can scale up or down your tech team easily and quickly and with talent spread right across the world you can have full time zone coverage. Our talent is thoroughly vetted and our current approval rate is around three per cent. Companies want the best and that doesn’t necessarily mean hiring from your own backyard.”
The future continues to look bright for skilled computer scientists, and Andela has ambitious plans to develop their talent network.
Agnes explains: “We’re going to continue to expand our talent offering beyond software engineering. We recently launched a Salesforce practice to meet growing demand for skilled Salesforce engineers, and demand continues to evolve. More and more companies want to provide a more nuanced and engaging online experience for their customers – so they need designers, data specialists and more, and we want to be able to support our customers to build those teams. And we’re continuously extending and layering our additional value offerings to retain that talent.”
Find out more about the global career opportunities open to you with the University of London’s BSc Computer Science.
This page was last updated on 25 January 2022