Despite pandemic uncertainties the tech sector continues hiring on a torrid pace. Of note…

• The earth has shifted on how organizations are most flexibly designed and what it takes to build winning cultures. As firms react to and prepare for the new realities of work, the demand for skilled HR leaders has exploded. ‘Employee success’ has entered the vernacular.

• While some firms continue to centralize management teams in and around head office, have become geographically unshackled and are casting ever wider nets for the talent they seek. Some are looking to lower cost geographies for what they seek.

• Companies that dawdle or with heavy selection processes are losing candidates to other opportunities. In red-hot functions such as ‘sustainability’, candidates have 4-5 opportunities from which to select and are bailing on those that take too long.

• Large companies, with expanding digital businesses, continue to compete with mid-sized firms and start-ups for talent. While some continue to struggle to adapt their compensation models to attract the tech sector executives they seek, others have transitioned so well that they are making it difficult for the start up sector to compete. For many executives the LTIP plans are more attractive than wheelbarrows filled with stock option dreams and promises.

• Repatriating Canadians to return to the Great White North remains difficult. US firms have become ever more sophisticated in structuring their comp plans to make it very expensive for executives and companies seeking to repatriate them.

• As demand for talent increases across the board, compensation is rising commensurately with base salaries up at least 15% in the past year alone.