Tatiana
Lucky Hunter Founder
Daria
Lead IT recruiter

How We Carried out HR Analytics for an IT Company within Three Days

Do you open a new tech job opening, but don't know what remuneration to offer your future employee, because most of your competitors don't include salary ranges in the job description? Or, perhaps, you are actively looking for an IT specialist, but get only refusals?

In such cases, the traditional solution is to contact a professional IT recruitment agency. It is a fast, efficient and quality way to hire an IT candidate. However, in cases where you know exactly who you are looking for, but don't know how much money to offer for a job, HR analytics may be the best solution.

HR analytics allows you to know market trends for your position, identify current salary ranges, understand how much money to offer a candidate for work in your company. Guessed it? Right :) In December 2020 an IT company contacted us with such a request. In the article, we'll explain to you how we provided the service.

HR analytics was carried out by experienced IT Recruiters of the company - Daria and Alina. The founder of Lucky Hunter, Tatiana, also took part in the research.

The task

Our task was to analyse salaries in the IT market for the positions of Java Developer (Senior / Regular), DevOps (Senior), QA (Senior / Regular), Project Manager (Senior), Web Developer (Senior / Regular NodeJs Full Stack).

We had to identify not only the level of salary expectations of IT candidates but also to determine the salary ranges the companies offer candidates.

Task specifics

  • 1
    Candidates included in the series of analytical results must have at least a B1 level of English.
  • 2
    The openings included in the study were divided into two categories: the openings from consulting companies and vacancies from technology companies. We did so in order to identify the difference in the salaries of these companies.
  • 3
    We had to submit the research results in a short time - in just three calendar days after the discussion of the task (yes, we had to work on the weekend :)

Preparation for research

Before starting the research, we'd collected all information about the state of the IT market. The data we built on in the research looked like this:
  • Shortage of specialists on the market
    The tech market is characterized by a high staff shortage. This is due to the fact that technologies are developing much faster than specialists educate. This creates a large gap between demand and supply.
  • Market volatility
    The IT market is highly sensitive to changes in the world. The launch of new technology or product sometimes significantly changes the demand for certain specialists.
  • Trends
    The pandemic has changed the IT market a lot. This is a significant increase in remote working format, and an increase in the desire of specialists to work for international companies as well as the gap сlosing of specialists' salaries in regions and large cities.
We took these and some other factors into account when conducting HR analytics. This allowed us to make the most relevant market analysis and provide up-to-date data on the salaries of specialists.

Research limitations

The main limitation of the study is the privacy of the internal processes of companies. Most of the openings employers publish have only a minimum salary limit (for example, 2k $), which often complicates the analysis.
We at Lucky Hunter have successfully recruited thousands of specialists, conducted tens of thousands of interviews, and therefore we are aware of what salaries IT companies actually offer.
Based on our knowledge and experience, we can determine the current salary ranges for positions and use this information for analysis in a generalized form.

The limitation was also the requirement of candidates' proficiency in English at the B1 level and above. This screened out more than a third of specialists.

Research. Recruiting channels

We processed CVs and openings in 14 main recruiting channels. Among them were:
  • The Lucky Hunter base
    We specialize only in working with IT companies from all over the world. Every month we have more than 50 open positions in our agency, for which we are looking for the best IT specialists. Thus, over several years of work on the market, we have formed a carefully selected database of proven IT specialists. At the moment, our database includes about 70,000 CVs of Middle + level specialists.
  • Telegram channels
    Telegram messenger has long been one of the best channels for finding IT specialists. We actively use messenger channels to select IT, candidates. To conduct HR analytics, we researched 8 specialized channels, having analyzed several hundred active vacancies.
  • Other channels
    We also used LinkedIn, Amazing Hiring, Podbor.io, Facebook, GitHub, Habr, and several other recruiting channels to get the most proper evaluation.

Result

In three days, our team has done yeoman's work. We:
  • 1
    Processed several thousand CVs of specialists and vacancies of IT companies.
  • 2
    Identified the lower, median (don't confuse with average values), upper values of wages for the required positions.
  • 3
    Found out whether there was a dependence of salary expectations on the level of English proficiency of specialists.
  • 4
    Investigated the main priorities of IT specialists, as well as the role of remote work in determining salaries.
  • 5
    Determined the level of the gap in wages of specialists from regions and megacities.

Thanks to our research, the client determined the accurate salary for future employees and successfully hired specialists in the company. In addition, based on the results of our research, the client was able to index the salaries of the current team in accordance with the market realities.

Our case showed that HR analytics is a key service in recruiting, which allows you to quickly and efficiently find tech specialists in accordance with the market. However, keep in mind that HR analytics doesn't build a candidate's profile. In such cases, we recommend contacting specialized IT recruitment agencies for the tech staffing service.

We at Lucky Hunter provide a full range of recruiting services, and we do it at the highest level :) Do not hesitate to contact us: we will be glad to help you!

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