The tech industry is constantly evolving, and changing technology needs also means changing hiring needs. A recent report found that the current drivers behind hiring initiatives are: big data and analytics (5o.4%), cloud computing (46.9%), artificial intelligence (36.9%), process automation (36.7%) and customer engagement (27.6%).

The HackerRank Tech Recruiting Benchmark report is based on responses from 5,297 tech hiring leaders, and aims to see how teams are approaching tech hiring.

“As companies’ tech initiatives shift, so must the technical teams that build them. And that requires agile, adaptive hiring teams to keep up with tech hiring demands. Keeping a close eye on key benchmarks—like evaluation time investment, time-to-hire, and more—ensures that your team manages the transitions smoothly,” HackerRank wrote in the report

The report also found that the average requisition per recruiter at smaller companies (1-999 employees) was 8 and the average requisition per recruiter at larger companies (1,000+ employees) was 12. HackerRank believes that larger companies have higher average requisition loads because they have access to more tools and more personnel support so they can spend more time recruiting and less time on administrative tasks. 

More isn’t always better when it comes to recruiting though. According to the survey, those handled over 20 requisitions at a time had an average time-to-hire of 45 days. Recruiters handling 1-4 recruits had an average time-to-hire of 29 days. “So those handling fewer concurrent requisitions—most commonly, at smaller companies—have the upper hand when it comes to agility,” HackerRank wrote.

Another interesting finding of the report was that regardless of company size, hiring panels spend 2.2 hours on average evaluating candidates. “Regardless of size, companies spend the same amount of time screening and interviewing candidates. Each individual on the interviewing panel spends roughly 2.2 hours evaluating per candidate—from screening, to code reviews, to onsites, debriefs, and more—in order to make a decision,” HackerRank wrote. 

Tech hiring panels are also tending to look for mid-level developers the most, followed by senior developers, interns or entry-level developers, and managers. The hardest role to fill is full-stack developers, regardless of company size. The easiest candidates to find are data analysts. “So why are full-stack developer roles the most difficult ones to find candidates for? It’s likely tied to the ambiguity of their role; ‘full-stack developer’ is a notoriously challenging role to define. The difficulty of defining the role, combined with the unique blend of required skills makes it an especially hard role to source for,” HackerRank explained.