In 2023, 32 IT companies hired 2920 juniors in Ukraine. Genesis, ZONE3000, Netpeak Group, Ajax, and EPAM hired the most juniors.
About it says in the DOU.
Interestingly, there were more product companies — six in total that hired more than 100 starters each. Traditionally, they hire more non-technical specialists, while service companies focus on technical ones.
Juniors are specialists with no work experience or less than a year of experience (in some companies, such specialists are called Trainees or Interns).
In 2023, 32 IT companies hired 2920 juniors in Ukraine. For comparison, in 2022, 40 companies hired 3989 juniors, a thousand more.
Six food companies that have hired more than 100 juniors each
The most noticeable trend among the surveyed companies is that there are more food companies that have hired more than 100 new hires each. There are already three of them in the top five:
- Genesis (490 juniors last year);
- Netpeak Group (313);
- Ajax Systems (309).
First time respondents to the survey
- SKELAR (206 beginners last year);
- Uklon (111);
- Laba Group (107).
Product companies traditionally need more specialists in marketing, analytics, management, and HR. Service companies are more focused on hiring technical specialists.
In total, four IT companies hired more than 300 juniors each last year, and six more hired more than 100 beginners.
In third place in terms of the number of juniors hired last year —Netpeak Group(313 new starters). As the company explained, they hire a lot of beginners because they have a developed mentoring institute, described employee gradations and requirements for moving to a higher level, and knowledge maps for most positions. They also use their own development — LITI, an AI recruiting tool that helps assess candidates’ soft skills.
Ajax Systemsalso hired more than 300 juniors last year, but according to the company, they consistently hire specialists in various positions and areas. They are constantly working to increase the R&D department, a significant part of which is made up of QA specialists. Due to the narrow expertise, it can be difficult to find candidates with relevant experience, so they often hire people with engineering and technical education and knowledge of mathematics and physics and help them get used to the role of a tester. In 2024, they plan to comprehensively expand cooperation with university engineering departments.
EPAMlast year hired 59% fewer juniors than in 2022, — 211 specialists. It does this only through its own educational projects. According to Denys Hryniov, Head of Education Programs at EPAM Ukraine, it was difficult to predict economic indicators in 2022. However, in 2023, it became clear that the need for junior specialists could increase again. With this in mind, the company plans to increase the number of juniors to 600 this year. This step is a sign of the company’s readiness to open new positions and provide opportunities for young professionals to study and work.
SoftServehired 75% fewer juniors last year than in 2022, but most of them were hired from the internal pool. Instead, in 2023, we focused on SoftServe Academy courses and joint programs with universities. About 80% of all new hires were recruited through these traditional channels. Like last year, the company does not have quantitative hiring plans; vacancies that appear on projects and for which no specialists have been found in the internal reserve are brought to the market.
The most popular areas
The data on areas is rather conditional, as fewer companies took part in the survey this year and not all of them provided a breakdown by area. However, it is still noticeable that in 2023, compared to 2022, companies were more active in hiring beginners in marketing, management, and sales. Instead, there were fewer developers, testers, support specialists, and devops.
In 2023, support was the most popular area among the surveyed companies. It is followed by development, QA, and marketing.
Hiring plans for 2024 — moderate
Last year, DOU was the most popular channel for hiring beginners among the surveyed companies. They also actively used recommendations, LinkedIn and Djinni, and searched through the company’s website.
Usually, each company uses many different channels. However, EPAM and SoftServe mainly hire juniors through their own educational programs and through cooperation with universities.
Half of the surveyed companies have minor plans to hire juniors this year (up to 20 specialists) or do not plan to recruit new juniors. But there are also those that will hire more juniors: seven companies plan to hire up to 50 new professionals, and eight more than 50.
