OurCrowd, a global investment crowdfunding platform serving accredited investors and institutions, has posted its Q2 High-Tech Jobs Index. According to the Index, startup job vacancies are skyrocketing as the work from home (WFH) environment, is here to stay.
OurCrowd states that its portfolio companies indicate soring vacancies, an increase of 300%, over a 12 month period.
Hiring remains robust with 95% of OurCrowd companies looking to re-open offices but with a hybrid approach. Software engineers & business development professionals are in the most demand. OurCrowd portfolio companies are said to have no plans to slow down hiring.
OurCrowd says that during Q2 2021, an average of 31 new vacancies were added every day compared to 15 new vacancies every day during Q1 2021.
While most companies have reopened their offices, only 13% are working in the office full time with 80% allowing employees to work from home part-time. Correspondingly, 77% of Israeli companies surveyed say they expect the hybrid model to continue at least until December.
Laly David, Business Development Partner at OurCrowd, says the spread of the COVID Delta variant has thrown workplace planning into doubt again with many many high-tech companies able to continue their business activities with WFH with minimal disruption.
“Most important, the trend of hiring employees from peripheral geographic areas is here to stay and fortunately even grow.”
Moshe Tanach, CEO of NeuReality, an OurCrowd portfolio company, says:
“COVID created an urgent necessity that pushed us to adopt a hybrid work environment that is critical, especially for new employees. In NeuReality, we are committed to maintain and improve this new working model, no matter what will happen with the COVID pandemic. We believe it is an essential component in our future success.”
While COVID has pushed a WFH environment this has also enabled firms to hire individuals outside of tech corridors – for OurCrowd this means employees may now reside outside of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Hiring firms are 35% more open to hiring from the periphery while another 55% said they already did before the pandemic hit.
“Morphisec is moving from the start-up phase to the scale-up phase and has doubled its workforce since the beginning of 2021 across Israel, the US and India,” says Michal Gilboa, VP of Human Resources at Morphisec. “In an effort to address the needs of our employees while growing during Covid, we have opened a small Tel Aviv office in addition to the Beersheba HQ to enable employees to work partially at an office while reducing commute time.”
On the other side of the WFH phenomenon, is cyber security. More than 50% of SME IT professionals say they plan to spend more on remote management technology and security technologies related to remote work. Three-quarters of the IT professionals said that remote work makes it harder for employees to follow good security practices.
OurCrowd portfolio companies report over 3,000 job vacancies as of the report.