Throughout 2021, IT talent has been scarce and remote work has remained in place in most IT workplaces in the US. These conditions have pushed hiring managers to hire more freelancers to complete IT projects. Thus, it should come as no surprise that B2B talent platforms have been experiencing accelerated growth over the past year.

Talent platforms facilitate transactions between freelancers and businesses with digital two-sided marketplaces and have been rapidly expanding since the pandemic reduced business’ hesitancy to hire remote workers. IT is the largest talent platform occupational category as measured by gross spend. According to SIA’s 2021 Global Talent Platform Survey, which surveyed 15 platforms representing approximately 31% of the total B2B market, IT accounted for 47% of the worldwide market in 2020. SIA estimates that B2B talent platforms grew 25% in 2020, compared to a contraction of 9% in global IT temporary staffing. While the staffing market is still vastly larger than B2B talent platforms, talent platforms are consistently growing at a much faster rate.

Talent Platform (B2B) gross spend by occupation, 2020

Source: SIA

IT jobs are well-suited to freelancing given the digital nature of the work and the need to hire specialists for one-off projects. However, enterprise adoption of talent platforms had been slow prior to the pandemic due to lack of awareness or resistance to change and cultural barriers around remote work. Today, these obstacles have been drastically lowered. The global shift to remote work has legitimized it as viable way to work, even preferable for talent that can be hard to source locally. Furthermore, widespread remote work has brought new awareness to freelancers who have been working remotely long before 2020 and are used to handling the challenges of remote work. The digital transformation many companies have undergone has also made it easier to engage and work with remote freelancers.

As a digital marketplace, talent platforms realize several advantages over traditional staffing firms that lack an online presence, such as a reduced reliance on recruiters. With a self-service platform, hiring managers can leverage matching algorithms to quickly find suitable freelancers and reach out to them directly without having to engage with a recruiter. This can significantly shave time-to-fill ratios and reduce hiring costs for buyers. Another benefit of the platform model is it gives buyers greater transparency into who they are hiring by including publicly accessible ratings and reviews from past managers on a worker’s profile. This additional data point can help hiring managers choose between candidates who might share similar skills on a resume.

Demand for IT talent continues to expand as companies across all industries invest more into IT projects. Additionally, the need for an agile workforce has made contingent labor more important to businesses. These tailwinds suggest a bright future for talent platforms as enterprises increasingly leverage different pools of talent to address skill shortages. To learn more about the rapidly evolving talent platform market, check out SIA’s recently released Talent Platform Landscape report.