Tech Talent Drop - Edition 22

Staying ahead in tech hiring means tracking the moves that actually shift talent demand. This week: recruiting agents go mainstream, infra spend surges, and several mega-rounds reset the market for AI skills.

The Drop

This week, LinkedIn unveiled a new feature called "Hiring in Your Network," which allows users to see immediate hiring needs within their connections. This feature aims to streamline job searches and improve candidate matching by leveraging personal networks. The move highlights the growing trend of harnessing existing connections for recruitment, potentially reducing the time and cost of sourcing new candidates.

Recruiters should monitor how this tool affects candidate engagement metrics.

AI Tool of the Week

GoodTime Hire - Automates interview scheduling across time zones and panels, balances interviewer load, and gives candidates self-serve rescheduling. Teams typically see faster time-to-schedule, fewer back-and-forth loops, and cleaner interviewer calendars.

Try this: connect your ATS, template your loops, enable self-scheduling for screens and panels, then track time-to-schedule and no-show rate for two weeks.

Hiring/Interview Insight

AI skills are now table stakes—and ethics/security skills are scarce. A new industry report this week highlights that 78% of IT roles now require AI skills, with shortages in LLMs, prompt engineering, AI ethics, and AI security. Consider adding a short scenario to your loop where candidates must flag uncertain model output or escalate a risky workflow—you’ll see judgment as well as speed.

Funding Watch

• Figure — AI robotics — $1B+ (Series C); valuation $39B. Hiring: robot software, perception, manufacturing, data ops.

• Groq — AI inference chips — $750M; valuation $6.9B. Hiring: compiler/runtime, systems, datacenter deployments.

• CuspAI — AI materials discovery — $100M (Series A). Hiring: ML for science, HPC, partnerships with labs.

• CodeRabbit — AI code review — $60M; valuation $550M. Hiring: developer tooling, evals/quality, enterprise GTM.

• Numeral — AI tax compliance — $35M (Series B). Hiring: data engineering, integrations, fintech partnerships.

These companies may be expanding their teams soon, offering fresh opportunities for tech talent.

Quick Bytes

• OpenAI plans ~$100B in backup server rentals over five years—a signal that compute scarcity and infra hiring (DC ops, reliability, supply) will keep heating up.

• Fiverr will lay off ~30% (≈250 roles) as it leans harder into AI automation—expect more freelance supply and pricing shifts.

• Snorkel AI cut ~13% (31 roles) in a shift toward data-as-a-service—ML/data talent may re-enter the market.

• LinkedIn Hiring Assistant is rolling out globally—early adopters should benchmark outreach and time-to-first-screen vs. manual baselines.

One to Watch: Agentic recruiting is moving from pilots to production. Track response rates, qualified screen rates, and candidate sentiment as AI handles more of the top-funnel work.

That’s all for this week’s Tech Talent Drop — stay informed, and see you next week!