Marc Sumner: Big vendors should arm themselves as channel partners push ahead in talent war

The channel recruitment expert declares the talent war is back on as hiring freezes thaw

The struggle for IT staff has picked up once again, but profitable vendors should be wary of their redundancy-happy past.

According to Marc Sumner, CEO of IT channel sales and marketing recruitment firm Robertson Sumner, the channel has resumed hiring to a significant degree.

"I'm predicting that by Q4 it will be back to pre-Covid levels of hiring," he told CRN.

Sumner saw this spike coming back in April when he told CRN hiring in the IT channel will start to pick up in Q2 .

However, his prediction came with a message that "overpaid" and "over-hired" staff who were laid off from vendors are now seeing channel partners as a new alternative, stating "vendor land isn't safe."

With his latest insights, Sumner reiterated his point that people are now turning to partners for work over vendors.

"We are already seeing that in Q3, but by Q4 we will see everyone catching up I think.

"Microsoft made 20 per cent more profit in their last quarter, delivering $20bn profit and made 10,000 redundant.

"How can that be justified? This has been a great opportunity for companies to clear out dead wood and make quite drastic changes without getting bad press.

"Now we are seeing hiring returning and it's starting to ramp! I wouldn't be surprised if they start hiring in September/October again."

No more layoffs and c-suite hiring on the rise

While the previously mentioned vendor layoffs have been the talk of 2023, Sumner believes the worst is now behind the channel.

"Channel companies aren't prepared to wait, and I don't think we will see any more major layoffs from big tech firms," he said.

"In distribution we saw some published redundancies from two of the big broadliners yet most are still hiring and are doing very well."

Sumner is of course referring to Ingram Micro's recent cull and TD SYNNEX's voluntary severance packages offer to employees, both affecting US staff and, in Ingram Micro's case, its EMEA CloudBlue business.

However CRN broke just yesterday that distribution giant Exertis has removed or replaced 150 roles in its UK business this year. According to the company, it is now moving into a hiring phase.

Sumner continued: "What I'm really excited about is that the big C-suite roles are starting to come up now, earlier than I anticipated, and we all know what happens when they get in - additional headcount, clear outs and new go-to-markets, and they start driving new initiatives.

Sumner revealed he and his firm have placed more senior leaders in the last four weeks than in the whole of Q1 and Q2.

"Significant moves will be happening in September, which is always the biggest hiring month of the year. We have 3 VP / CRO's starting in September at large partners and you will see many more at vendors and distributors announced on LinkedIn," Sumner added.

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