The blockage in IT recruitment comes from market fragmentation, not a shortage. Experts are fleeing ESNs for freelancing and SMEs. The challenge is to know how to aggregate this dispersed ecosystem.
According to the OPIECC barometer, 78% of companies report encountering difficulties in recruitment for their IT projects. At the same time, the use of external skills can reach up to 80% in certain IT departments of large groups. These figures reflect real tension, but poorly express the nature of the problem. Because IT does not lack skills but struggles to mobilize them.
A market in transformation
In the missions that we support, one observation comes up regularly: companies have projects, budgets, ambitions. But they struggle to bring together the right expertise at the right time. At the same time, the market is changing rapidly. The model of the big ones ESN attracts less, while many experts choose independence or join smaller, more agile structures. The result is clear: skills become more specialized, more diffuse, and therefore more difficult to identify and mobilize quickly.
The blind spot of digital VSEs and SMEs
This reality appears very concretely when we look at the TPE and digital SMEs. We work regularly with these actors. They have experienced teams, advanced know-how, and structured methods. However, they rarely appear at the forefront of major projects because they do not have access to the market under the same conditions. They have neither the visibility nor the commercial means necessary to directly address major accounts. They then intervene in the background, often in a cascade of subcontracting.
An intermediation to rethink
What we are seeing is a growing mismatch between market structure and access to skills. Companies must identify specific expertise, often carried by different actors: freelancers, small structures, specialized partners. This diversity greatly complicates access and coordination. The challenge in this context is knowing where to look, how to assess and assemble skills into an operational framework. It becomes necessary to structure approaches capable of aggregating dispersed expertise and making it quickly available.
With the acceleration of technologies, particularly on subjects linked to artificial intelligence, this ability to mobilize the right skills at the right time becomes crucial. The projects that progress the fastest are managed by teams who know how to activate a broader ecosystem of skills.
Change perspective
Reading the market must evolve. We must recognize a lack of connection. The skills exist. They are simply dispersed, sometimes barely visible… In this context, the value lies in the ability to make the skill accessible and usable.
