What Employers Are Really Looking for in 2025

Table of Contents

• A Look Back at Tech Hiring in 2024
• What Employers Are Looking for in 2025
• How to Stand Out in the 2025 Tech Job Market

Ready to launch a tech career in 2025? To get a better sense of the trends that shaped 2024 and what to expect in 2025, we spoke with Ashley Ramos, a Career Success Lead at Springboard. Ashley shares insights on how job-seekers navigated the challenges of 2024 with the support of Springboard and offers expert tips for standing out in the tech job market in 2025. Whether you’re preparing for your first tech role or looking to level up, Ashley’s advice will help you approach your 2025 job search with confidence!

A Look Back at Tech Hiring in 2024

Ashley, as a Career Success Lead at Springboard, you have a bird’s-eye view of where Springboard students are landing in 2024. What were the biggest tech and hiring trends of 2024?

2024 was a difficult year for many, inside and outside the tech careers industry. We had longer than anticipated searches, seeing the most successes after nine or more months of job searching for those making a significant career change. The market required a strategy focused on networking and commitment to continued skill development beyond what they may have learned in their programs. 

We saw graduates land jobs within a variety of industries, but we noticed a focus on more local and regional companies over Fortune 500 companies warranted the most positive results. 

How did Springboard respond to those 2024 trends?

Understanding the seismic shift in the 2024 market, our priority at Springboard was to offer extended support to our job-seekers. This included extra coaching, technical mentorship support, and 2-3 career events a month to form a community and stay focused. 

We also coached our job-seekers in 2024 with these two top tips:

1. Prioritize in-person and hybrid work opportunities in stable industries (healthcare, government, manufacturing, professional services). 2024 was marked with return to office demands and applicants overwhelmingly sought remote opportunities, so the fastest path to your next job experience was with in-person or hybrid roles. Particularly for career changers, we instilled the importance of needing a first job to get proper experience on the resume before leaning into the “perks” of tech jobs often afforded only after putting some time in.

2. Networking should be where you spend most of your time to help unlock any of the hidden job market. There are jobs out there that aren’t posted, but simply exist through word of mouth. It is pitching yourself to folks about what you do, and what you’re looking for, and someone having a lightbulb go off about an opportunity at their company. 2024 was about relationship-building for the long haul. My hope at Springboard has always been that our job seekers are learning skills for life, and understanding the importance of relationships in your professional career is one of them.

What types of tech roles did Springboard students land in 2024? 

Despite this being a hard year for some bootcamp graduates, we saw great success for many of our aspiring job seekers. Our graduates landed data analytics and data science jobs within companies that need to make strategic business decisions like technology and professional services. We did see some consistency remain with financial institutions and healthcare companies. In addition, UX designers, full stack developers, and software engineers were among the highest job titles. 

What Employers Are Looking for in 2025

What technical skills are employers looking for in 2025?

The reality is every employer is different, from the size of the company to their industry to the tools and programs available. There are fundamentals like Python, R, JavaScript, React, SQL, and PowerBI that will remain in demand in 2025. However, it is important to consider your career goals and align yourself with the languages and tools that make the most sense. 

Our recommendation is to focus on the foundational frameworks and languages that you are learning in your course, knowing that part of this career is to continue your skill development. There will always be a new framework or language to learn. The evolution of technology will always be here. How you demonstrate a growth mindset, and describe your ability to learn new frameworks, tools, and languages in interviews is what matters. After all, if you learned something in 6-9 months, and you can pass technical interviews, that says a lot about your ability to learn new things on the go!

Are there new soft skills that you will be telling junior talent to emphasize in 2025?

As folks continue to discuss the way AI is optimizing and accelerating certain tasks of many jobs, it only provides further justification to know and sell your soft skills. 

Some of the ones we believe are most valuable in 2025 include:

• Curiosity: Learn how to ask better questions, so that you understand and meet stakeholder expectations. Getting curious can also help you navigate disagreements and assume good intent in the workplace.

• Agility: This is technology — a lightning-speed, ever-changing industry. You must be able to pivot, redirect, and move quickly without frustration.

• Design Thinking: Understanding how to solve problems through a user-first approach is a priority for any new product or service.

• Emotional Intelligence: Conflict is unavoidable, so ensure you control your responses for successful resolution. Emotional intelligence is a key part of managing how we handle stressful situations in the workplace. 

• Cultural Sensitivity: As companies evolve to include folks across different countries, cultural sensitivity is necessary to be a good coworker. Understand how workplace cultures are different, and how you can be a collaborative partner with your international colleagues.

Are these skills and tools that people can learn at Springboard?

Yes, Springboard offers courses that support foundational skills in careers like Data Analytics, Data Science, Software Engineering, Cybersecurity, and UI/UX Design. If you’re looking at Springboard or any bootcamp, it is important to look at those frameworks, tools, and programming languages and research if they are aligned with the types of jobs you’re interested in pursuing.

How will AI affect tech roles in 2025? Will the AI hype cycle die down or stabilize? 

Simply put, no, the AI hype will not die down. When we look at what is happening, we are still in the exciting development phase. There’s buzz because there is competition, and that competition grows every day. Right now, there is a rising competitor to NVIDIA when it comes to AI chip production and all of that could change soon again! 

Ultimately, aspiring tech professionals should be less concerned with “Will AI replace this job?” and more concerned with learning about the opportunity AI presents for their work efficiency. AI tools could help you lean into the importance of soft skills that drive how we work. AI cannot and will not replace the human-related aspects of how we conduct business. At minimum, we must know “the how” of AI, in order to ensure its safety, ethics, and effectiveness in the future. 

Do you anticipate any new tech or tech-adjacent roles becoming more popular in 2025?

Outside of more AI-focused roles, I think we’re going to see more of the same push. Most companies are waiting to see what happens next under the new administration. There will be a continued need for cybersecurity as online threats become more sophisticated due to AI. In addition, blockchain technology is growing for companies who are investing in hiring talent for it. 

Which industries or types of companies do you anticipate will hire the most tech talent in 2025?

Professional services, financial technology (fintech), and greentech continue to have the most buzz for the future. Again, we’ve seen tons of talent acquisition movement across multiple industries in the second half of the year, which is always a tell-tale sign of the market to come. While there are hot industries, some of our trusted ones will be making their return. 

How to Stand Out in the 2025 Tech Job Market

We’ve seen the tech talent job pool get very competitive in 2024. How can bootcamp graduates stand out in the 2025 talent pool?

Sticking out in today’s talent pool boils down to two things: your personal branding and your ability to get uncomfortable: 

• Branding: Ensure you have created a website or portfolio that demonstrates your skills and projects and link it to your resume and LinkedIn profile. Don’t just look for jobs on LinkedIn; engage on LinkedIn. Have a strong narrative of your background and how it relates or complements the next job you seek. Relevancy throughout your career and having a strong “why” is essential to your brand. Try to bridge the gap between what you’ve done and what you want to do.

• Getting Uncomfortable: A major part of getting uncomfortable is networking. I know, it’s the scariest word of 2025 in the job search! However, if you can view networking as everyday interactions, then you’ll slowly start to feel less overwhelmed by the concept. Networking can take place anywhere and anytime. Talk to the person standing in line at the coffee shop. If you’re doing gig work (like Uber/Lyft), talk to the customers you interact with. If you have a part-time job in anything, talk to anyone and everyone. Naturally, when people get to know each other, one of the first things we do is talk about what we do for work. Lean into the vulnerability of getting to know strangers and allowing them to know you. We’ve had countless stories of job opportunities coming from BBQs, gig economy jobs, and even someone who was a window washer. You have to be willing to be uncomfortable. Once you’ve done that, and you’ve bridged the gap between what you’ve done and what you want to do, find the people who have done it and connect with them to learn more. 

Are there any new tech job search tools or platforms that you’re recommending students check out as they search for their first tech role in 2025? Will automated application software get any better in the new year?

We always recommend our students consider how they best optimize their job search through the use of credible tools and platforms to help expedite their application processes. This includes using ChatGPT and platforms like Teal. 

LinkedIn remains constant for job seekers; however, we recommend they focus on relationship-building and branding efforts across LinkedIn instead of just looking for jobs. While there are many job boards and job tools available, our graduates who saw the greatest success leaned into a targeted company list that became their guide for networking and seeking out jobs. 

Find out more and read Springboard reviews on Course Report. This article was produced by the Course Report team in partnership with Springboard.