Ready.Set.Midmarket! Podcast: Rory Devine, VP, Robert Half Talent Solutions, On A ‘No Fire, No Hire’ IT Job Market
If you are a midmarket IT executive, what you should be thinking about right now is “how to incorporate AI hybrid workflows into everyday jobs,” advises Rory Devine, vice president of national technology accounts at Robert Half Talent Solutions.
In this episode of "Ready Set Midmarket!," hosts Adam Dennison and Samara Lynn are joined by Devine to discuss the current landscape of the IT job market. The conversation covers the challenges and opportunities for IT leaders and CIOs in the midmarket sector, particularly in the context of the fourth quarter when job changes are prevalent. Devine shares insight into the impact of AI and automation on traditional roles, the importance of reskilling and upskilling, and the rise of fractional executive roles. The discussion also touches on the evolving expectations of CEOs, the role of private equity in the industry, and the significance of personal relationships in recruiting.
The full episode can be watched on YouTube and heard on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Previous RSM! episodes are here.
Transcript:
Adam Dennison:
Hello and welcome to another episode of Ready.Set.Midarket! the podcast for all things midmarket IT brought to you by MES Computing. As always, I'm joined by my senior editor and colleague, Samara Lynn. Welcome, Samara.
Samara Lynn:
Thank you.
Adam Dennison:
And we have a wonderful guest today, Rory Devine. Rory is vice president with Robert Half. Rory, thanks for joining us today.
Rory Devine:
Very happy to be here, Adam. Thank you.
Adam Dennison:
So I was telling Samara earlier, I could have a discussion on this topic for probably six hours, but that would not make for a good podcast. We're gonna talk about hiring, we're gonna talk about what's going on in the market right now for IT leaders and CIOs. We are in Q4 right now when the time sort of hits for a lot of job changes and things of that nature. can personally tell you that I've got some very close friends of mine that are CIOs and IT leaders in midmarket organizations that have been removed recently and they're having some tough times finding other spots right now. So Rory, you could kind of, first off, just kind of let us know your role at Robert Half and then carry that into what are you seeing in today's landscape with kind of all that's going on, both domestically, economically, geopolitically and where you see some opportunities and challenges that are out there.
Rory Devine:
Absolutely. And thanks again for the time. I'm Rory Devine, 18 years in IT and technology staffing across nationally. Currently as the vice president of Robert Half, I serve as a working with mid-level small to midmarket accounts, as well as some of the major accounts, major enterprise that you are all familiar with. And anywhere from the recruiting side, all the way up to executive placement, inclusive of the entire spectrum of IT. So that's what I've been doing for most of my career.
And I feel like your timing for this podcast couldn't have been better given where we are in Q4.
Adam Dennison:
Yep. So what are you seeing out there right now? Like I said, there's some really good qualified candidates that I know personally through one reason or another, if it's merger and acquisition, if they made a change and they're having a tough time right now finding other spots. And so, you know, they're doing some consultant work out there, is not, I know, all too uncommon, but what's the landscape looking like right now from your perspective?
Rory Devine:
Yes, for the quick look back from 2025, Q1, Q2, Q3 have kind of been a no fire, no hire market. Everyone's been calling it kind of the 'hug your jobs' day. No one's really looking for anything new. The last four years since 2022, we haven't seen anything on the executive level move. We call it a hardening at the top. 2022 was one of the biggest reshuffling of executives in the last 20 years, but since then there's been almost no movement. What we're seeing in Q4 right now, and especially in this week is what we're seeing is the efficiency wave where there are a lot of layoffs happening within the tech space. Not only at the bottom, but also happening at the top where there is going to be just kind of a, some people are calling it a white collar sessions. You know, that's a little too spicy for me. I think it's honestly just an efficiency space. think there's going to be a redeploy a reskill kind of movement and you're seeing kind of the painful piece of that growth happening in Q4 right now.
Adam Dennison:
How are these organizations making their decisions if it is at the top, the CIO, the vice president, obviously not all midmarket organizations have a CIO, or if it's more within the staff? Do you know how they're looking at that and making some of these hard decisions?
Rory Devine:
I've seen a lot of peer to peer networks up spring in the last two years. A lot of people are afraid of falling behind. So there's been a lot of, kind of gathering, after hours after work, what are you doing? Am I missing anything? How are things being implemented day to day? What do you see coming? this is no surprise to anyone. What's happened in the last few weeks with some of the bigger companies. I know this is a midmarket podcast, but when big tech sneezes, the rest of us get a cold. So it's really important to focus on that.
Adam Dennison:
Yeah.
Rory Devine:
So, so what we're seeing really is just an evaluation of any sort of repetitive, redundant, man-hour work is now being optimized or is at least forecasted to be optimized. And you're seeing all this happen now at the end of Q3 into Q4.
Adam Dennison:
Is this, we got to say it right, is this a direct correlation to AI and where people want to be with AI or where they think they can be with AI and what they think it can do and maybe they're not quite sure yet?
Rory Devine:
Yes. This is,pivoting into AI integrations. Sales aren't down. Automation is up. traditional roles within companies that we just thought weren't replaceable marketers, analysts, HR, software developers, all of that is now being automated and optimized. So, you know, we want to see from the, from the employment side, want stability, but the companies right now are looking for efficiency over expansion. All this repetitive work is being eliminated and what you should be doing, or if you're a CEO or midmarket right now is figuring out how you can incorporate AI hybrid workflows into everyday jobs. That is what 2026 is going to look like. That's where the opportunity is. I'm perpetually an optimist. So I see this as the painful point, but we're going to come out of this with a lot more opportunities for those who are able to reskill and upskill their current, their current job.
Adam Dennison:
Yep. Samara, You have a couple of questions. I got a bunch more. Would you want to jump in?
Samara Lynn:
Yeah, I mean, I just think that's interesting. you know, just considering the technology environment right now, Rory, are you seeing more placements for people who are skilled in AI and cybersecurity, especially like, are there some tech skills that are more in demand? And do you see that continuing into next year?
Rory Devine:
Yeah, the early adopters of AI within their companies are being promoted. They're not being replaced. It's the ones who are dragging their feet on the education piece. I think a critical point to make a clear demarcation of is some of these, when you're getting curriculum sent to you from your company or from your leadership and people are saying, this is free education. It's not free education. is training. It's mandatory. They're not calling it mandatory, but that's what they're there. They've been watching all year who was hitting benchmarks, who are upskilling themselves when given the opportunity. So if you are currently lucky enough to have a job in the tech space, please, please take the opportunity to grab any of these certifications or anything you can do in your off time. to maintain relevancy. Most of these companies do not want to lose the brain drain and the institutional knowledge of these long-term employees. But if they aren't willing to learn and change and grow with the market and what's co
Adam Dennison:
What kind of, you know, what recommendations would you have? And again, I'm talking about personal friends that were part of MES. Some of them were advisory board members, know, 20, 25 year careers, understand the business, understand multiple facets of their business. They've worked in multiple industries. They're in some big markets as well. I don't know how hybrid's playing into things right now from a workforce standpoint, but what kind of recommendations would you have for someone that's, you know, they were hit by a layoff bug in August and we're now, it's almost November and they're still out there. What do you have to say to them?
Rory Devine:
Sure, for executives in transition, if you did lose your job, think a really great avenue is to stay relevant. Certifications above all, they are objective things that you can put right in front of your resume. I also feel that people who are just using maybe AI tools or just massive applications all at once and considering that a job hunt is just not the right way to go about things. Personal experience for me, five good bespoke cover letters to a company.
Adam Dennison:
Yeah.
Rory Devine:
Or for a job that you're looking for, it more than 500 applications. You know, a great couple three-step process. If you find a job that you think you're a fit for, check your personal network. First and foremost, go to LinkedIn, see if you have any connections there. Use that, you know, as an employee, you only really have to kind of resources, have your personal past performance, which is only working with your current company. And then you have equity with people that you know in your personal network. So if you can cash in on the equity with personal network, please do that. Take the extra moment to figure out who might be hiring for that job. Always apply to the job on the job career website. Do not do it through a job board. That is potentially getting lost. That's really AI agents sending resumes to applicant tracking systems that are just simply rejecting them. So you there's going into a black box. So you really got to take the, when you don't have a job, this becomes your full-time job. So you have⁓ the other piece I would argue or, or certainly ask for any executive mid-market have both an executive resume that shows management while also doing an individual contributor version of your resume. Nothing more attractive right now in the market than an IC resume. People are looking for hard skills, abilities, something that they can get a specific project done to show ROI while budgets are lean. Executive resumes are more business impact, what I was able to drive, initiatives, et cetera. A lot of companies might be posting executive roles right now, especially small to midmarket.
But they may not actually want them. That's just showing a position of strength. It's window shopping. What you really want to do is find the people that are looking for actual projects to get done. And then in 26, when I believe you are going to see a rebound and hiring and again, it may not be the same traditional SDLC [Software Development Life Cycle] jobs that we're used to, you know, but there will be other ones out there. If you continue to upscale and reskill yourself, that's where you're going to make the opportunity for yourself.
Adam Dennison:
It's almost like go back to the old school way, right? It's, you know, cover letters and whatnot. And, you know, we all know the national ads that are out there and we don't need to name the companies, but going to these aggregators and whatnot, that's where the bots and the AI might be getting in there. And, and as you said, things getting lost and it's like, kind of take the time to go back to the old, old, old ways of, of, of job hunting.
Rory Devine:
Hard skills get you the job, but soft skills will get you promoted and get you a full-time job. So if you can come in on a contract until the market warms up, that's what I advise most people.
Adam Dennison:
So that was going to be another question I had around fractional CIOs. And I'm starting to hear that a lot more now as well. And some of these folks that are going into consultancy roles are doing these fractional types of role. I just met with someone a few weeks ago that does, you know, fractional outside of IT, but they're doing other executive. Are you seeing an uptick in that? that a good place to go? Is that, could that potentially have a, you know, 45, 50 year old carry out the rest of their career in that? Or what are your thoughts around those types of positions and roles and agencies and consultancies?
Rory Devine:
So that's an excellent entry point into back into the workforce. After COVID, a lot of it, I'm speaking holistically with a lot of Robert Half's clients, but a lot of operational leadership left, moved or retired. Project management as a service. So if you say executive or fractional, I also think don't let your ego get in the way of maybe going for a fractional project management role. You cannot.
Companies need experience and you can't fast track that or rush it. So if you have that experience and you're willing to come in as a fractional, get in the door, show your value, that's another way of growing your personal network while actually working. And I think some people kind of prohibit that from being a viable option because they think, well, I'm an executive, I shouldn't be doing portfolio or project management, but anything starts and then you can always build yourself up within that company.
Adam Dennison:
Sure.
What about heading to the dark side, the vendor side? I've seen that a little bit as well, where vendors are out there saying, okay, there's some IT leaders that have experience, they've got connections, maybe we want to bring them on in some sort of a business development type of a role. Are you seeing that kind of move as well?
Rory Devine:
I am seeing that, anecdotally, personally, and then nationally, lot of the executives in transition that I know and work with in Southern California have moved into some of the bigger consulting firms. won't say what I would also say that some of them don't even have. Kind of projects they're asked to bring in. What's your personal network look like? Who do you know? For the most part, in my experience, those people only last about a year on the dark side, and then they want to come back.
Adam Dennison:
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a whole 'nother world.
Cause they bring you in, want you, they're putting a number on you and saying, this is what we want to hit and we want pipeline. yeah, it's a, it's a whole, it's a whole 'nother world out there.
Rory Devine:
And don't forget if you do go over there and when you do get that job, they're going to be the first call you're going to get. Hey, I helped you out when you weren't there. Yeah. So that's a, you always, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right? So you'll, you'll see that ⁓ once you do get a new job, but that is absolutely a trend. And I understand why some of the executives are doing it, but there are other options. If again, if their ego doesn't limit them to what they can do.
Adam Dennison:
What are you hearing from the C-level CEOs that you talk to and what they want in their next, you know, is it, it like, like Samara said, I, know, someone has to have a proven track record in AI or is it, know, they want someone that's, that has the financial abilities to kind of, you know, work more, work more closely with CFOs and understand that aspect of the business. you, you hearing any sort of trends that somebody might be able to grab onto from that, from that CEO level?
Rory Devine:
Yeah, mean, overall, that's a great question. And overall, the how is where the tech leader is going to come in. The CEO is going to say, here's my strategy. I need you to execute on it. I think everyone's been buzzworded. Everyone's heard that AI is going to replace your job. AI is going to, you're going to get your job replaced by someone who uses it. We've all heard that. But where I see this from the CEO and the leadership, they have some change management does not even start to grasp what they're going to be asking these tech leaders to do. So if you can kind of sell yourself in 2026 and you're looking for a job, when you go into an interview, you should really be prepared to talk to the CEOs and the leaders about how you plan to execute. mean, some of the real changes that are happening, you kind of mentioned hybrid return to office, every company is different. How does that work?
I think the companies who manage this transformation next year are going to thrive long term. values still matter. People's families and communities are being affected right now. How can you reskill the current population of your employees? How do you not lose those people and replace them? If you can come in as a tech leader, educating, you know, I think a lot of companies thought they were going to be able to email out a curriculum and just assume everyone was going to do it.
You know, do you, can you walk us through how you're going to educate and actually market internally to take these and why it's good for you to take this. Another piece of this is on the other side is retention. I think there's going to be a boom in the creator economy next year too. So, the people who are adopting AI may actually leave your company and go for something else. Micro businesses, side hustles, all of that. So, you might get a lower bandwidth person on a very talented, so have to keep them engaged while, while they might make their eye might be wandering someone else. So, I just see that. Capacity is going to improve so high that, know, reskilling is the new bachelor degree. You got to really go in with that kind of thought. And how are you going to, you know, I think universities and everything a lot are still scrambling to try to figure that out. But as long as, you know, we might look back on this in a few years Nvidia has given out a really great AI certifications for free. know, the academic
I think a couple of years from now, that is going to be a very expensive teaching module. As long as you can, know, what CEOs ultimately want is how can you combine human creativity and machine intelligence. And if you can answer that question and the rollout and manage retention, return to office, education, that's what they're looking for. They don't, they have the how they, they don't have the how they have the why and what, when, what.
Adam Dennison:
It's really interesting you bring up the universities. I'm knee deep in it now. My daughter is a freshman at Syracuse and that's where I went as well. And I was looking at their majors. just canceled probably 15 majors, kind of like old school types of majors. It's creating a bit of an uproar, but some of the new things I'm seeing pop up; they're launching a major around podcasting. They're launching one around influencers.
They already have one around e-sports and e-sports management, like things that they weren't even thought of when I went years ago when I went to school there. But it's just really interesting to see when you start to look at the universities and where they're placing some of their bets in these kind of new avenues of careers and revenue streams and things like that.
Rory Devine:
Yeah, liberal arts applications are down 12 percent, year over year. That's a real thing. I actually am very involved with the Student Alliance at UCLA. Actually, myself and another CIO that I work with very closely. have something called the IT Career Academy where we are the ITCA and we are helping kids get jobs within computer science. So, I work directly with engineering, computer science. So, data science and data-related majors are up 900 percent the last four years and cybersecurity is up 25 percent. So yeah, they are scrambling to catch up, but we can read the tea leaves there. The kids are seeing where the jobs are, and they are retooling and rescaling themselves.
Samara Lynn:
Makes sense.
Adam Dennison:
Yeah.
And I think we're seeing a lot of double majors right now as well. And, and, I'm talking full blown double majors, not, not a major and a minor. They're, they're kind trying to get after it. So they've got a couple of possible avenues to go down.
Rory Devine:
Yeah, they're the ones that have to come get a job right away. the reason I've kind of backed into this career academy is because a lot of these, you know, a lot of the new market people new to the market have the same problems as maybe a seasoned executive in transition. They haven't built the resume.
Adam Dennison:
Yeah.
Rory Devine:
Everything is kind of experience. What does your digital avatar say in the space? What is LinkedIn? You know, how are you building your avatar and your business acumen? So a lot of it is very similar parallels and it's I've signed myself serving both sides.
Adam Dennison
Yeah, I went through that when I was, I was hung up on a COVID layoff and I was like, my gosh, I haven't updated my LinkedIn in 13 years. I don't have a paper resume. I am lost. We can't talk about recruiting and what's going on in the job market without having the touching on compensation. So, what are you seeing out there as far as compensation, what they can expect? Are there any types of, you know, blended types of compensations where it's not all you know there are they tied to profit, right? That's another interesting one or are they saying, ‘hey look I want my next CIO to come in but they have to be tied to the revenue growth’ and these types of opportunities. What are you seeing around that? Should they expect lower compensation as well?
Rory Devine:
Yeah, there is a collective dissonance between what the compensation is and that's not only market, but that's geopolitical to your original question. And we started this; I think inflation is still rising. There is an, and people's expectations for jobs, especially when they're investing in the re-skilling and re-educating themselves in these tools. There are from the midmarket side, I am still seeing just a very big break between what is expected and from the employer side and then also what is the expectations on the employee side. I think right now from the bigger tech enterprise technology, you're kind of seeing a wild west. If someone can kind of prove their value or worth with AI, ML engineering, cloud security, cybersecurity, are collectively getting pretty good compensation in the market, not necessarily tied to performance, but you know, they're trying to bring in every great mind they can and hope for the innovation. But yes, on the SMB side, we're just seeing more of a tied to performance becaus
These companies are focusing on what really matters, not short-term growth by letting go of more people to hit a quarterly mark.
Adam Dennison:
Yeah, well, that's a good segue into what are you seeing around private equity, PE. I think all of our competitors are PE owned for the most part. They didn't used to be, right? They used to be family-run, high-tech media businesses. And almost all of us now are under PE. And I'm hearing that from a lot of my audience of high tech, I'm sorry, midmarket IT leaders across various industries.
What kind of effect does that have and how do they navigate through that?
Rory Devine
So, I will say bright side of that, if you are looking for fractional executive leadership and kind of being able to drop in as a high-level consultant on the executive side, align yourself with PE is a great call right now because they are buying everything up. I've even seen some of our competitors get bought, and I don't actually see the business sense behind owning a staffing firm if you get rid of everyone, and you lose the relationships that they had. But I think the PE money is there. I think it's available. I also feel in my experience, there's just PEs coming in and promising a lot of moonshots with existing companies with AI, but I just don't think it's necessarily feasible. I think with the clients that we work with who are looking to advance their frequency with the capacity, they're just struggling with, they're just.
I don't even know how to say this. They're struggling with what's realistic in the market. So, like they're not getting the ROI that they want. But yeah, when it comes to the, I can't give actual numbers or anything like that, but yes, we are seeing a major shift in the PE where they're just owning a lot of the infrastructure of American business.
Adam Dennison:
Yeah, no, absolutely. It's interesting you mentioned the expectations too, when we boil that down to, you know, specific projects and we partner with Gartner to do our state of the midmarket research. And we've recently added a question around, you know, what are you doing around AI? You know, what workloads are you doing there? And then a question we asked was around, you know, when AI fails, what's the reason behind that? And number one is typically data quality.
And then tucked in at number two and three is unrealistic expectations, which I would say is probably coming from the top. they're, you know, I'm expecting XYZ to come back out of this, but that's not quite there yet, or they can't quantify it. And that's creating some issues because, you know, made the investment, we did the time on this and we're not seeing the return. And now you're mentioning that kind of on a more blown up scale, obviously.
Rory Devine:
Yeah.
Stakeholder realistic expectations is a huge -- it's going to be a big, big tech leadership understanding, you know, I I can't say which but there's been some government people that I know really, really well within the local area who have been asked by the leadership and government, 'Hey, I need you to stop these deepfakes' and I'm trying to explain to them like well, that's not realistic I can't stop those, those can be made by anybody at any time and disseminated out across multiple channels, but again, even the you know, someone might see something.
A company might come in with a perfectly clean data set, show them this is what you can do with AI. The CEO sees it or the leader sees it. This is what I want. And then you realize that there's probably like a two or three year data restructuring and cleanup before you can even consider doing some sort of move on that.
Adam Dennison:
I can tell you now, Samara and I have had some episodes of Ready.Set.MidMarket! where we've been talking about security around AI and some of the things that I didn't think could happen and what's coming. it's pretty daunting to say the least.
Rory Devine:
Yeah, I think the cyber security in the AI space is going to be interesting with the rush to build all the AI frameworks. We, don't think everyone really took a good look at what's underneath. And if you build something that's flawed with a threat vector, you're going to find yourself in a lot of trouble down the road. The leaders and that I work with, you know, I think we're probably within the next six months, going to see a pretty significant AI cyber event. So you're absolutely right on that. It is daunting.
Adam Dennis:
Yeah.
Absolutely. Well, Rory, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join Samara and I today. I am going to ask you again to join us at an MES Spring event coming up next year, hopefully, so the audience can get to meet you. If somebody out in the audience wants to get in touch with you or get in touch with Robert Half to make a connection, build a relationship, what's the best way for them to do that?
Rory Devine:
Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you for asking. So the itcareeracademy.org. I also have a podcast about best tips and tricks to get a job called Between Gigs. You can find that on YouTube and I also post them pretty regularly on my LinkedIn profile. You can find me on LinkedIn and then, you know, feel free to email me, rory.devine@RobertHalf. If you need some help, some personal assistance on a resume, I'm always happy to help and offer my experience in the last few years.
The whole idea of values matter and this is still communities being impacted. I'm here to help wherever I can. And why I think recruiting is, know, what's old is new again. I thought maybe recruiting may not be something that's happening, but we're going back to personal relationships. We're going back to personal vetting. And I think that's why this career and this job is always going to be there because there is such a personal component of it.
Adam Dennison:
Yeah. AI's not taking Rory's job.
Rory Devine:
Yeah.
Adam Dennison:
Learn how to use it and enhance it.
Rory Devine:
Creativity, relationships, and strategy. AI will never be able to take that from us.
Adam Dennison:
Absolutely. So thanks again so much. Really appreciate it. And to the audience, I hope this was helpful. And we get to see Rory on an MES stage in a few months.
Rory Devine:
Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Samara, I appreciate it.