Indonesia’s demand for top talent has outstripped supply. Here’s how one startup hires the best

Suitmedia team.

Most Jakartans in the digital services industry can tell you that Indonesia faces a shortage when it comes to recruiting top talent. But this is not necessarily a result of fewer students interested in IT, web development, or design. On the contrary, people like Almika Indra, managing director of Suitmedia, believe that the local demand for digital skills is growing faster than the talent pool can keep up.

Suitmedia is a creative digital lab that focuses on web design and mobile app development for corporate clients in Indonesia. It is also the firm that gave birth to the archipelago’s popular consumer-to-consumer marketplace Bukalapak, which now competes with local players like OLX, Berniaga, and Tokopedia. Bukalapak CEO Achmad Zaky was also the managing director of Suitmedia until 2011. Today, Indra (the company’s former business director) now runs the show, having replaced his predecessor Fajrin Rasyid as managing director. Referring to the early synergy between the two companies, Indra says, “We grew together, side by side, while Suitmedia focused on servicing clients, Bukalapak developed its own platform.”

Suitmedia makes apps and websites for international brands, localized for the Indonesian market. Since it’s inception five years ago, the company has become arguably one of the most successful web design and app developers in Indonesia. Suitmedia’s list of clients includes names like Unilever, Samsung, Bank Mandiri, Johnson and Johnson, Proctor and Gamble, AirAsia, and Toyota.

See: Samsung to build mobile phone factory in Indonesia

Bottlenecks in digital talent

Indra, 32, believes web design and app development is a promising sector for a new generation of college graduates in Indonesia. But because the local market is upping its competitive game, businesses like Suitmedia are now facing challenges.

“The barrier to entry in this industry is quite low, so fresh graduates or new small companies can offer a few similar services with a very low price,” he explains. “In this case, our advantage is that we have an experienced team that has handled many projects from SMEs to big corporations.”

Indra says his two biggest challenges in Jakarta are an increasingly crowded market and what he refers to as “talent wars.” He explains, “With the rise of digital startups […] we find that it is quite challenging to find great talent. The demand of digital talent increasingly exceeds the supply.”

Suitmedia is not the only business in Jakarta feeling the digital talent bottleneck. In a recent interview with The Jakarta Post, Hasnul Suhaimi, CEO of local telco XL Axiata said:

The number of creative people out there is immense, but we have to be both diligent and prudent in searching for the right talent in the market. At XL Axiata, we have decided to recruit talent from relevant industries because headhunting those people from our competitors is difficult, given that they too are experiencing the same talent shortage.

A shifting paradigm allows employees to become entrepreneurs

According to a recent survey conducted by Accenture, 20 percent of Indonesian companies consider finding the right digital talent to be a major problem. The report says, “Digital Indonesia is no longer an aspiration. It is an expectation—from businesses’ shareholders and from the country’s citizens. Business leaders ignore that reality at their peril.”