Member Article

Are businesses missing a trick when it comes to the skills shortage?

A recent report published by the job-vacancy site Adzuna has highlighted that the UK’s technology sector continues to suffer from the skills shortage, with employers having to increase salaries in order to fill vacancies.

In London alone figures reveal salary increases of up to 26 per cent in the last year, from £38,274 to £48,307. These numbers show a real disparity between supply and demand, a concern that has more recently forced employers to outsource talent from abroad.

Taking into account the all-time high level of unemployment within the UK, particularly amongst younger people, these figures are alarming. Across the UK legions of intelligent, enthusiastic school leavers and graduates are desperate to begin careers. For every graduate position, there is an average of 52 job applications – there has been an 11 per cent rise in graduate applications.

Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said: “Technology is actually one of the least competitive job sectors in the UK according to Adzuna’s data, with far more jobs available than applicants. The problem lies in the graduate IT market. British employers are often looking for candidates with specific coding skillsets; such as SQL, Ruby, HTML, Python, and are hesitant to take on new graduates without work experience in these areas.”

Evidently recent figures suggest UK companies need to be doing more to take on and nurture talent from the right age. By implementing training and recruitment policies, UK businesses can help to establish the next generation of skilled technology workforce.

Inflated salaries, particularly in the capital, indicate companies are unable to fill positions requiring a certain degree of experience. Yet how can people gain that experience if companies are not taking them on and investing in training? Surely if the skills-gap can be addressed, many more of these opportunities can be brought back onshore?

Measures such as outsourcing from abroad are only temporary solutions to the problem, and critically in doing so, they are causing further damage to the UK’s economy and the millions of unemployed young people.

From a wider perspective, the UK technology sector is going through a boom phase demonstrating the industries strengths and outcome of Government investment. Nonetheless, these latest reports are a good indication of the dire need for investment in IT sector training and grassroots level computing education.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Wolf Group .