Most IT Leaders Believe In Tech Talent Shortage

It's not easy recruiting adequately skilled technical staff, or at least that's the major message from a recent piece of research commissioned by cloud service provider Reconnix.

In fact, 74 per cent of IT chiefs responsible for hiring suitably qualified staff said they had experienced difficulty in employing new recruits with the necessary skills and experience to carry out IT roles. Only 12 per cent of those surveyed (100 IT decision makers in the UK) said they found an "ample" supply of potential candidates for the tech positions they were trying to fill.

And there's quite a disconnect between those percentages, and the 82 per cent of current tech students and graduates questioned – 200 of them, in this case – who remained "positive with regard to employment prospects" despite the aforementioned experience of employers.

Reconnix highlighted the key areas in technology which were hampered by the biggest cases of talent drought, including web app development (38 per cent of employers mentioned this as problematic area), Internet and networking (36 per cent) and data analysis (34 per cent).

Two-thirds of businesses admitted that they outsourced some of their workload due to this skills shortage.

Pat Nice, CEO or Reconnix, commented: "The technology sector is currently facing a massive challenge in finding the properly qualified staff it needs to grow. The UK tech sector has been one of the darlings of the UK's economic recovery but its full potential will not be reached as long as companies face difficulty in filling key technical positions."

He continued: "Optimism from current students and graduates is encouraging to see following years of uncertainty, but the reality is that many are not at the level that employers need them to be at. Graduates are leaving university with a broad understanding of technology, but lacking critical skills that employers actually require. Employers need to take a more hands-on approach to help develop talent in the industry, whether this is working more closely with education establishments or directly training through apprenticeship programmes."