The IT skills shortage has abated, but it will soon return if IT
bosses fail to stay alert and invest
It's official: the IT skills crisis is over at last. At least, that
is the view of the Home Office, which last week announced it was
dropping the fast-track visa scheme for overseas IT workers. The
UK, it seems, has more than enough IT skills without drafting in
foreign expertise.
At this point in time the Home Office is correct, and the results
of the latest SSP/Computer Weekly Quarterly Survey of Appointments
Data and Trends corroborate its belief.
The survey shows no sign of an end to the current IT jobs
recession. Posts advertised on the Web in the second quarter of
2002 were down by 66% on the corresponding quarter in 2001; jobs
offered in newspapers were down by 80%; and salaries on offer have
remained almost static, with the average annual rise mirroring
inflation at 1.6%.
But it would be premature to sound the death knell of our skills
problems just because the Home Office currently has no official
shortage list for IT skills. Things are never that straightforward
in the UK IT jobs market.
For the moment, supply is meeting demand. But this could change
overnight, should frozen projects start to thaw out, and
development budgets rise again. Who knows when the next killer
application or the next "millennium bug" will reveal itself,
sending IT managers on a frenzied recruitment drive?
In 1998, there was little demand for Web-based skills. But by the
turn of the millennium, IT workers with these skills were naming
their price.
Regardless of the peaks and troughs of demand, there will always be
shortfalls in certain skills. According to SSP, for instance,
demand for embedded software, SAP and UML skills has risen in the
past 12 months; and skills in customer relationship management
applications are also increasingly in favour.
A longer-term IT labour problem will continue to beset the UK for
as long as it fails to set in place mechanisms to ensure that the
supply of skills can track changing demands into the future. To
become complacent now, just because our skills needs have been met
for today, tomorrow and next week, would be dangerously naive.
IT managers must keep a vigilant eye on the horizon, so that they
are not taken by surprise when the need arrives for a new
generation of skills. Does mobile commerce look set to transform
the way your organisation does business in the next two years? If
so, you should be putting the appropriate skills in place today.
You must also continue to train employees. In a static job market,
it is tempting to think that you need not offer training as a means
of staff retention. But failure to do so will soon backfire.
Finally, you need to assume the role of public relations officer
for IT. This means boosting the profile of your department around
the business and the community within which it operates; working
hard to draw more women into IT; and ensuring that UK children
leave school open to the possibilities and benefits of a career in
IT.
Are you prepared to invest a little of your time into safeguarding
an adequate IT skills set for the UK?