The number of advertised vacancies for contractors has
suffered its biggest fall for four years, according to the latest
Computer Weekly/SSL salary survey. Where contractors lead,
permanent jobs tend to follow. See
Recruitment fears as contract jobs decline and
Skills on the rise.
Contributing factors include fewer big-bang implementations,
particularly in financial services, productivity improvements from
the spread of development tools, and offshoring.
At the same time, the pace of change in IT means there will
always be hot skills and skill shortages in specific technical
areas.
The challenge, both for IT departments and individuals, is
ensuring you have the correct mix of skills as the market
shifts.
Conventional wisdom is that the long-term demand for purely
technical IT skills in the UK will continue to decline, while
people with both technical and business skills will be in high
demand. That combination does not emerge fully formed from either a
business school or a computer sciences degree. It has to be
developed, as Steve Burrows underlines in his opinion piece on this
page.
Individuals need to ensure that the training and experience they
get benefits future career prospects, rather than merely providing
a short-term fix to meet the immediate needs of an employer. This
demands a much more rigorous, active approach to managing your own
career.
For IT departments, the focus should be on developing the
careers and skills of existing staff and on bringing in people from
the rest of the business with an aptitude for technology.
If it gets the mix right, an organisation can ensure it has a
loyal, motivated, productive workforce with the right skills at the
right price.
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