Businesses will have to adapt their recruitment
processes to cope with a shortage of IT professionals with combined
business and technology experience over the next five years,
Gartner predicted this week.
The analyst firm said businesses would face
significant shortages of staff with the skills needed to manage
and implement major investments in technology.
"Companies in the US and Western Europe are already expressing
concerns that they cannot find people of the calibre they are
looking for. That is going to continue over the next three to five
years," said Gartner vice-president Diane Morello.
Demand for skills will be driven by organisations investing in
systems to create customer-focused services, opening their IT
networks to business partners, and extending their operations
around the globe, said Gartner.
"Where we see the greatest need and the greatest area of
shortage is in business process design and being able to manage
relationships globally," said Morello.
"Businesses are going to demand people who have
a more fleshed-out view of IT and business together. Professional
and technical skills, that is where the shortage is going to
be."
Gartner said that IT professionals and other employees would
increasingly use online forums to work collaboratively across
multiple virtual teams, irrespective of their geographic
location.
Because of this, employers would increasingly need to source
staff from anywhere in the world to find the people they need,
creating a global market for jobs, said Gartner.
Traditional forms of recruitment, such as advertising on the
internet, would be replaced by recruitment through online networks
and viral marketing, the analyst firm predicted.
"Organisations will need to recognise that none of their
previous assumptions about how to attract and recruit people will
work in the future," said Morello.
To take advantage of this trend, she advised IT professionals to
tap into as many blogs and to participate in as many social
networks as possible.
Demand for IT staff hits five-year high
>>
Social software boosts collaboration
>>
IT skills shortage at two-year low
>>
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