Software programmers are in short supply despite the recession
decimating the total number of UK job vacancies and some IT workers
are still sought after.
Programmers are in demand despite there being the lowest number
of total job vacancies ever recorded in the monthly Recruitment
& Employment Confederation and KPMG UK employment report.
The research report, which began in October 1997, is carried out
by Markit Economics. It reports the findings of questionnaires
completed by 400 UK recruitment firms.
The total
demand for staff fell at its highest rate since the first ever
survey more than 10 years ago but there is demand for certain
IT skills. UK businesses need more permanent staff with .net, C#,
and PHP developers, while temporary staff with
CNC programming
skills are in high demand.
C# and .net skills are needed for building Windows applications
and web services, while PHP is a website programming language.
Yann L'Huillier, CTO at
share trading exchange Turquoise, says people with the right
programming skills are always in demand providing they understand
the business needs and can communicate. "The way that business
evolves means we always want more computerisation, which requires
more skills to support it."
He said in 200 there was an influx of people into the software
industry training as programmers which led to an overflow of them
around 2003. "But now that the world has moved on we need a lot of
people with new skills again."
Jeff Brooks, chair of the REC IT sector group, said because IT
helps businesses increase sales and cost cut at the same time,
certain skills are still required.
"It is a tough time for job seekers, but technology is one area
where vacancies still exist and certain skills remain hard to
find," he said. "We expect this trend continue for a while yet, but
we also know how the IT sector can move into growth quite rapidly
from our experience of previous downturns."