e-skills NTO interim results reveal massive change needed to avert IT skills crisis.
Launches industry backed project to encourage companies to broaden recruitment.
e-skills NTO, the National Training Organisation for IT skills, has unveiled the interim results of its research into recruitment trends. The research reveals that industry must look beyond traditional recruitment sources and methods if it is to fill the growing skills gap. Ultimately industry needs to attract up to a million more IT professionals within the next five years.
As a result of this research, e-skills NTO is launching a campaign to broaden recruitment supported by Patricia Hewitt MP, the Minister for e-commerce.
e-skills NTO found that recruitment problems were compounded by the industry’s image and the characteristics of its existing workforce. The research has shown that industry does little to meet the needs of recruits looking for a work/life balance, with perceived long hours putting potential new entrants off altogether. The makeup of the IT workforce currently was found to be male dominated (74%), mostly graduates, heavily biased towards the South East and predominantly under 35 years of age.
The Broadening Recruitment project will aim to increase employment from non-traditional groups into IT professional roles. The research has identified the following potential recruitment pools: school leavers, graduates (only half of IT graduates enter IT related careers), failing industries, career changers, women, over 35s, and the unemployed. Involved in defining the project will be the DTI, DfEE, the IT vendor community and major organisations representing industry.
"Interim results from the e-skills NTO research has highlighted the need to broaden recruitment of IT professionals, by not only improving the recruitment of graduates, but also improving the targeting of different groups including school leavers, women and career changers. We will be working to provide detailed information to employers on the full extent of the labour pools available to them, as well as helping companies focus on how to make their recruitment more successful by appealing to different types of new entrants," said Astrid Flowers, project manager, e-skills NTO.
Alan Stevens, managing director, government accounts, Electronic Data Systems said, "so far organisations have taken a short-term view, choosing to buy their way out of a skills crisis by headhunting already skilled staff or recruiting young IT graduates. This is clearly not sustainable as the recruitment pool does not exist and companies struggle with retention issues. To broaden recruitment we need to see a change of attitude across the board, amongst IT employers, recruitment agencies and human resource professionals."
e-skills NTO has identified a number of early objectives for the Broadening Recruitment Project:
Summary of research results
The interim findings of the e-skills NTO recruitment research identifies a number of key findings in the areas of skills, proficiency and training that highlight the need to broaden recruitment. The final report will be available in May.
Diverse skills needed
Despite commonly held technical stereotypes a diversity of skills is needed in IT roles and employers are beginning to recognise and place importance on ‘soft skills’ such as problem solving, oral communication, customer relationships, industry awareness and team working.
No quick fix to proficiency problems
Employers are experiencing proficiency problems severe enough to impact their business. 43% of respondents said that their IT workforce or team was less than 100% proficient. While a lack of technical skills is perceived to be the main cause (63%) it is coupled with a failure to train (33%). Problems caused by a lack of proficiency include delays in the development of new products (37%), and difficulties in meeting company objectives. 31% of respondents said that this had caused an increase in operational costs, 14% had lost orders, while 13% had to withdraw products and services from the market.
Ad-hoc training falls short of requirements
Research showed that on-the-job and self-help packages were the preferred training medium. However, only 31% of companies said that they had both a training budget and training plan, while 40% had neither. Relatively small numbers used consultants to train on-site (22%) or sent staff on residential courses (15%).
Recruitment practices remain traditional
Companies chose to advertise vacancies in local newspapers (43%), while 29% used recruitment consultants and one in five used Job Centres. Surprisingly only 15% said that they advertised in national papers and only 13% advertised on the Internet. Recruitment appears to favour individuals already in the industry rather than looking towards new sources of people. For example, e-skills NTO also researched the number of recruits employed from the following sources in the last 12 months: 25% of organisations reported recruiting IT graduates, 6% school leavers, 13% college leavers, 7% National Trainees or Modern Apprentices, 9% overseas staff, and 23% mature people. 45% of respondents had employed none of these groups.
About e-skills NTO
As the National Training Organisation (NTO) for the Information Age, e-skills NTO is a not for profit making membership organisation with responsibility for the whole IT remit. Its role is to represent the IT industry as the national body for the sector and to improve the IT user skills of the entire UK workforce while addressing the skills needs of employers of IT professionals across UK industry.
e-skills NTO works closely with industry, education and government partners to identify and address key issues in order to improve workforce competence and maximise business competitiveness, and one of its main responsibilities is to develop and oversee standards and qualifications for IT users and professionals at a national level.
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For more information please contact:
Nyarrin Scanlan / Hugh Mark
AxiCom
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Anne Cantelo
e-skills NTO