Offshoring opens up skills gap

Skills shortages are just one of the challenges facing the UK IT jobs market.

Businesses will soon also have to contend with the impact of offshoring on the typical career path. Offshoring is a time bomb that could be even harder to defuse than the perennial gaps and shortages of expertise, according to sector skills council eSkills UK.

The latest Learning and Skills Council employer’s survey contains few surprises, revealing the usual shortages in both the basic technical ability of the everyday workforce and in the skills of IT professionals.

Such shortages can at least

potentially be addressed by suitable education and training, and

eSkills UK is developing new qualifications both for general and professional skills.

But the impact of jobs being moved overseas on IT graduates trying to get on the career ladder is harder to counteract.

Globalisation has mixed effects on a national employment sector. At the moment, the UK’s strong presence in the global financial services industry is a crucial factor in the buoyancy of the technology jobs market.

According to figures from ReThink Recruitment, 65 per cent of all new technology jobs are in London and the South East, compared with seven per cent in the North West, the next highest placed region.

The South East has always been the biggest IT employer, but the continued rise is not because the region’s software and services sector is booming. Rather, it is because of the impact of globalisation, says Philip Virgo, strategic adviser to user group the Institute for Management of Information Systems.

‘If you took financial services out, I doubt there would be any growth in the IT jobs market at all,’ said Virgo.

‘The South East is part of the global economy and the majority of new IT jobs are with the global financial services players and their suppliers. ‘Everything else is stagnant,’ he said.

But the long-term effect of globalisation and offshoring is felt most on the career path available to UK graduates.

There is already a shortage of top-level programme and project management skills, and targeted education and training is only part of the solution.

It is the early roles, in which graduates traditionally gained experience, that are increasingly being moved abroad, says eSkills UK chief executive Karen Price.

‘We are operating with people with five to 10 years’ experience, and they are often the people we are looking for, but we don’t have the jobs for traditional graduate entrants because they are done offshore,’ said Price.

‘The situation will only get worse because we don’t have enough jobs for the first few years after a degree, before people get into the business analysis roles where the typical shortages are,’ she said.

Focusing on skills shortages is as necessary as ever, but there is not yet a clear answer about how to fill a gap in the career ladder itself, says Price.

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* The latest Learning and Skills Council survey of 74,000 employers says 13 per cent of applicants lack general IT ability and one in 10 lacks professional technical skills.

* Sector skills council eSkills UK is developing qualifications at all levels to try to address changing employer needs. The IT Management for Business degree course started in three universities last year, and will be available in nine more in the next two years.

* eSkills UK is also introducing an IT diploma as part of the government’s 14-19 reform scheme. The first courses are due to start in 2008.

* The UK has a high demand for networking staff, web designers, business analysts and architects.

* Key technical skills among permanent staff include Linux, SQL Server and voice over IP. For contractors, top technical skills include expertise in Cisco, MS Exchange and Illustrator.