Over the next five years, the UK’s technology and computer science graduates will face a tougher recruitment environment than ever before.
Although the number of UK students gaining qualifications in computer-related topics has almost tripled in the past decade, businesses are increasingly looking overseas to fill graduate level positions.
China is producing 300,000 graduates every year in science, technology, engineering and mathematics – three times the number coming through UK universities, according to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).
Meanwhile, India has 450,000 computing and engineering undergraduates in the 2006 academic year alone.
‘We are beginning to see UK companies saying it makes sense to source graduates internationally, particularly from China and India,’ says John Cridland, deputy director of the CBI.
‘The declining numbers of UK students isn’t yet a crisis, but it will haunt us unless we address it now.’
Part of the problem is that UK graduates are often not equipped with the skills employers need.
Denise Plumpton, chairwoman of user group the Infrastructure Forum (TiF) and director of IS with the Highways Agency, thinks we have definitely dumbed down degree-level qualifications.
‘We are trying to churn out too many people through the sausage machine,’ she says.
‘People leave university with very high expectations but they are certainly no longer the top 10 per cent of the population.’
Plumpton argues that Indian graduates are on a par with their UK equivalents 30 years ago.
‘It used to be that your education led you to a certain career path, but we are not seeing that in the UK because we have too many courses that are too general,’ she says.
‘The problem is that, as a result, we are losing out in the global marketplace. We must focus on matching our education to our business require ments.’
Consulting firm TCS sees a wide gap between the technical expertise of graduates in the UK and India. The Indian-owned IT services group recruits 27,000 people annually (90 per cent of these outside the UK) and looks for a combination of skills.
‘We want basic IT understanding, but also analytical capabilities and systematic thinking,’ says A S Lakshminarayanan, TCS UK and Ireland country manager. ‘If they have those basic skills, we can always train them in other areas such as software engineering,’ he says.
Finding the right people is easier in India and Hungary than in the UK, he says, adding: ‘IT there is seen as a career that you aspire to, which makes it easier. In the UK there is not the same desire, and we find people do not have the same grounding in basic maths and science.’
Graduates are also increasingly disillusioned with their own qualifications – research conducted by IT services company FDM found that 46 per cent of UK graduates believe that their degree course failed to provide them with relevant IT skills and, with hindsight, 41 per cent would have skipped university entirely and gone straight into employment. More than half of graduates said they would have preferred more vocational or on-the-job training.
Sector skills council e-Skills UK has consequently launched a three-year action plan to close the expertise gap for IT professionals. The Sector Skills Agreement for IT (SSA for IT) will offer resources including employee hours, work placements, business guru advisors and new vocational qualifications. The council has also launched a new IT Business Management degree, which will be rolled out to 17 universities this year.
For some entry-level IT professionals, it may be worth side-stepping university entirely, says Kate Hanaghan, analyst with Ovum.
‘When we talk to industry, they are often not too bothered about having pure IT graduates, or even graduates for that matter,’ she says. ‘They want people who are more rounded, who may have spent time working in industry and who can hit the ground running.’
For students who will graduate in 2008 onwards, it’s not all bad news. Research conducted by e-Skills UK found that employers are still reporting a lack of candidates in key areas such as technical support and systems development.
In 2006, advertised demand for candidates with experience in Arcserve, Linux and MS Office increased for the sixth consecutive quarter, and demand for staff with voice over IP (VoIP) skills rose for the seventh quarter in a row.
Plumpton says her key advice for a graduate would be to focus more on developing skills than a formal degree. ‘Make sure you have enthusiasm, communication skills and a good technical understanding,’ she says.
IT manager skills
As an IT manager, your future is looking pretty bright. The number of IT jobs for experienced professionals is expected to increase by 20 per cent in the next five years, driven by large government projects, such as national identity cards and the NHS IT programme (NPfIT).
‘Current forecasts show the whole industry is in growth again, but the perennial skills shortage is also coming to the fore and the requirements are project and programme management,’ says Karen Price, chief executive of e-Skills UK.
But the nature of IT management jobs is polarising – and ambitious IT professionals should focus on developing commercial and business skills alongside technical expertise, according to the experts.
Data from recruitment experts SSL found that growth in demand for experienced IT professionals fell in 2005 for the first time in two years, with demand for basic technical skills falling furthest, while demand for IT professionals with business skills continued to grow.
Such evidence is backed up by research conducted by the Institute for Management of Information Systems (IMIS), which found that pay for project management skills rose by seven per cent in the last year alone – while salaries for purely technical roles continued to fall.
IMIS believes that the UK IT industry will face a skills crunch by 2012, with a severe shortage of project management skills.
IT managers with proven project management expertise can expect to earn a premium and choose the best, most interesting jobs, says the Highways Agency’s Plumpton.
‘Already in those areas, it’s a candidate’s market,’ she says. ‘It’s not so much that there aren’t candidates to be found, but the salaries are increasing and people want more interesting packages, so it is harder to attract and retain them.’
Alongside project management, the experts predict a growing shortage in commercial and contract negotiation skills.
Lisa Hammond, chief executive of consulting firm Centrix, says there is definitely a skills gap at the senior IT level relating to how to successfully select outsourced partners. Hammond argues that IT managers with an eye on the CIO’s office should focus on developing a skill-set that is more ‘make and buy’ than simply ‘make’.
Employers will increasingly look for this kind of skill-set to avoid another decade of high-profile outsourcing project failures, she says.
‘Picking the right outsourcing provider, breaking a project down and then managing it is not a traditional IT skill, but it is one that must be acquired quickly by managers, because getting it wrong is absolutely disastrous,’ says Hammond.
This doesn’t mean that IT managers can chuck their technical skills out of the window. Future organisations will demand in-depth technical knowledge from IT managers and IT directors alike, says Ovum’s Hanaghan. ‘We are seeing strong demand emerging for people with wireless, security and cutting-edge network management skills,’ she says.
In the next decade, Hanaghan believes most organisations will outsource routine IT management and retain in-house staff to focus on cutting-edge technologies that deliver most strategic value. For professionals who want to get ahead, this is where you should focus your efforts, she believes.
‘You should try to get as much training as possible but also think about your experience,’ she says. ‘It’s massively important to try to be in customer-facing roles where you can see the impact of technology.’
Paul Essue is a perfect example of this new kind of IT professional. He works as a management information systems manager at Sony Entertainment. As well as providing routine IT support to the 300 employees in Sony’s London office, he is also responsible for testing some of Sony’s newest equipment, including the new PlayStation 3.
‘We have to be trained in the really cutting-edge stuff, which is difficult because you never know what’s coming down the line,’ he says. ‘Having experience doesn’t count for much when you’re testing a completely new bit of hardware.’
The Highways Agency’s Plumpton adds: ‘The worst thing you can do is take on a back-office role where it’s you and your machine against the rest of the world. Those kind of roles won’t allow you to develop the skills you will need to survive in 2010 and beyond.’
If you want your career as an IT manager to reach the next level, Hanaghan advises drastic measures: leave the country.
‘The Holy Grail at this stage of your career would be spending time in India because what’s really sought after is global experience or dealing with customers, suppliers, project management with a global spin – it will do wonders for your pay packet,’ she says.
CIO skills
Peter Baxter, head of IT at retailer the Thresher Group, has worked as an IT director for almost 10 years – despite not having a background in IT.
He believes that success at a senior level does not depend on technical qualifications, but on having a good understanding of the business.
‘You need a logical mind to understand how things fit together, but I have people who do that techie stuff and know the bits and bytes,’ says Baxter.
‘I don’t believe at this level you must have that knowledge because it’s my job to know what the business needs and how we are going to deliver that.’
Certainly, future IT directors and chief information officers (CIOs) will need to work even more closely with the business and the board than today’s top IT executives, according to research from Forrester.
The research group found that 40 per cent of CIOs now report directly to the chief executive, and only 12 per cent to the traditional IT boss, the chief financial officer.
Such growth represents a significant increase from 2004, when only a third of CIOs reported to the chief executive.
‘As IT becomes increasingly important to all of a firm’s business efforts, the chief executive will seek closer control,’ says Bobby Cameron, research analyst at Forrester. ‘Particularly in areas such as financial services, it’s vital that CIOs are able to communicate effectively on a business level.’
By 2010, most CIOs will operate in different organisations from an IT perspective – and so will require slightly different skills, predicts Tim Walker, a partner with Deloitte Consulting. ‘I think we will have a lot of CIOs looking after very small internal teams who focus on things such as IT architecture and strategy, while the routine administration and management is outsourced,’ he says.
Walker says an effective CIO will need to manage multiple suppliers and ensure that those suppliers can collaborate to deliver a single, coherent vision.
‘It’s a tough call, and I think that the demands of this structure will lead to an increasing use of things like FFIA (framework for the information age),’ he says.
CIOs should implement FFIA or a similar programme in their organisation as quickly as possible, says Walker, to gain a clear view of the skills at their disposal – and to ensure that all staff are trained in alignment with business strategy.
A successful CIO must demonstrate two skills, says the Highways Agency’s Plumpton. ‘There is a lot of emphasis on “can someone bring competitive edge to the organisation”, and there is also a lot of demand for CIOs who have some commercial sense – who understand contract management and the financial side of things,’ she says.
Despite this, future CIOs will definitely benefit from a technology grounding, according to Forrester – only a third of today’s CIOs do not have an IT background. Some 60 per cent of CIOs were promoted into the job from an internal position, usually within the IT department.
CIOs surveyed by Forrester say they spend less than half their time as general business managers, and most of their time dealing with technology issues.
Plumpton agrees that technical skills are still a core requirement for the would-be CIO.
‘I think we went through a stage where being seen to know very little about technology was almost seen as a virtue,’ she says.
But Plumpton says IT professionals who sit on the board of their companies are acting as an adviser on technology, not on business. ‘The board of directors already has lots of business advisers and general experts, thank you,’ she says.
‘What they are paying me and you to do is to advise them on this technology stuff. And if you do not have the professional knowledge to provide good advice, you cannot do the job.’
In a senior role, however, it can be difficult to maintain technical skills – not many CIOs have the time to pop out of the office for a five-day training course at Microsoft HQ, for example.
Thresher Group’s Baxter recommends reading trade journals, attending conferences and industry meetings, and networking with other IT professionals to share experiences.
‘The aim is that you should have enough understanding to know what people say to you, and to ask the right questions,’ he says. ‘I also need to know where things are headed, and how suppliers and technologies are changing.’
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