Consultancy Accenture is predicting a growth in demand for business software services and outsourcing skills in 2006.

The company is basing its New Year recruitment strategy on a predicted surge in three main areas: relationship management – particularly outbound contact and customer segmentation; business intelligence and data mining; and business process outsourcing projects focusing on human resources and elearning.

‘We work with a multitude of clients in a number of industries, so it is difficult to be specific about what areas we recruit IT people for,’ said Julia Harvie-Liddel, Accenture’s head of recruitment for UK and Ireland.

‘But we expect to see growth in vertical markets, especially communications and high-tech, financial services and government.’

The company, which relies on IT skills across its management consulting, technology services and outsourcing businesses, wants to employ development-led IT professionals, and those with application-specific expertise, to work on projects next year.

‘We are looking for a range of technical skills – from Oracle, SAP and Siebel, through to J2EE, .Net, security and network or infrastructure expertise,’ said Harvie-Liddel.

‘The majority of people we recruit will work on client-facing roles, working in project teams at different stages in the deployment processes of large delivery programmes.’

But successful candidates will also have key, non IT-related abilities such as intellect, empathy and strong communication skills, says Harvie-Liddel.