Skills crisis deepens as employers stand by

The UK's IT skills crisis is continuing to deepen, according to new research this month from e-Skills.

The latest quarterly skills bulletin from the government and employer-backed body showed that the skills gap reached its highest level for over a year during the second quarter of 2006, with almost a fifth of employers saying they believe their general staff lack IT skills.

The survey of 1,000 organisations also found that 11 percent of firms believe their IT staff lack required skills, with medium to large scale operations the most likely to suffer IT skills shortfalls. Karen Price, chief executive of e-Skills UK, said the survey "confirms that skills gaps among ICT professionals and IT users remain a serious issue for employers". The report also found that 13 percent of organisations were struggling to fill IT vacancies, particularly in the field of software engineering.

Dave Pye, IT spokesman for trade body the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), said that there was now "no question" that the UK was facing a major skills shortage. "Fewer people are coming out of university with IT skills and that is having a knock-on effect on the market," he said. " Recruiters need to think more laterally and perhaps consider more experienced staff for what would previously have been graduate positions."

The report also revealed that firms are doing less to help tackle the skills shortages, with the proportion of IT staff receiving job-related training during the quarter falling to 29 percent, a full eight percentage points lower than 2001 levels. Price insisted the government was currently considering recommendations from e-Skills designed to help reverse this trend and ensure employers increase investment in IT training.

Competition for IT staff also looked set to increase, according to the report, as the proportion of organisations planning to recruit new IT professionals climbed to 17 percent. However, a separate survey of over 250 recruitment professionals from the REC revealed that many IT job hunters are jeopardising their chances of finding a new role by including basic spelling and grammar mistakes in their CVs.

"There are shortages in IT but technology graduates tend to be worse than other sectors at selling themselves properly," said Pye. "They often fail to mention broader skills and often don't proof read their CV. People will write that they have experience using Oracle or SAP and then misspell Curriculum Vitae."