The 'IT skills gap' - a genuine problem or just scaremongering?

Is UK plc scaremongering the government into relaxing visa restrictions?

When Prime Minister David Cameron pushed for international technology experts to be given fast-tracked visas to enable them to work in the UK, he said that the 'Exceptional Talent' route would help "to make Britain the best place in the world in which to start and grow a business".

The UK's answer to Silicon Valley, dubbed Tech City, was to work with the Home Office so that the UK can benefit from more specialists in the technology sector from April 2014.

The move was lauded by UK businesses and Tech City, but could this just have been a case of the government caving into demands from UK businesses to relax visa restrictions by suggesting that there is an 'IT skills gap'?

Ann Swain, chief executive of The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), claims that an IT skills shortage is emerging but is likely to grow in the coming years.

"The IT sector was one of the hardest hit during the recession, and our monthly trends report - which analyses vacancies and placements across the professional staffing sector - has in the last few months pointed towards the early stages of a skills shortage," she says.

Michael Bennett, director of recruitment agency ReThink Recruitment, says that his firm has seen a surge in the number of different IT roles that it is hiring for.

"Demand for skills like C#, .NET and other programming languages has been consistent during the recession and has really started picking back up. However, we simply can't find enough skills in the UK market," he claims.

This, APSCo believes, is the result of a long standing STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] skills shortage.

The Royal Academy of Engineering recently estimated that the minimum number of STEM graduates required to keep the industry fully resourced now stands at approximately 100,000 a year, but only 90,000 graduates are coming out of university with a STEM degree - and up to one-quarter of those go on to choose non-STEM careers.

According to a Tech City UK spokesperson "there is a shortage of digital skills the world over" and it is "something [it is] addressing". It is doing this, in part, with the help of the Exceptional Talent visas.

"[The visas among other things] allows our technology industry to attract the best talent the world has. We understand that to make London the best place in the world to scale and grow a business, we need the best talent at our fingertips and so we are doing all we can to support the needs of our thriving eco-system," the spokesperson told Computing.

The 'IT skills gap' - a genuine problem or just scaremongering?

Is UK plc scaremongering the government into relaxing visa restrictions?

But while Tech City believes it is moving in the right direction, APSCo's Swain believes that the government, educational institutions and UK businesses are failing to make any meaningful changes to eradicate a problem that has been prevalent for many years.

"The likes of Siemens, BAE and Dyson have all publicly condemned the lack of STEM talent coming out of the country, so surely it is time to make significant changes for the benefit of UK plc - and not, as many are doing - scaremongering the government into relaxing laws to enable international talent to work here in the UK," she says.

Swain emphasises that hiring international talent is the "easy option", and urged companies to skill up and develop existing talent, and help to address the education system as a whole.

"While in today's globally mobile workforce, the UK has benefited hugely from overseas talent, simply using this option to address skills shortages won't alleviate the issue in the long run," she says.

But ReThink Recruitment's Bennett says that companies are under pressure to bring in the right talent, and sympathises with their predicament.

"If there are no skills in certain areas, [UK companies] should bring them in now. We're not doing enough to train them, so we have a short-term problem and we have to be creative about how we solve that," he suggests.

But now that visa laws have been relaxed, will companies bother to "up-skill" talent, or will they find it easier to hire more experienced - and potentially cheaper – employees from abroad?

"Possibly, but I don't think the cost [of wages of employees] is a driver for corporate firms. However, it may be for some of the technology services companies," says Bennett.

But, he adds, most clients that approach him are looking for talent from within the UK because of the language and communication skills needed.

And although many candidates have the desired communications skills, hiring people with the right technical skills is one of the main issues affecting companies in Tech City that are looking to expand, according to former Facebook chief technology officer, and now CEO of Tech City, Joanna Shields.

"People weren't banging on my door, but every tech company that we talk to says that hiring is a problem," she says.

This is why Bennett believes that as long as it is legal to bring in international talent then companies will keep on doing it.

However, without any changes being made, the core problem of producing the right skills in the UK may remain.