IT employment: public sector IT jobs can hamper career

But demand for IT staff will generally remain buoyant

The public sector lags the private sector in taking up the most advanced technologies because of its limited budget and inability to attract the best candidates to roles, according to Sid Barnes, executive director of recruitment firm Computer People.

He suggested that a bigger budget is allowing IT leaders in the private sector to make strategic plans ahead of movements in the market. "IT leaders are now delivering strategic implementations and they will need to recruit staff to deliver these; they can't wait any longer," he said.

A talent spotlight report from recruitment firm Badenoch & Clark detailed specific skills in demand in the public sector. These include system developer skills as they will help save costs. In addition, companies migrating to the cloud will be looking for service-delivery managers, while increasing cyber threats mean there is more demand for senior security specialists, the report stated.

The same report outlines a rise in demand for service delivery managers for the private sector. Application and web systems developers and UX designers are also highly sought after.

Barnes believes that staff with more advanced skillsets would be better suited to the private sector due to the more up-to-date technologies used.

He said that many of the public sector roles would involve working with legacy systems - this might mean candidates have to take a step back in their career path.

However, candidates across the board will benefit if IT services provider Xceed's prediction that the IT jobs market will grow is correct. Xceed has predicted that the potential collapse of the euro will present IT providers with opportunities, such as reinstalling currencies on to banking and trading systems, thereby driving an increase in the jobs market.

Gary Stewart, director and founder of Xceed still thinks that the industry is suffering from an IT skills shortage. "A shortage of skills may result in more creative solutions from other companies, particularly if they mitigate the need for in-house skills through ‘as-a-service' technology," he said.

"As a result of companies cutting 'expensive' employees with significant skills and experience, the same consultants will pick up the tasks previously managed by in-house specialists," he continued.

In Computer People's monthly IT monitor report, the recruitment firm found that the IT industry will not suffer from the unemployment faced by other sectors, with vacancies becoming relatively stable and an increase in salaries leading to growth in 2012.