Lack of soft skills training is curbing IT career progression

Employers are failing to provide IT professionals with the business and people skills needed to move up the career ladder.

According to a survey of 1,000 IT professionals by recruitment firm, CWJobs.co.uk, 84% of IT professional believe employers should provide more training in soft skills, such as business and people management skills. Almost all IT professionals surveyed (93%) believed they would be "more valuable" to businesses with further training.

Richard Nott, website director at CWJobs, said, "As the IT department plays a crucial role in the efficiency and effectiveness of a business, it's invaluable that IT professionals are equipped with the skills needed to progress to a board level role within an organisation."

Despite job vacancies falling in various sectors, demand for skilled candidates remains high. Over a monthly period, contract vacancies fell 19% in the retail sector and 15% in media sector, according to recruitment firm, Computer People.

Sid Barnes, executive director at Computer People, said, "We're still seeing demand for skilled candidates in spite of a slight reduction in vacancies with many still receiving multiple offers and this is applying upward pressure on hiring managers' budgets as pay is on the rise."

According to Computer People, the number of permanent vacancies rose slightly (0.14%) in the past month while contract vacancies fell 0.4%.

"We are still in a candidate-led market with the number of vacancies across both permanent and contract remaining fairly level month-on-month," said Barnes.

He added, "There were 15,492 permanent vacancies and approximately 6,033 unique contract vacancies showing a minor shift from the previous month of 15,470 and 6,057 respectively."

Barnes believes employers' caution over economic conditions is impacting recruitment.

He said, "Whilst many organisations favour caution, others have realised that they need to continue to implement strategic and operational plans."

However, the jobs market will pick-up through recruitment for business critical projects.

He added, "There is an understanding that it could take many months or years for the market to recover and that, despite external uncertainty, there are projects that are simply an internal necessity and remain business critical for organisations' future success."

Computer Weekly has launched an information resource called ITworks to empower the digital economy through IT skills and training (ie. help you get a job).
 

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