By Gemma Simpson, 26 April 2007 16:02
NEWS
The IT skills shortage is at a two-year low as UK employers are finding it easier to net people to fill tech roles, according to e-skills UK.
Only six per cent of IT recruiters surveyed reported difficulties finding staff with the required tech skills, qualifications or experience in the third quarter of 2006 - making this the second lowest figure in two years, the quarterly research by the UK IT industry group reveals.
IT Skills most and least in demand in Q3 2006
Demand falls by 25 per cent or more:
♦ Fourth-generation programming language
♦ Application programming interface
♦ Active template library
♦ Computer Graphics Interface
♦ Corba
♦ Framemaker
♦ Frame relay
♦ Informix
♦ Object Oriented Architecture
♦ Pick
♦ Powerbuilder
♦ Powerhouse
♦ Rational Rose
♦ Sendmail
♦ Virtual memory system
Demand for skills rose by 25 per cent or more:
♦ Arcserve
♦ Fireworks
♦ Hubs
♦ Java class library
♦ Navision
♦ RPG400
♦ Synchronous digital hierarchy
♦ Wiki mark-up language
The IT crowd needs to buff up its non-technical skills in particular as one-third of IT recruiters said the levels of interpersonal and other non-technical skills held by candidates were below that required by their business.
One in seven employers also criticised candidates applying for a non-technical role - for a lack of knowledge of spreadsheets and databases.
Flash and Winrunner were both skills in continuous demand from IT employers over the last five quarters for permanent positions, according to the research.
By contrast, demand for contractors with Extranet, Ingress, MFC, Object Oriented Architecture, Perl and Visual Basic skills continued to fall during the third quarter of the year - the fourth such consecutive drop.
Bluetooth, C and C# were all named as skills increasingly needed by IT contractors, with demand for these skills increasing steadily over the first three quarters of 2006.
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1. Asperger Technical
This is bad news for people with Asperger syndrome. In recent years, the IT industry has moved away from technical expertise and now places more emphasis on people skills, being diplomatic, team leadership, and extroversion. This has resulted in many people with Asperger syndrome unable to get jobs because they fall short on the soft skills.
To make matters worse, the IT industry shows precious little interest in recruiting people who have Asperger syndrome, and IT managers probably dislike people with Asperger syndrome in their attempts to shrug off the geeky image of the industry.