By Natasha Lomas, 28 August 2007 13:02
NEWS
The IT skills shortage is hitting the financial services industry hardest.
According to results from the exclusive 2007 silicon.com Skills Survey, FS companies are finding it most difficult to fill IT vacancies in their organisations, compared to the public sector and the world of retail.
Half of the respondents to the survey who work in the FS sector said they have tech job vacancies they are unable to fill. This compares to 44 per cent of respondents in the retail sector and just over a third (35 per cent) of those who work in the public sector.
When it comes to specific IT skills shortages, the FS industry and the public sector are finding it hardest to locate staff with programming languages, followed by workers with database skills. In the retail sector programming languages, database and Windows skills are all equally hardest to find.
Skills Survey 2007: the results
Find out from this year's Skills Survey:
♦
Are CIOs getting less cash?
♦ How the staffing crisis is deepening
♦ How techie salaries are faring
♦ Offshoring still a hot potato
The non-IT skill in shortest supply in the FS sector is project management, followed by 'knowledge of the sector' - perhaps owing to the need to comply with heavyweight industry-specific regulations such as MiFID and Basel II.
In the retail and public sectors, project management is the non-IT skill in shortest supply, followed by leadership skills.
But the majority of respondents from all three sectors disagree or strongly disagree there is a need to hire staff from overseas to plug short-term skills gaps. Such shortages can be adequately filled by hiring contractors, according to the majority of respondents from the FS, public and retail sectors. There is also strong support for more in-house IT training across all three sectors - especially the FS and retail sectors, where nearly three-quarters of respondents agree or strongly agree organisations need to devote more time to it.
On the question of IT outsourcing, the retail sector has clearly felt the pinch: nearly three-quarters of respondents from this sector said IT departments have been forced to outsource to cut costs. That compares to less than two-thirds from the FS sector and less than half from the public sector.
All sectors see learning over the web becoming increasingly important - with more than half of respondents from the FS and retail sectors, and close to two-thirds of those from the public sector, agreeing or strongly agreeing e-learning is getting more significant.
Software as a service, however, is not yet viewed as a viable alternative to employing skilled staff in any of the verticals. The majority of respondents said they have not been driven to consider SaaS because of skills shortages in their organisations.
Read more Skills Survey stories:
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Rafal
There will always be a shortage of skilled IT staff in FS companies, if they will be so reluctant to lift the salaries to an acceptable level. Skills are marketable commodity and if there is a shortage, the price will sooner or later go up. Unfortunately FS companies don't seem to understand it.
2. anonymous
Pay more then and stop crying about a skill crisis
3. Karen Challinor
to quote Peter Cochrane "Damn metrics ... they lie"
the banks have no metric that measures the value of IT staff beyond "faults fixed" or problems solved, so if their equipment and software is fairly reliable anyway, their worth is devalued as there are fewer problems and as has happened over the last few years they are laid off in favour of offshore or outsourced companies because this is cheaper in the short term
so when the midden does hit the windmill there are very few staff left who can handle it and they have been beaten into submission and lack motivation with targets applied by managers who don't understand IT, threats of redundancy if they fail to meet targets, threats of redundancy anyway if the base lending rate blips and the board wants a quick trim down of costs, complete lack of interest in requests for training, no stimulation in their environment and rubbish salaries compared to pretty much everyone else in the organisation
The banks (and any other organisation with IT staff) have to start thinking of these people as a valuable asset, have to start investing in these people with training and decent salaries, have to stop them being managed with metrics that devalue their contribution to the organisation and finally stop putting non computer literate numpties in charge of them
then when they need to respond to a new technology or disaster strikes they might just have the resources to hand to deal with it instead of whinging about non existent skills shortages which they are actively creating with their IT employment policies in the first place
4. anonymous
Mifid shortage? Forget it, Mifid demand is virtually non existent. Check the rates. Most recruitment companies have marginalised it and people who focused on Mifid are being let go. The markets are simply not responding.
5. anonymous
Where is this staff shortage? As a 50 + who has been out of work for over a year I cannot agree there is any kind of shortage. I am a professional PM with over 30 years experience in many industies but it it seems I am no longer of any interest or use to todays employers.
6. anonymous
36 years of 100% successful Project Management in the Finance Sector, especially Banking and Life and Pensions, some really large and complex situations (£150million project to my name) and can I get a job or contract, can I hell. Trouble is, I am over 50 like the other comment writer. Skill shortage - no. Selective blindness to anyone over the age of 40. I have emails from another chap with the same problem and he is now trying overseas. Skill shortage indeed. My skills and those of others of my age are superb, but we are invisible to the kids who work in agencies and HR departments. And one reason we have a 33% Project failure rate in this country is we use totally inexperienced people to run a complex business area - Project Management. Someone will, one day, wake up and smell the flowers and realise that maybe us oldies are useful - but by then we will have all given up and gone into premature retirement or left the country. Sad, isn't it.