Skills set for short supply in new year

New e-skills survey highlights growing gaps in technical ability

According to a new report, Demand and Supply in the Information and Communications Technology sector, firms are likely to face skills shortages in a number of key areas over the coming year.

The report was produced by e-skills UK on behalf of the REC's (Recruitment and Employment Confederation) IT & Comms Sector Group. It is a quarterly round up of skills issues, and serves as an indicator of what tools, technologies, and abilities are growing in demand.

Total demand for ICT professionals is at its highest level since 2001, as demand has grown so has the size of the workforce in general, the report says, and by comparing trends and demand it has highlighted a number of areas where firms might struggle to find qualified workers.

Those skills-based roles that are likely to be hard to fill are systems developers, system administrators, technical pre-sales support staff, and workers trained in SQL server, ASP and Java script. The report says that these are the most frequently requested areas of experience seen in job advertisements in the sector, but advises that others are likely to increase in importance. These include workers skilled with C# and C.