Skills gap rears its ugly head

The number of job openings is rising - but it's only becoming more difficult for UK employers to find the right candidates for IT positions, according to new research.

Recruitment activity has sped up in the first quarter of 2005 and nearly half of employers expect this to continue over the next six months, says the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI), an industry gauge published by Cranfield School of Management and The Daily Telegraph.

Yet the dreaded 'skills gap' has reared its head, as certain types of jobs, such as IT and sales, are becoming harder to fill. Forty-fix per cent of organisations polled for the RCI are betting it'll be difficult to attract qualified IT workers, an 11 per cent rise over last quarter.

Employers anticipate the same problem in finding sales personnel but say board directors are actually easier to get compared to three months.

Shaun Tyson, professor of human resources at Cranfield School of Management, offered an explanation for why the UK continues to have a skills shortage. "I think it's because we don't invest in having long-term training and development, particularly for skilled jobs, senior management positions and senior professional specialists," he said.

And it's the job of employers to improve the situation. "It's their responsibility - it's no one else's," he said. "They're going to use the people to make more money."

Tyson recommended, for instance, that businesses spend more time forecasting and determining which skills will be useful to them in the future.

The RCI findings are in line with preliminary results from the silicon.com Skills Survey 2005, in which just over half of respondents agreed there is a skills shortage in the UK.

At the same time, though, more survey respondents said they were able to IT vacancies than not.

Tyson said of the IT skills gap: "One thing that has been happening, there's been a reduced demand, the need for IT is down, but recruitment is up. That might imply that there are new skills that are needed that are not readily available in the marketplace."

The Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) is based on responses from 1,115 employers in public and private sector.