Skills gap "damaging" for UK businesses

UK businesses continue to face difficulties recruiting qualified IT staff, with one in five companies experiencing problems finding applicants with the right skills.

The most common shortages were in systems design, systems development and support staff. However, a wider problem relates to applicants' "non-technical skills", according to the quarterly ICT Inquiry survey of 1,000 businesses by e-skills UK.

The report said: "More generally... the business skills of applicants were most commonly considered by ICT recruiters as lacking amongst applicants for ICT posts."

Further reading...

♦ Skills Survey 2006: Business skills key to success in IT

Each IT post advertised externally now attracts an average of 26 applicants but the study found that just seven of those people match the job description on paper. It also takes longer to recruit techies than other staff in a company - an average of 42 days compared to 32 days for non-IT staff.

British Airways CIO and chair of e-skills UK's CIO board Paul Coby warned earlier this week that the UK faces a skills crisis which will harm its global competitiveness unless businesses and the government take action now.

Karen Price, CEO of e-skills UK said the impact of skills issues is potentially "very damaging" for organisations.

However, e-skills UK's study also found that while IT recruiters are having problems, there is a bigger problem for businesses trying to recruit finance, engineering and unskilled manual staff.

Separate research from recruitment company the IT Job Board claims staff retention is also a problem, with 65 per cent of technology staff looking to change jobs this year.