Supply vs demand for IT professionals

Hmmm… very interesting article. Its true with regards to the lack of quality, but then at the same time I’ve seen some Service Desk/1st line support jobs where they require you to have a CCNA?? Since when?

In all fairness I think the people hiring need to manage their expectations a bit better and not place such high demands for roles which are considered the bottom rung of IT.

Good article! Being an unemployed professional, I’d think those numbers may be incorrect. I’ve applied to several Web Developer jobs in the past months, but couldn’t get any of them (one company even said that they received 200+ CVs for one junior position). I thought it would’ve been way easier to find work at times like these, being a University graduate with years of working experience. I hope the worst of this recession is over and companies will invest more in IT.

Agreed on Claws comment about employers demands on skill set. To expect candidates to be exposed too and proficient on a set like Exchange, servers, Sql & Cisco is TOTALLY unrealistic. Only those working for small companies would have a chance at being exposed to all those. Medium & large companies have 1+ person for each skill. You don’t cross skill. And to make matters worse the employers wan’t all that lot AND want to offer sub £30k for it. Get real !!

Daran,
MCSA
ITIL
Hopefully soon to be CCNA

Good article. But not too realistic though. I have 6 exp in .NET and strong MOSS 2007 development skills. I lost my job in september 2008. By March 2009 I left the UK because of NO JOBS and only body shop made by real timewasters “employers”. I am employed outside the UK by real employers!

like Daran says. GET REAL ENGLAND!

Employers that are not finding people for a position have only themselves to blame.

For example they are describing different versions of similar a tools as a different skill.

In my case, they seem to think that somebody with many years of Solaris Administration experience has got no chance to administer HP-UX, Red Hat or AIX.

Employers: they are all UNIXes! That is the point of all (except Red Hat, but that is another matter) being POSIX complaint.

Most employers fail to understand that as good technicians our most valuable skill is to assimilate technology quickly and proficiently (it is what I have done all my life).

I despair when somebody from an agency tells me I am not suitable to administer an HP-UX shop. I am sure I could do it if given the chance, as I am sure anybody with background in any UNIX or LINUX flavour would.

Or what about clustering? Same thing. Somebody that has worked with clusters from any manufacturer surely has enough know how in order to pick up the intricacies of other manufacturer’s solution quickly.

The skill is “cluster administration” not Sun, RedHat, or Veritas cluster.

By targeting so tightly the specs for new positions the employers are artificially inflating the salaries they have to pay, which during a recession is frankly ridiculous.

And then the jobs requesting a list of skill longer than a bad novel but offering a paltry salary.

I would go for a lower salary than I used to have, I am not stupid, we are going through a recession and the pressure of outsourcing to cheaper locations (another history that deserves a long treatment), but the employers and the agencies are shooting themselves in the foot (and us as “collateral damage”) by defining jobs as ultra niche that actually should not be.

Hear! Hear!

Must agree with El Gramatico: having 15 years of programming experience means I can pretty much pick up any language (though I never admit to VB) in any problem domain and run with it. Thats what defines my job. To have some clueless rookie agency tell me “but you don’t say xyz on your CV” is just so frustrating when half the time the things that I omit on my CV are ommited because it should be fairly obvious that someone with my experience has a good grasp on object orientation (for example).

Then of course, for the so-called niche jobs, the agencies are claiming to have received 700 CVs. How is that niche? I think that for every 100 CVs they get, there are 99 chancers trying their luck which is why it is so hard to recruit. The truth is that the agency workers have no clue what they are looking for or how to weed out the chancers. I recon half the agencies are chancers themselves. I would argue that we need some sort of regulation, but the thought of having this clueless government involved in my field sends shudders down my back. Perhaps some sort of meaningfull certification would be usefull.

I’ll stay in my boring contract with pre-recession rates thank you very much.

“The skill is “cluster administration” not Sun, RedHat, or Veritas cluster. By targeting so tightly the specs for new positions the employers are artificially inflating the salaries they have to pay, which during a recession is frankly ridiculous.”

Agreed that skill is say server admin or whatever rather than specifics (and how ridiculous to have some jobs specced so tightly as to ask for specific backup applications or security suites!!! – just how stupid are employers?). So many jobs I know I could do but can’t apply for as I haven’t used x or y package – i’ve used z instead.

But I don’t agree that niche specs are inflating salaries. They still seem to want to only pay low rates for all the niche stuff too.

Interesting article indeed, but what about companies that are using this glut of talent to hire people they could not ordinarily afford to get.
There are lots of companies out there looking to get Ferraris for Ford money and because for the market many are getting them.
Should people that have been out of work for months bite the bullet and take a hit or will the market improve to the extent that they hold tight and expect to be in the same role as they were before the market changed?

I have always found the difficulty in applying for jobs that ALL companies want previous experience. Yet when in a role, they are unwilling to train up or give experience. For instance to use Active Directory – no can’t do that. Contracors can’tt have access to it. Then next contract wants A/D experience. SO recession or no recession, they always want experience. In good times they are willing to wait for the candidate that has that experience, in bad timesthey claim they can always find the rightr candidate. And yes, nowadays they specify almost impossible things. One company wants MCSA, another one wants ITIL. If you have the experience, they want ‘recent’ experience in the same sector. Or with the experience, that position ‘happens’ to require SC or DV clearance. Not to mention enhanced CRB clearance. And then you have to live locally. I am surprised I am not seeing adverts yet stating that one must have ‘recently’ finished a previous position.

Hold tight. Don’t settle for less. The market will improve, it has started already. If you start to accept rubbish £35K salaries now, then you’ll basically find it a very very hard climb back up the ladder as employers will get used to paying less and offering less. It’s also harder to jump up in salary because some employers don’t want to give big pay rises against what you were earning in your last job and use that as a measure of your worth, hence they tend to ask what you are currently on. So if you are currently on £30K, they aren’t going to offer you a £40 job simply because it’s a lot higher than you’re currently earning (I’ve had that before). If you wanted £40K and held out for 38/39K then when you move on getting the £40K will be easier simply from the psychological and numbers point of view.

Here is a good one. Again you have to laugh / despair I don’t know which!

My client, a long standing and highly established company based in Cambridge is now looking for a talented and dynamic individual to fulfil the role of Systems administrator.
Your main responsibilities will include:
*Desktop hardware/Printer troubleshooting skills.
*Desktop software support skills
*Solid understanding of ERP systems and concepts (
*Solid Active Directory 2003 experience ( (Recommended exposure to Group Policies, Networking, Domains and Trusts).
*Experience with Exchange 2003.
*Good understanding of SQL 2000/2005 and RDBMS.
*Crystal Reporting / Microsoft SQL Reporting Services skills.
*Solid understanding of networking concepts (DHCP, DNS, VPN’s, Firewalls, Wireless).
*Exposure to / Understanding of Firewalls (recommended exposure to Watch Guard) [Main support provided through third party]
*Exposure to/conducting System Audits (hardware/software) recommended.
*Experience operating in and supporting a Terminal Service environment (Windows Server 2003).

All this, and in an expensive part of the country; Cambridge, for ……… wait for it …… £25K FFS.

If you think that’s funny, I’ve written a replacement job spec for my position that you’ll choke on if you were to see, it’s about 3 times as long…

I am not saying my previous salary, that is private matter and it is something that only my accountant has any need to know about.

??
Who asked for your salary??

Obviously I don’t work for £30K but still… I don’t work for £60K either for the large job spec that I will dump on the poor recruiter who tries to replace me, I think they’ll tell my employer where to go… or hire 2/3 good people, each one at least the same salary as I get. I will laugh.

Oh I can’t wait for the jobs market to pick up gear again, it’s started already…

The agencies.

They always want to know your salary.

How do you refuse to tell them your salary? How do you phrase that exactly?

I expect there will be a lot of people saying FFS at that time!

El Gramatico’s reply pushed this comment further down, the FFS was in relation to what the recruiters would be saying as well as anybody they approached upon seeing the job spec vs the offered salary.

I think if the salary is good enough, you can usually appease most of what people want. If people were being honest and not just avoiding the subject they would just admit they are primarily concerned with salary, instead of finding alternate excuses regarding switching jobs, which seems to be the majority (the odd exception being someone who works in some horrible and pressured environment)

Perhaps we need more honesty and directness in the industry?

It’s all about salary and environment (working conditions). Career development, training etc are all just oriented around keeping oneself marketable in order to achieve the first goal.

Show us the money, basically.

@Daran – Mate, thats really bad. All that for a paltry salary. Surely you got to be having a laugh??

I’m wondering if potential employers are just tacking this stuff onto job descriptions as it is a means of vetting applications from the many that they will receive in the current climate. I think its unfair to do this since a lot of unemployed people are desparate to get back into work and would probably just settle for such responsibilities with little reward.

Talk about preying on the desparate!!

It’s pointless though, as soon as the market picks up again they’ll be gone, all you are doing is wasting your money on recruitment instead of giving it to the workers.

This ties in to the other blog from the IT job board about “job hopping”.

We had 4 developers all leave after 6 months, then you have to start all over again… what’s the point?

You’re just making things operationally more difficult for your business.

You only get what you pay for, and in capitalist counties like the UK/US where money is needed to pretty much breath the air, this is especially true.

People aren’t idiots, they will not go the extra mile and will leave at the first opportunity.

It is so true. I stayed quite long in a previous job (with hindsight more than I should have, but that is another history) because the salary was good, I got some training once in a while and I was compensated properly for working long or odd hours.

I reckon the company saved thousands of pounds on agencies fees and productivity (we reckoned that a new employee took around 3 months to be fully integrated in the company’s procedures) by having a low turnover.

Most employers simply don’t get this. If you can’t pay high salaries that is fine, but then don’t come with unrealistic expectations about the kind of person you want to get. Your technology could be a great magnet to attract high calibre people, so give some leeway for people lacking one or two of the skills you need, so they have some reason to stick around with you for a while…

@ Claws – that’s not my job! I’m in a poor situation myself. I normally get paid a bit more than £25k for far less responsibility. But, my employer (CAT) don’t give me any training, and I had to threaten to leave to get out of desktop support to go into 3rd line infrastructure development which I earned through hard work and self-training with MS certification. Although as soon as the recession hit CAT got rid of ALL their worldwide IT contractors (we lost 20+ in our facility alone), and I was pushed straight back down to do desktop support again to cover for the 3/4 people they lost doing that role.

I’m technically far better than many others in our IT dept, but I’m one of the worst paid for various reasons all of which make no sense – i’m not a brown-noser, I don’t do powerpoint presentations or stats and I tell management what I think. All things which doesn’t do me any favors no matter how decent my technical ability. I have to suck-up the fact that people with no technical skills but good powerpoint skills get paid more than me. And i’m not the only one suffering. Trust me, do NOT work for any Caterpillar business!

I’ve been battling them for years for better pay. I’ve given up now, had enough. And I expect to leave in the next 6-12 months. I’ve wasted too much time already, and should have left before (I was told by friends that I would not get on if I didn’t suck up to the bosses etc – sorry I won’t). And as i’m hitting 40 soon I time is running out….

Daran, just leave.

I have had a very similar experience to yourself.

The worst thing you can do is stay at the same employer. Change jobs twice a year if you have to, but make sure you change jobs until you are happy with everything including your salary.

If you don’t change job, you don’t force your salary up and you don’t force a change in conditions.

I tried to negotiate and change things, but if people/company don’t want to change then they won’t.

Much easier to leave, even if only for small £2K pay rise, just to get out there and start climbing again.

The comments on the string are all very interesting. Having recently changed to a recruitment role after being within an IT environment for over 10 years I can see why some IT Professionals are dismayed by the lack of knowledge held by most agencies. As has been mentioned many of my colleagues ask me what certain terminology means and what they should be looking for in a CV….. and sadly many of these advertised roles get MANY applicants who have no chance of succeeding in the role and clog the Job Boards making it harder to find the credible candidate.
I recommend that if you see a role that suits you, pick up the phone, don’t rely on your application being seen or understood by the Recruiter.

The subject is bigger than just a future Brain Drain; we are seeing British society changing at a rapid pace, driven in part by New Labour, but mainly by business. The capitalist concept of paying a decent wage, figured-out/imposed upon the economy during the end of the 19th century had one significant impact – more people than ever could buy things. From the early beginnings of Thomas Cook in the Victorian Age to the concept of home ownership by the ‘masses’ to the idea of owning a car (something unheard-of to most people before the mid-1970’s) so it is our economy and society has benefited from the simple mechanism that people who have a little bit of disposable income will…well dispose of it. In the far past people with any extra money simply saved it, to ward off the bad days they knew would come. The Victorians comprehended this lesson so well, creating a ‘middle-class’ that just spent and spent, when before you were either poor or well off, and rarely in the middle and ‘comfortable.’ The vast expansion of the middle class from 1860 was testimony to the growing prosperity of British society. Now that group, so well recognised as being crucial by politicians up until New Labour – who don’t understand that a thriving middle-class can provide the tax finance to fund whatever mad-cap dreams they have – are fading, no not fading – rather plummeting off a cliff. And its new territory; we’ve never seen capitalism collectively choose to reduce the means of its customers to purchase goods – but the likes of finance firms who ship well-paid roles to another co-prosperity sphere (i.e. Asia) are doing just that; taking part in an experiment that can only have a bad result.

Capitalists are driving us to that ancient pre-middle-class world again. In a world of shipping jobs abroad and low wages, what suffers is the willingness and ability of folk to spend money – on holidays, cars, iPods…houses. Instead you give it a miss, squirrel the extra money – however small a sum, away. As Marx said, give a capitalist enough rope and he’ll hang himself. That’s precisely what is happening now – not just in the UK, but in the US. There’s a threshold at which point you introduce just too much doubt and fear into an economy, and “Modern Capitalists” have managed to cross that line and are still digging. What is happening to skilled IT workers is just a microcosm of the wider state of things; our country won’t get better until this ‘New Capitalism’ is replaced with a new generation who understand the common sense of the past and know how an economy is supposed to work.

All very interesting what has been said. Another interesting thing – frequently jobs are advertised requiring current SC and even DV clearance. SC or DV is required in some instances in addition to rare skills. And I could add with examples of job adverts consisting of shopping lists of skills. I agree with Darans comment where he puts an example of this and explains why emplyees cannot possess all these skills. And when one has a job, as I have found, the employer will just train you for the role that you are doing and no more, if at all. Access to lets say Lotus Notes or A/D is not given to you for security reasons because you are a contractor. There are other factors preventing you gaining practical skills. And then comes the next employer who states that they want in depth knowledge of Lotus Notes or A/D. You tell them that you are flexible and able to learn. The reply comes back ‘but this employer’ wants the skill/experience to be in place and has no time for you to pick up/learn – even if its something simple .(And you hear the same answer when you go to other employers. Added together, this equates to say that ALL employers want you to already have the skill. And to move on….. the employer you are working for will not enable you to gain anything new apart from what you have. The next employer will not let you have the job where new skills are needed because you should already have them. An explanation in the case of contract work is given that ‘as this is a contract, there is not the time to learn the skill. Permanent positions have allowance for learning that skills. So you turn to the permanent side. And in the job advert, there is a shopping list of skills you should already have. And the same advert says that this position offers career progression and training….And it seems that agencies are being dictated by clients – ok its fair that clients say what they want, but clients as we know, are demanding a lot( I have seen adverts with demands or even for thrid line support people paying £6 to £12 an hour) for an unrealistic set of skills (and or current SC/DV clearance as well) it becomes illogical. I have heard of a case where an agency had to as a favour find a candidate with a particular set of skills willing to be paid £8 an hour. So some factors preventing career progression. And the risk of taking in desparation a low low paid contract after which you cannot go up easily as said by Hari. And here I will mention a situation which I would not be surprised if somene has encountered – a contractor who is doing a fairly decent job and suddenly contract is terminated unexpectadly because the company considers that they can go out to market and get a more experienced contract for a lesser price? II was taken on, job was not explained properly, so the hiring manager could go to his superiors and prove that the job is not for contractors, so could he have his permanent staff back who have been seconded out to another department which lost staff becaue of redundancies and redundancies were done across the board, so busy departments found themselves without the staff and he had to have his staff seconded out. Changing slightly, I can quote examples – the contractor has finally got that job, and now how the company treats contractors badly – unfairly. So where is the fact that contracting is a well paid area where you choose when you want to work and do not get involved in company politics?

As usual, when there’s the slightest blip in the economy, the employers/clients try to push rates down. If they can “offer” a highly-skilled job at an unrealistic salary, of course, they can then “prove” that there’s a skills shortage and import another migrant worked for peanuts. There’s never *been* a real “skills shortage” – just a shortage of people to do champagne jobs for lemonade money.

Sounds like things are bad on both sides of perm and contract, I guess that is why so many professionals are leaving the UK for greener pastures abroad.
J*sus what has Labour done to this country, flooded it and now out goes the good soil with the receding tides… I wonder if the UK job market wouldn’t be so bad if not for soooo much immigration in the decade of labour… I guess this certainly adds to the supply being excessive and hence causing such an imbalance in the supply vs demand that is required to keep things stable and painless.

I can’t quite figure out how this form of capitalism (which I’m generally quite fond of as providing incentive for people to do good work) is going to shape the improvement or decline or the genetics and proliferation of the global population, speaking strictly as a logical scientific person here… always an important factor I think in the future safety and quality of life, environment etc of the future… since all of that is dependent on the quality of people that exist in the future…

with reference to Marc’s point of just going for cheapest all the time that was…

Guys, this is nothing. Here is my story.

I lost my job almost 9 month ago after 5.50 year long contract and I use to carry SC, BC, CTC and CRC clearances level. Since I lost my job I did certification and courses for Cisco CCNA, CCNA Security, CCSP and now working on CCNP because when I was working I didn’t have time to do them. I already hold MCP/MCSE since 1997-98 and kept upgrading to current level.

I have applied many jobs and not getting anywhere. Two weeks ago, I had interview and gave all accurate answers with some example to prove my skill but I was reject with excuse that I gave examples. But before that Interview, I been reject by another employer that I didn’t backed my answers with examples. So win situation for us ?? I don’t mind those employers or Interviewers read my post here but they have to be realistic.

I am not giving up my hope and fight, as I spent 15 years in IT industry and I feel most of decisions are nowadays political rather then merit or knowledge based.

I agree with other posters that we should NEVER take less money. In my case I have already saved potential employer nearly 8K for Cisco Training courses and keep investing money in books, classes etc.

“I have applied many jobs and not getting anywhere. Two weeks ago, I had interview and gave all accurate answers with some example to prove my skill but I was reject with excuse that I gave examples. But before that Interview, I been reject by another employer that I didn’t backed my answers with examples.”

I know this is a blog, but even so- if I’d had an application with that standard of written English, it would have gone straight into File 13.

@Marc

Oh! Sure you dump my CV or whatever you do! But the person who knows the worth of those technical skills, he will look into it.

I never have been interested in English language. English isn’t my native language. But I do know 6 languages apart from English. How many do you know?? Get a life and get out from your race and ego shell.

People like you who sit in office and work as Hiring managers can’t live without our technical expertise. We are the one carrying you on our shoulder.

Employers that are not finding people for a position have only themselves to blame.

They are being too specific with their particular skill set requirements.(it seems to be “this is the required skill set and this is what I must have”.)

Most employers fail to understand that as good technicians our most valuable skill is to assimilate technology quickly and proficiently (it is what I have done all my life),most of us have builtup our skills and experience levels over many years.
It seems gone are the “good sense guys” that could read from a CV that you have 99% of the skill requirement and the odd 1% is that learning curve from which you will pick up in a fraction of the time it would take someone else to assimilate that knowledge.

What I am finding is that far from the Agencies taking a back seat in telling these employers that they wont get X for £XX, they are trying …(at least some of the major players do , those that do know the jobs that the take on.)
Its those that dont…. that are frustrating the market by just accepting that the client knows best…demanding X for £xx and that they must have these skills,when in fact it is a Client “wish list”, (meaning-that is the ideal person we would like to have,for this amount of Money/Budget).
Employers see that the Contractor market has been flooded with loads of talent and are capitalising on what they see as a ..discount boon….
In fact I had one such client reverb back to me that” it is a buyers market and I can get who I want for what I want… which is the lowest possible price……I can get more for my Budget availability”.(He actually said that to me directly).

My answer to that is ..”fine you take who you like (probably someone who has’nt the experience nor skills to do the job right in the first place), and who thinks he can do because he has picked up some snippet of knowledge..(hey This is easy …).
You’ll more than likely go “down the pan” or you will be looking again pretty soon for someone that really can do the job properly,unfortunately it wil cost you twice as much because you didnt make the right decision in the first place.
I agree with most of the above comments….it is a manyfold mire as to why there are so many of us out there….What the Industry needs to do is look at how it is running/Operating and how can we get these guys back on board and helping us be more efficient and profitable companies …so we dont have to farm services out to “off-shore or out-source”.
Do I really believe that will happen…….??????….. in short ….NO.
The problem is with
The shareholders……. they will always want every single Penny of Profit on there Investment,
The top Exec’s ………want their large Salaries and even larger Bonus’s.
The Management……….Who have smaller and smaller Operating Budgets to work With, because of the two greedy S*ds above.

20% have trouble hiring the right candidate – what cobblers.
Sorry to be blunt, the candidates are out there, but if you ask for someone with a wide range of indepth experience and knowledge to take major responsibility in a high ranking role and then claim you want them in an office in London for 35k then yes you will have trouble – but its your problem not the candidates.
I have also had experience (GE in Cambridge in particular) of companies interviewing hundreds of candidates to glean insights and knowledge and employing no one in 6 months – it is just not plausible that none were ‘the right candidate’, especially as each of us (and I know abotu a dozen) have been given the feedback that they have ‘found someone stronger’. Basically they are advertising and not employing.
Other companies have also had hiring managers who were unable to make up their mind about the job spec – fortunately for this particular company they have offered me compensation for the waste of several days and much of my money, assuming that makes it into my bank account I see no reason to name them.

The problems that there are for some of these companies are entirely of the companies own making, so the 20% who are grumbling about not finding the right people are entirely to blame.

Marc got it right. Employers offer stupidly low rates (in one case I saw, almost minimum wage), very few people apply, aha! there is a skills shortage, Mr Clegg we need skills imported.