UK’S IT Job Market Remains Steady

From my experience I find that an increase in the number of adverts for a specific role a specific role does not necessarily indicate an increase in demand. The basis of this belief is that I have applied to so many roles over the years (since 1985), but have found little demand, if any.

Even after I lost my last IT role, I found little real interest in whether I could actually do the work.

As the training will cost good money, I need to be able to guarantee that I will have a role at the end of the training, otherwise it could end with the money spent being wasted in training in an area that does not require persons such as myself.

The consequence of this means that I have come to one conclusion, which is the same as the view of the Job Centre. This view is that it is only worth my while investing in the training once I have been employed within a specific role.

The only problem with this is that the employer expects the applicant to have already received the training that they require. This cannot always be done, as nobody knows what tomorrow will bring and what will be required. Even if they do know, then it is not that easy to determine the best route to take to get to where you wish to be.

The result of this is that I will only believe that there is demand only when the employers are prepared to employ persons such as myself. The only way that these employers will employ persons like myself is when they decide to train the successful candidate up to their level. I have no doubt that they are at times doing this, but are choosing the wrong people before training. In which case, I have no doubt that at least some of the increase could be the employers having to replace persons who they chose once they find these persons unable to do the work required.

e-skills UK has published the latest issue of the e-skills Bulletin, the definitive source of information about changes in the demand and supply of ICT labour and skills in the UK.

The latest Bulletin, which covers the period January to March 2010, shows a decline in the number of ‘ready candidates’ for ICT positions. The resulting increase in the number of available jobs meant recruiters faced more competition in trying to find appropriate candidates for positions during the first quarter of the year.

As a result, advertised pay rates were seen to rise for both permanent and contract positions with increases of up to 9% occurring for a number of ICT roles.

Key findings include:

The number of advertised vacancies for ICT staff rose for the third consecutive quarter to 86,000 positions, even as recruitment activity declined across the economy as a whole.

Demand for each of the following roles has increased over each of the past three consecutive quarters:
• Senior Business Analysts
• Senior Test Analysts
• Development Team Leaders
• Projects Managers, Business Analysts
• Senior Systems Developers
• Systems Developers
• Software/ Programming Managers

Demand for each of the following skills has also increased over at least three consecutive quarters:
• Sybase
• C#, Coldfusion
• .NET
• SQL
• Swing

The number of ICT professionals working in the UK was up on the previous quarter, to 1,065,000 people.

The number of unemployed ICT professionals fell to 48,000 whilst the associated unemployment rate now stands at 4.4% – well below the UK average of 8.3%.

The number of ICT professionals seeking to change job fell to 68,000 people or approximately 6% of the total IT professional workforce.

Around one quarter of all ICT professionals (approximately 263,000 people) had received education or training during the previous 13 weeks.

To download the Bulletin and subscribe to future issues go to http://www.e-skills.com/bulletin

I have experience of VB / Dreamweaver / HTML / CSS / Javascript / SQL and I am still looking for evidence of demand – after 3 years looking. Had to change jobs as I could not find any evidence of demand!

I have good experience in IT application support, also have manual/automation testing knowledge, additionally i also have finance experience , Despite applying , nothing comes out as positive. I feel that it doesn’t look propective.

Too many recruiters have an exacting person spec and discard everything that doesn’t fit there exact expectation ignoring that fact that programming is just programming, it’s irrelavant what specific language you’ve used in the past, it’s the ability to create an algorithm to solve a problem in an efficient and structured manner. The tool itself is the least important part of the skillset. It’s like ignoring somebody with experience driving a metro, rover, ford, citroen just because you want them to drive a toyota.

I agree that too many recruiters go for a too exacting person spec – but programming is not just programming. I have experience within the software development – and I can say for sure that VB programming is not quite the same as C++ programming – even though both can be said to be programming.

The specific language is relevant as they all have their differences, including differences in syntax and the usability in certain situations.

Hence, you are claiming that it is just like going for only toyota drivers and ignoring all other drivers – but it is more like going for some (but not all) of the people who have experience of driving HGVs while excluding those whose experience they deem as irrelevant (which is not always the case).

At times, I think that the recruiters can be more flexible in their approach – as they can give training to those who have relevant experience (to say, a person who has used VBA and Web Development technologies when they want somebody who can use VB.Net – but giving the training to a developer of a different language may not allow the employer to use the skills as early, unless the skills are also required).

I just think that the employers need to be more positive – some of the rejections I have received come out as ‘we are rejecting you as we do not think you will stay where you are – and they are not asking whether I would move – or consider it when I say that I would).

UK’S IT Job Market Remains Steady? Tell that to the 100 or so ex-Grads that left Bournemouth Uni this year and that are still looking for work! Also tell that to the 1000s of good IT people on the dole or working in a supermarket just to pay the mortgage… Trends do not prove real jobs are there and often the Job agencies are lying about what is on their books in the first place.