 |
|
| CURRENT SECTION :: Market Reports | |
|
 |
Demand for IT management and software skills has sunk as technology projects that won’t deliver an immediate return on investment are put on hold until business conditions improve. Agents at ReThink Recruitment said that the number of IT jobs it advertised for managers and application developers has fallen by 30% and 18% respectively since 2006. Fewer new jobs emerging in these and other senior IT roles will remain as long as “financial uncertainty” keeps compelling clients to postpone their non-revenue generating projects. “Where there is a less clear-cut business case some IT projects are being put on the back burner and that is leading to a softening in demand for some management and software development roles. “[But] we are talking about fewer new jobs here, not mass redundancies,” the agency said, “so there is no sense of a return to the post-dot com market when huge numbers of contractors were laid off.” In contrast to the narrower pool of senior IT roles, the number of support jobs created has risen almost 20% since two years ago, despite worries offshoring had reduced them . Adverts for IT support roles tracked by ReThink now comprise 30.1% of all the technology jobs advertised on online job boards, compared to 24% two years ago. Partly this is because offshoring has become less economically attractive as wage inflation in India has crept up, but also because offshorers have created jobs onshore. “Offshoring has made organisations’ IT functions more efficient, which has freed up budgets for investment elsewhere,” said John Butterfield, ReThink’s managing director. “These new projects require support teams, and it’s not always appropriate or advantageous to base these staff offshore.” Alongside higher staff wages for offshore replacements, UK companies also have to meet the cost, in time if not money, of co-ordinating their remote teams across international time zones. “There is some debate as to whether offshoring has peaked,” Mr Butterfield said, pointing to the combination of factors. “Organisations may not be repatriating jobs en masse, but when new jobs are created, the UK is becoming a viable location once again.” The agency said the shortage of IT graduates suitable for entry-level roles, combined with low pay, means support jobs often remain unfilled for a significant period of time and suffer from high churn rate. Rather than the result of a lack of applicants, this high turnover of candidates may suggest universities are failing to tailor their computer science degrees to the realities of the business world. Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency seen by the Financial Times show that one in 10 computer science graduates is still unemployed several months after graduates – the highest rate for any subject. Supporting figures from the Association of Graduate Recruiters seen by the Times show that almost a tenth of employers in IT and banking received more than 10,000 applications this year. Jul 10, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
|
|
    |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| All content © Contractor UK Limited | [Archive] | [Register for News Letter] | [Privacy Statement] | [Terms of Use] | [Top of Page] |