UK Spike in IT Job Advertisements
The number of active job postings in the UK topped a million this week, according to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC). In particular, there has been a significant surge over the last month in job ads for IT professionals.
Demand for web designers and developers skyrocketed 15.5%, compared to June.
“We’ve seen two years of digital transformation happening in the space of two weeks,” TechUK’s deputy chief executive Anthony Walker told the BBC. “A lot of business leaders we’ve been talking to, and survey data, shows that digital will be more important to their business, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.”
The industry group says that British firms, both large and small, are now realising that digital skills are crucial to all parts of the business – including setting up e-commerce websites to sell goods online, improving international marketing efforts and optimising production processes.
The number of workers on UK company payrolls fell by 649,000 between March and June, while unemployment rose by 34,000 in April to reach 1.3 million, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
But according to the REC, in the week of 6-12 July, there were 106,000 new job adverts posted – 14,000 more postings than the week of 22-28 June.
Roina Hadi, Head of Talent at health tech company iPLATO, said that people hunting for work are casting their net further than they would normally, in the hopes of finding employment.
“We are receiving a huge amount of applications when jobs are posted,” she said. “But unfortunately we are finding 60% [of applicants] are not suitable candidates and are seemingly applying for any role.”
She says the flood of applications has made it harder and more time consuming for already strained businesses to find appropriate candidates to fill new roles.
The UK already has a serious skill shortage when it comes to IT – the latest data from the Open University shows half of employers struggle to attract talent with the right IT skills.
Large tech firms IBM and SAP previously predicted that by 2020, there would be one million unfilled jobs in the IT sector, because people aren’t being trained with the skills to take on these jobs.