Combating the tech skills gap
Thetechnology skills gap has been a hot topic in the recruitment and IT presslately with researchrevealing that two-thirds of techprofessionals do not have the necessary skills and experience required to deliver on mobile projects. With mobile IT roles set to be vital withinbusiness in just threeyear’s time, this is a concern for the wider industry.
So what can be done?
A newly launched “Creative Technology andEnterprise” Masters Course – a hybrid of computing, creativity and business –at Bath Spa University signifies a pre-emptive drive to fill the gap. However, whileon paper such a move seems positive, a year long course is unlikely to be enoughto meet the current high demand – not least because employers also wantindustry experience.
As well as affecting IT professionals’ jobprospects and those businesses that need specialist tech employees, the skillsshortage also presents a problem for the recruitment sector. Recruiters will befaced with the task of filling vacancies with only a finite number of suitablecandidates available. The challenge for recruiters will be identifying those illusivefew who possess the required skills and industry experience.
Current basic recruitment technology used byrecruitment officers identifies candidates via a keyword match. In other words,if the employer specifies a competency in mobile projects as a required skillin the ideal candidate, then the basic keyword search will present anycandidate that mentions the word ‘mobile’ in a CV or application, irrespectiveof context. This often throws up a huge number of irrelevant applications thatthe recruiter has to manually sift through – an arduous task that doesn’t solvethe problem that they had in the first place!
For recruiters to truly combat the skills gap,they must implement intelligent technology that goes beyond a basic keywordmatch. CV search tools that utilise natural language semantic meta-searchtechnology enable recruiters to accurately identify those candidates to haveheld a role that has exposed them to the relevant skills and competency. Theseintuitive tools also score and rank jobseekers according to their level ofskill. By automating the search and match process in this way, recruiters cansignificantly reduce the time spent finding suitable candidates, enabling themto present a shortlist of the best applicants to the employer before anyoneelse.
A skills shortage shouldn’t hinder therecruitment process – with the right technology, it is a matter of findingthose hidden gems!