The great IT talent war waging in London

May 29, 2012

Internet giants are up against blue chips and start-ups in the hunt for talent - can London’s IT pool keep up?

Like industrialisation before it, the computer revolution allowed companies to do more with less, but just as the steam-powered economy relied on engineers, modern business turns to IT specialists to keep the cogs turning.

Of The UK’s 10 fastest-growing public companies, most are in the technology and communications sectors, yet many are struggling to recruit enough IT staff to keep pace with expansion.

London-based InternetQ, for instance, has added 25 IT specialists in the last year to support the global roll-out of Akazoo, a music content distribution platform, and will require plenty more to build on a triple-digit rise in sales.

Topping its wanted list are staff with skills in Java, C++, .NET and online development, all of which are currently in wide demand, along with C#, SQL, strong hardware knowledge and a good understanding of the development lifecycle.

For those boasting the right CV, London offers an expanse of opportunity: from FTSE 100 giants to the technology start-ups of ‘Silicon Roundabout’; and from home-grown success stories like Inmarsat to glamorous foreign imports like Google.

Yet all that choice, plus a dearth of new IT staff graduating from university, has led to what Hays, the leading recruiting expert, calls a ‘talent war’ among big technology companies to attract the best IT staff.

“Silicon Roundabout has changed the pace of technology recruitment in the UK, especially in London. The mix of those guys and the proliferation of marketing and digital agencies in Soho means that good candidates get snapped up very quickly right now,” says Darren Goldsby, head of technology at online property portal Rightmove.

Going solo

Reassured by such demand, many computer professionals have opted for the flexibility of freelance work and only six per cent of contractors surveyed by Hays are considering a move into a permanent position.

“Contractors are often offered really exciting short roles for quite a bit of money and then they can move onto something else, which can be hard to compete with if you’re a well-established internet business like us,” says Goldsby.

Rightmove’s dilemma is indicative of the wider IT recruitment market, reckons Andy Bristow, a director at Hays IT, the leading recruiting expert.

“Unlike full-time roles, the contract market is oversubscribed – there’s lots of supply for relatively limited demand and that’s going to need further adjustment,” he says.

Perhaps envious of their freewheeling peers, full-time IT staff have joined the clamour for more flexibility, with almost three-quarters of those surveyed telling Hays it was the most important benefit their companies could provide.

Unlike other perks such as extra annual leave and pension contributions, however, flexible working is an area where employers are still some way off meeting staff expectations.

There are fewer grumbles over pay, with more than half of IT professionals reporting a rise in the last year, though the majority only made below-inflation wage gains – employers may need to do better as almost two-thirds of respondents told Hays that they anticipated moving jobs within the next year.

Education

Despite soaring demand for permanent staff, IT can be a hard industry to break into.

“The landscape for recruiting for IT is much more specific than it used to be as a result of the divergence of technologies,” says Bristow.

This means that bright graduates with general computing knowledge are often overlooked in favour of specialists who boast relevant experience with a particular software platform or programming language.

To accommodate more domestic talent, some senior figures with the IT industry believe that technology companies need to offer better training, mentoring and support to graduates, but many are also scathing about past IT education in the UK – a view shared within academia.

“There is evidence that the IT education in school has damaged the prospects of getting the right talent pool into computer science at university and so has hindered the development of the right kind of graduates being available to the industry,” says Kevin Jones, professor of dependability and security at the School of Informatics, City University.

Happily, however, progress has already been made, both through revised A level syllabuses and industry-driven initiatives in school.

Such has been the success of this revamp that the next hurdle – according to Dr Sebastian Hunt, associate dean at City’s School of Informatics – will be to find enough teachers to nurture the next generation of budding computer professionals and keep those cogs turning.