Hiring tech talent is becoming increasingly challenging in the UK. The number of companies that are looking to hire skilled developers is increasing yet the apparent “skills shortage” means that the right technical candidates are almost impossible to find. At Searchability we have spent over six years growing our technical networks and finding innovative ways to source great people for our clients, including keeping our finger on the pulse for what is happening in the wider marketplace too. Here are seven statistics that we wanted to share with you:
59% of Developers in the UK & Ireland are open to new opportunities, but just 9% are actively looking for a job
Source: Stack Overflow
If you are relying on that 9% who are actively applying and uploading their CV onto the job boards then you are going to have a lot of competition on your hands! The fact is there is a huge portion of developers that are open to opportunities, so forget looking and advertising in the obvious places to find them and try tapping into the networks of your current IT employees through employee advocacy.
The Open University supplied the most number of recent graduates within the Information Technology and Services Industry.
Source: LinkedIn
The Open University came top followed by the University College London, showing that more people are opting for the convenience of learning from home.
94% of Developers in the UK & Ireland say they are at least partially self-taught.
Source: Stack Overflow
While a lot of Developers will hold a formal qualification of some sort, it comes as no surprise that they are constantly learning new skills and technologies on their own. If you are reviewing developer CV’s then consider using a technical test or code review to get a better grasp of their skill level than simply looking at their formal qualifications.
Not so surprising: The Developer landscape is still highly male dominated with 89.2% identifying as Male.
Source: Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow surveyed over 64,000 Developers and in asking respondents what gender they identified with the majority of respondents (89.2%) identified as male, with just 10.8% of respondents identifying as Female, Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming or Other.
Cardiff is seeing the same rate of employment growth as London
Source: LinkedIn
According to these statistics from a recent LinkedIn talent report of IT professionals, Cardiff has seen a 15% spike in employment growth, the same amount as the tech scene in London.
JavaScript is the most used and most in demand skill for Developers
Source: Stack Overflow
The below results from Stack Overflow give an overview of the developer landscape, and as you can see JavaScript is seen as the most in demand and most used programming language at the moment.
59% of IT professionals class a better work-life balance as a must have in their job
Source: LinkedIn
Companies that invest in improving the work-life balance for their technical employees will reap the benefits to attract and retain the best people, so if you don’t factor this in soon then you may find it harder to secure and keep hold of your technical staff. Consider working from home, flexi-time, condensed working hours or even job-sharing options to help provide better options for your employees.
Check out our blog post from “National Work Life Week” last October to find out more about options to boost work-life balance in your organisation.
