It’s rare that an idea that has its inception in the eurozone actually affects the UK in a positive manner, but it looks like there’s an exception to the rule.
The EU recently announced it’s currently tossing about the idea to standardise IT certifications throughout the entire eurozone, which means that every single one of the 27 countries in the EU would all work off the same playbook when it comes to measuring skills for IT workers. What this means for IT contractors and freelance workers in the UK is that a huge world of possibilities have just opened up for more work opportunities, and with the nature of IT working allowing qualified and skilled contractors to work from nearly anywhere with an internet connection this means the entire eurozone could become one massive pool of prospective clients.
The reasoning behind the change is the fact that there’s really an incredibly unsustainable lack of workers with the requisite skills to satisfy demand throughout the EU. Eurozone firms and governments have decided to band together in order to combat this, and standardising certifications across the EU is one of many weapons in the arsenal in order to solve these problems; another tactic currently being employed is, through 2015, to provide investment and advice in order to support any IT worker who looks to relocate to a high demand area; I think that’s a fantastic step but might only result in limited successes with IT workers that have built a life for themselves in their current geographical area, complete with friends, family, and existing business arrangements.
However, there are other programmes currently underway that I think will fare better than providing relocation support, such as the push for employers in fields specialising in digital or emergent technologies to broaden their training programmes in order to provide more IT education access. Governments are doing their part as well in sponsoring awareness campaigns to the fact that the eurozone is in die need of new, young IT professionals to help satisfy runaway demand for anyone who knows their way around a server stack or an SQL database.
This massive shortage is, of course, why freelancers and umbrella company workers that specialise in information technology are so in demand at the moment. Qualified IT professionals can more or less write their own ticket in the current market landscape – or they can on a regional basis, anyhow – and if the EU adopts a standardised certification process, regions and countries with serious shortages of qualified personnel can absolutely benefit from workers from the UK or other EU member states without all the red tape or without hemming and hawing about whether they’ll be appropriate for a firm’s needs.
