IT contractors may be interested to learn which skills are currently in short supply in the IT sector.
According to the latest Report on Jobs from the REC/KPMG, the shortage of contractors with Citrix, Datastage, Firewall, .Net and Oracle skills that began at the end of last year continued in January. Last month, two new skills were added to the list; Business Analysis and Security.
The REC said that recruiters are now struggling to find candidates with skills in the above-mentioned disciplines.
Demand for IT contractors increased slightly in January according to the REC index. It scored demand at 51.7, compared with 51.4 in December. However, that is still well down on the figure of 61.2 recorded in January 2011.
It has been suggested that the decrease in temporary billings is linked to AWR but as yet there is no conclusive evidence to back up that suggestion. Kevin Green, the chief executive of the REC, acknowledged that there had been a dip in billings for temporary staff, but said employers are still taking advantage of flexible working arrangements.
He went on to point out that employers have also started looking for permanent members of staff even though the economic outlook is uncertain. Demand for full-time IT staff rose in January, although the skills shortage problem once again raises it head.
Agencies recruiting for full-time IT staff have had problems finding developers, database administrators, IT marketers, C#, .Net, SAP and Security candidates. They also report a lack of applicants for DB2 and Datastage positions.
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