Talent management and skills development are challenges that face every industry, but the pandemic has produced a shift that puts added pressure on IT roles. As businesses fundamentally transformed the way they operated, adding remote work and transitioning to cloud-based resources (among other accelerated changes), the demand to fill new or changing IT positions has increased. As this was already a hot field, it’s more important than ever that business leaders be in touch with hiring and upskilling trends in top IT roles now.
The DevOps Institute, a Florida-based company focused on developing DevOps learning in the IT community, recently researched global and regional must-have IT skill capabilities in their Upskilling IT 2022 Report and Survey. [i] Their findings identified the following key trends to watch in the coming months:
High demand for IT operations professionals: Demand for IT engineers and developers will continue to be high this year. Among survey respondents, 60% reported that they were recruiting for IT operations engineering, and 48% were looking for an IT operations developer.
Top title being hired—DevOps Engineer: The top three job titles being hired were DevOps Engineer (34% of respondents), Software Engineer (34%), and Site Reliability Engineer (31%).
Identifying barriers to skill development: Upskilling existing staff can be a solution when it is difficult to find new candidates for specialized roles. However, respondents identified key barriers to skill development. These included lack of time (53%), lack of budget (47%), lack of offerings (32%), leadership not making upskilling a top priority (20%), and an emphasis on hiring rather than upskilling (19%).
Only half of enterprise IT organizations have a formal upskilling program: Among respondents, only 50% of organizations had a program in place to support upskilling. Although another 27% said they were currently developing one, most of these were still in the assessment stage, far from being ready to go.
Skill development is rising: Respondents were asked about skills mastery and their opportunities to learn and use new skills. Sixty-seven percent said they had mastered the skills they needed for their job, and 95% reported learning a new skill in the past year.
New skills aren’t always applied: Unfortunately, of that overwhelming majority who reported learning a new skill in the last year, only 33% of respondents said they had applied the new skill they had learned.
Certifications have value: Over half of survey respondents (54%) said they found different IT certifications to be valuable. Certifications can help show that IT professionals have acquired pertinent skills for a particular role, helping companies that are recruiting better identify appropriate candidates for open positions.
Job satisfaction could improve: Only 31% of respondents said they were very happy with their current job, and 4% reported being very unhappy. This aligns with a study by Haystack Analytics, which reported that 83% of developers were suffering from burnout, with nearly half citing high workload as a chief complaint. [ii]
Technical skills are the top focus in hiring: IT enterprise managers surveyed identified technical skills as the top thing they look for in hiring, at 50%, with human skills at a much lower 33%.
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[i] https://www.devopsinstitute.com/upskilling-it/
[ii] https://www.usehaystack.io/blog/83-of-developers-suffer-from-burnout-haystack-analytics-study-finds
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