With the tech talent gap widening, mapping where the skills demand will lie and upskilling to meet the market will be key for ambitious tech professionals to futureproof their career, says recruiting experts Hays.
“The tech industry will continue to thrive beyond our expectations, with continuous digital transformations taking place across all sectors,” says Adam Shapley, Senior Regional Director at Hays.
“It’s not just native digital organisations embracing the latest transformative technologies, more traditional organisations are making strategic investments to ensure that they remain relevant in the digital world. If jobseekers have what it takes to not only help them on their journey but help them operate in their new world, it’s likely they’ll find themselves in the driver’s seat of their career,” he said.
Digital transformations and data challenges are at the heart of the war for talent and software development skills are core to most of the areas where we expect opportunity to lie.
Here are the skills Hays suggests you need to futureproof your tech career:
Cyber Security: With cyber threats ever-evolving and constant reports of data breaches, larger organisations, in particular, are looking to hire Cyber Security Specialists to be at the frontline of their cyber defence. The finance, insurance, utilities and retail industries are all competing for top talent in these areas right now, but there’s no doubt all industries will eventually be affected.
Business Intelligence (BI): As companies continue to invest in protecting, managing and exploiting their data, candidates with BI analysis skills will become more sought after. Whilst data migration skills are in demand now to help identify and manage data migration interdependencies, in future organisations will continue to need BI professionals with an analytical mindset to help interpret the information to drive operational decision-making.
Data Science/Big Data: Data is the new corporate currency, as advancing digitisation sweeps every horizontal and vertical market across the world. The impact on the data science sector is far-reaching and, as a result, a range of new roles and skillsets will be created. With the size of data growing exponentially, and machine learning and predictive analytics increasing in popularity, a broad skillset will be required across technology, statistics and stakeholder engagement.
DevOps: The growing demand in this area to create scalable solutions leans towards scripting and building adaptable environments. To keep up with the pace of innovation, organisations will require quick builds and deployments and therefore will need competent Engineers with in-depth scripting skills who can take a holistic view of technical environments.
JavaScript: JavaScript skills will continue to be highly sought as growth in momentum and popularity continues. This is perhaps the hottest skill Developers need to upskill in for the foreseeable future. Developers should seek to gain experience of building applications with these technologies in a commercial environment, particularly with Node.JS, Angular.JS & React.JS.
UX/UI Development & Design: Organisations, small and large, continue to focus on devising their strategies to improve their customer experience. With social media providing a public platform for customers to voice their experience and a shift in understanding the value of nurturing existing customers, organisations in future will continuously need professionals to fine-tune the best user experience for end customers.