In Tech North’s recently-published ‘Digital Powerhouse‘ report, they said that the North of England would only match the performance of other leading tech hubs around the world if several ‘creative conditions’ were met, including:
- Talent – successful tech clusters depend on a pool of highly skilled workers, not only coders and programmers but also people with sales and marketing expertise. The UK’s digital economy is expected to require an extra 760,000 digital workers between 2015 and 2020 and the Government’s response has been to introduce compulsory coding within schools, while at a local level several upskilling initiatives have been launched. Examples include Northcoders which runs bootcamps for entry level software developers and (our own) Career Hacker, a new platform using big data to help students, teachers and careers advisers keep up to date with industry trends. The region is also fortunate to already have a number of well-respected computer science university departments that can be drawn upon for talent.
We’re really pleased to be included in the report and are keen to play our part in helping businesses find the talent they need, and provide individuals with up-to-date advice on the skills they require to forge a successful career in the tech / digital sector. This is obviously a long-term initiative but what can be done right now?
- Firstly, we’d like to encourage more teachers, businesses, tech sector support organisations, councils and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) to take a look at our Career Hacker tool to see how it can be used to help them achieve their aims
- Secondly, we need a more collaborative and joined up approach to tackling the current and growing skills shortage which is caused by the business world and academic world not working together closely enough (read our previous blog titled ‘What’s the Future of Tech Recruitment?‘)
- Thirdly, we’d like more individuals to register for a free Career Hacker profile which will help us provide even more accurate and up-to-date information on the skills required to follow a certain career path
- Fourthly, we’d like to encourage you to read the ‘Digital Powerhouse’ report and then tell us what more could be done to improve digital skills and career matching in the UK by leaving a comment below or Tweeting us @GeekTalent
Download the ‘Digital Powerhouse’ report by clicking on the image below:
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