Companies remain desperate to hire specialized tech talent—but what kinds of talent do they actually want?
The 2024 Technical Skills Report from Pluralsight, based on a survey of 1,400 executives and IT professionals in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, suggests that a “technical skills gap” exists in three areas: cybersecurity, cloud, and software development.
Technical skills gaps can have severe consequences for organizations. “Seventy-eight percent of organizations have abandoned projects partway through because they didn’t have employees with the necessary IT skills,” the report stated. “Organizations are also worried the skills gap will mean they’re unable to adopt new technologies, maintain legacy systems, and procure business opportunities and clients.”
Skills gaps can also force tech professionals’ workloads to increase, which can lead to burnout. “For upskilling to drive revenue and results, organizations need to continuously work to
close the skills gap or risk overworking their employees and falling behind the latest
tech—and the competition,” the report added.
However, from an organizational perspective, upskilling is often easier said than done. Top difficulties include finding time to train people, lack of leadership support and resources, and employees’ disinterest in training. Fortunately, there are a variety of potential solutions, including integrating training time into day-to-day workflows, as well as offering incentives for training.
In cutting-edge fields such as cloud and cybersecurity, skills and tools are constantly evolving. For example, cloud engineers need to stay abreast of everything happening with the largest public clouds, including:
It’s a similar situation with cybersecurity—to become an effective cybersecurity architect, for instance, you need to learn the nuances of everything from application security to IT security architecture. This often necessitates earning key certifications; but you can convince your employer to foot the bill for such training if you can convince them it’ll increase your value to the organization.
Software development is another field undergoing rapid change, thanks in part to the rise of AI-powered tools that allow devs to code (and check code quality) even faster than before. While it’s imperative for developers to seize the initiative and learn new skills on their own, managers who want to close the skills gap will need to examine how they can improve their organizations’ training capabilities.
