Financial sector suffering IT skills shortfall

The financial-services industry remains the most hampered by an IT skills shortage, according to the 2008 Skills Survey from ZDNet UK's sister site, silicon.com.

More than half (54 percent) of respondents who work in the FS vertical said their business has IT positions it is unable to fill — up from half of respondents in 2007. This compares to just over a third (38 percent) of public-sector organisations, and less than a third (32 percent) of those in the retail sector.

The IT skills most in demand in the FS industry are (in order of most sought-after first): programming languages, IT management and Linux. The most hankered-after non-IT skills are: knowledge of sector and project management, followed by leadership.

After finance, the sector most likely to be short of IT pros is telecoms, where almost half (49 percent) of respondents reported vacant tech seats. The high-tech sector also reported a significant skills shortage, with 48 percent of respondents saying they have IT positions they can't hire.

In the public sector, the tech skills in most demand are: IT management, programming language and web services/SOA. Non-IT skills that are hardest to find are: project management, leadership and knowledge of sector.

The retail sector is keenest for the following IT skills: database, ERP and web services/SOA; and these non-IT skills: project management, knowledge of sector and leadership.

In the telecoms vertical, the most in-demand IT skills are: applications development, programming languages and networking/messaging. Meanwhile the high-tech sector is especially keen on: programming languages, web services/SOA and Linux.