“This skills festival is not only unique but so desperately needed,” that was the message from Ian Stewart, Mayor of Salford as he opened this year’s Manchester Digital Skills Festival.
The one day conference marked the start of what was to be four days focused on bridging the digital skills gap, with not only Europe’s largest digital employment fairs but also a chance for school children and job seekers to get hands on experience in agencies and universities.
But, what is this much talked about skills gap? Daniel Nolan, from the E Word summed it up during one of the day’s panel discussion:
“The boom that we have seen in the digital economy and the creation of roles in the digital economy has created something of a vacuum. To put it simply there are often too many roles and not enough people to fill those roles or certainly not the skilled trained individual to do so. This creates several problems particularly for employers such as wage inflation and difficulty in filling roles. However, the so-called skills gap is being addressed in various ways. So we have got bodies such as Manchester Digital, universities, UTCs, organisations such as Hyper Island who offer digital apprenticeships for example, all of these people working in isolation and together to improve the situation.”
Speaking at the conference Manchester Digital chair Tony Foggett, revealed the results of the trade association’s skills audit. It found that 80 per cent of industry in the city was experiencing growth but finding the right people to fill the roles created was a struggle. He said that developers and designers were still heavily in demand. However, with technology changing so quickly can employees be trained with exactly the right technological skills or does there need to be more emphasis on the so-called soft skills such as curiosity, team-work and initiative, to name but a few.
In fact, speaking as part of the conflict in the curriculum panel Nolan summed up this viewpoint:
“Anecdotally, haven spoken to teachers in colleges, in universities and apprenticeship providers it seems that one thing being suggested is while there are increasing measures being put in place for teaching people certain digital skills there is a growing need for teaching them life skills.”
There was a real feeling that a lot is being done to get children coding and getting computer science graduates who have amazing technological skills but does there need to be more focus on things like project work, teamwork and even things as basic as punctuality?
For some businesses they seem to be able to find people who could code but may not fit in with the company culture or be able to interact with clients. The problem seems to be that it is hard to find new employees who have everything a firm needs to hit the ground running when they start.
It is also about training students, not just for today’s roles but for the entirety of their career as David Edmundson-Bird, principal lecturer in Digital Marketing Communications explained:
“We are trying to equip our students for an array of job titles that don’t exist yet. I want my students to have the skills to get a job as soon as they graduate but I also want them to be able to work in ten years’ time, so it is about the bigger skills and not necessarily about specific technologies.”
However, a lot of people argue that the ideal candidate will never exist, Damian Payton from the Hive argued that businesses are maybe expecting perfectly rounded human beings to turn up when they take on young people and apprentices:
“Businesses want the top talent but you don’t get brilliant English and maths, great technical skills, great personality combined with being good with people and good with business all in one person. Businesses should expect to do some of the nurturing themselves when they employ young people and be prepared to help them out.”
One thing was clear from the conference was that there are no easy answers as such a fast moving industry will always provide challenges but also provide great rewards, but isn’t that why we love working in digital?
