CompTIA Research


Summary of “Skills Gaps in the World’s IT Workforce: A CompTIA International Research Study"

About the study

The IT industry has experienced many changes and much growth in the past decade with the fast pace of technological change and the ever-increasing globalization of business. There has been a lack of industry data on current trends in the IT skills market, particularly, on a global level. In order to gain a better understanding of trends and gaps in worldwide IT skills, CompTIA commissioned The Center for Strategy Research, Inc, a Boston-based market research firm, to conduct a survey among organizations worldwide to identify IT skills gaps and solutions to close these gaps.

The research identifies trends in IT skills, explores issues surrounding recruiting and hiring, investigates the current and potential IT market growth and demand for IT professionals, and discovers which factors most influence, and are expected to influence, the IT industry. Information from this study will be valuable in helping employers address IT skills shortages, for employers to utilize as a benchmark for their own open positions, in guiding employers in recruiting and hiring capable employees now and for the future, in informing policy-makers, educators, and others involved in the industry of potential roles they could play, and lastly, for
employees to understand what employers are looking for.

Respondent Profile

The respondents were 3,578 “IT Managers.” All are responsible for the hiring and/or managing of at least three IT employees, at companies with ten or more employees. The survey sample was comprised of a minimum of 250 IT Managers from each of the following countries: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, South Africa, U.K., and U.S.

Sample of Key Findings

  • The top three most important IT skills are security (74% rating it 6 or 7 in importance on a 1-7 scale), general networking (66%) and operating systems (66%); these skills are expected to decline most in importance over the next five years.

  • When comparing reported proficiency in skills to importance of skills, the skill with the widest “gap” in proficiency is security/firewalls/data privacy.

  • By far, the skill expected to grow most in importance over the next five years is RF mobile, wireless technology (39% say it will be important one year from now vs. 55% say it will be important five years from now).

  • When asked what their organizations should be doing to enhance employees’ IT skills, the top two answers are sending employees for professional training externally (42%), and providing incentives, rewards (41%). Also important (third in order of importance) is sending employees for certification (36%).

  • IT managers currently report and anticipate future increase of their staffs (46% currently say increasing, 52% one year from now, and 64% five years from now), the IT workforce of their countries (57% currently say increasing, 59% one year from now, 62% five years from now) and the IT workforce worldwide (65% say currently increasing, 68% for both one year from now and five years from now).

  • The plurality of respondents (38%) report there are not enough qualified IT candidates in their countries.

  • Programmers/coders/developers (25%) are the positions most likely to be open, and Quality Assurance positions are the least likely to be open.

  • An index was created to enable comparisons in confidence about the growth of the IT workforce among different groups. While IT managers overall are “bullish” about the growth of IT workforces, India, China, Russia and Poland are more confident in that growth than other countries, those in the IT industry are more confident than those in other industries, and small companies are more confident than mid-size or large companies.

  • The fast pace of technological change (52%), budget constraints (51%), security and compliance (48%), and consumer needs (47%) are currently the top factors driving change in the IT industry.

  • An aging workforce is the least important factor now (21%), but is anticipated to grow most in importance five years from now (45%).

Complete reports are available to CompTIA corporate members via logging into CompTIA’s Members Only Area at http://members.comptia.org. The information contained throughout these studies is proprietary to CompTIA. No portion of these studies may be reproduced in any form without the expressed written permission of CompTIA. However, small segments of no more than one paragraph in length may be quoted if proper citation is made. For more information or if you’re not a member and would like to purchase the report, please contact research@comptia.org.