It's good to talk, or so the saying goes. So, why aren't candidates for IT jobs talking to their recruiters, and vice versa? Recent survey statistics suggest that the two factions aren't on the same page when it comes to job requirements -- and that it is creating a skills gap.

The data, which came from a survey of 1560 IT professionals and 38 recruiters by CWJobs.co.uk, found a marked lack of communication between recruiters and candidates. That's going to hurt everyone, including the clients, in the long run.

The problem, according to recruiters, is that job candidates don't have the skills that they need. But job candidates feel that the recruiters are not very good at explaining what they want. 59.6% of candidates said that employers are not clear enough about the skills they expect when recruiting for technology roles. And, surprise surprise, 65.8% of recruiters felt that candidates are not clear enough about the skills they have when they apply to jobs.

This is leading to a mismatch in skills. Six out of 10 employers want C# skills, according to the survey, but 74% of technology professionals said that it wasn't an integral skill in the current market. 84.5% of them also said that ASP.NET wasn't an important requirement, and yet half of all recruiters want it.

So, in addition to some better communication skills, there clearly needs to be some retraining. IT professionals say that they need to retrain in SQL, .NET, Java, Oracle, and Linux. Recruiters said that SQL, .NET, and Java will be important skills over the next one to two years, in addition to C#, and PHP (which still didn't feature highly on job candidates' lists).

One interesting snippet is that recruiters cited soft skills such as business acumen and understanding user requirements as an important skill in the future. Perhaps this would also enable job candidates to communicate their skill sets more effectively. But recruiters need to do the same, and learn how to articulate what they want.

This is something we clearly need to fix. This IT skills gap has arrived just at the point when the economy is beginning to recover (if the Bank of England is to be believed). Companies are starting to invest in new projects, and will need the technical expertise to implement them. The jobs are apparently waiting to be filled, but the whole situation is like a bad date; although each party is looking for someone else to be with, they can't seem to hit it off, because they are not on the same wavelength.

As an IT professional, the skills you use for your job are your most valuable asset - most gainful employment within the sector relies on some specialist knowledge. Whether from experience or education, the things you have learned define the job you can do.

It is safe to say that any investment in your skills is worthwhile, then - expanding your knowledge of things IT related will help greatly in developing your career - cementing and diversifying your current role (with greater chances for advancement) and improving your prospects for later roles as well.



The dangers of over-specialisation

The detriments of a narrow skill set are all too obvious, then - technology is a fast moving sector to work in, so if you don't keep your skills up to date you could get stuck in a legacy support dead end, or worse - find yourself replaced with a new wave of fresh faced developers toting the latest buzzwords and paradigms.

That's not to say that a certain degree of focus can't be a bad thing - if you're amongst the few real experts in a niche area, you can certainly make a very tidy profit - but all the same it is wise to be sensitive to the evolving landscape of IT. If you're in a receding area of expertise, over-specialising can be dangerous.

Certain subcultures in tech can breed this kind of lack of adaptability - those in the almost self-contained Java and .NET worlds are more vulnerable than most. Being involved in a close community is largely a good thing, at least as far as support is concerned - but it's not hard to become isolated from other areas and miss out on some of the more up-and-coming languages, platforms and techniques.

Being a 'jack-of-all-trades' isn't much better

Keeping an open mind to new technologies can pay dividends - but it's wise to be at least slightly cautious. Overzealous chasing of the bleeding edge can lead to a lack of depth to your knowledge - which will adversely affect your skill set as a whole.

Challenge yourself. Expend at least some time broadening your knowledge into adjacent sectors. But never forget the core skills that define your role today - use them as a base, not something disposable to discard at the first sign of change in an industry.

While the life of a technology worker can be fast paced, the changes that come about are evolutionary - and with the right mindset, and with a little effort expended to keep your awareness fresh, you can do well.

As a hiring manager, I was sooo disappointed when I met promising candidates who had the same year of experience 5, 10, even 20 times. Sometimes their resumes disguised that fact, because they'd moved to several projects or to several different organizations. But, they hadn't done anything new in years.

The worst example of this was when I interviewed someone who'd finally been laid off from DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) in the early '90's sometime. (I can't remember if Compaq had bought DEC by then, and he'd been laid off by Compaq or DEC.) I phone-screened this guy for a client, and thought he had some promise, so he came in for an interview. During the interview, I discovered he'd worked in the same facility, working in the same office, working on different projects for different managers, but doing the same work day in and day out for 20 years.

I was blown away. Surely I had misunderstood. I asked more behavior-description questions, trying to discover what he'd really done, and sure enough, he had kept the same role, doing the same thing he'd done for 20 years at the same company in the same office.

I asked him why he was looking. "Because I need a job." Had he looked inside DEC? "Yes, but no one needs this type of work anymore. I was hoping to stick with it." Didn't he want to learn something new? "No, not really."

My goodness. Not the kind of person my client needed at the time. And, no, we didn't need precisely his skills, which is what he wanted to find a job doing. I don't know what happened to him; I was astonished that he'd spent 20 years doing literally the same thing every day.

It's easy to get in a rut at work. So, now that it's January, take stock of your skills. In fact, take this time to edit your resume. (I'm reviewing Andy Lester's Land the Tech Job You Love: Why Skills And Luck Aren't Enough, to be released soon, and he has excellent advice in how to organize your resume.)

Write down your achievements from last year. See if you can quantify anything about them, so they pass the "so what" test. "Led the team that reorganized accounting workflow" is interesting. Add ", saving the finance department at least 20 hours a week according to the CFO" is a huge thing. Write all of these down. You likely have somewhere between 2 and 5 for the year. That's good.

Now, take a look at your resume. Do you see areas that have gaps? Maybe you haven't led a team yet. Do you want to? If so, put that on a list. Have you explored a particular language or OS or database that intrigues you? If not, put those on your list. Make sure you have at least three things on your list.

Now, you have fodder for a conversation with your boss, about what you might want to do over the next year. If your job doesn't allow you to do those things, look for an open source project. (No, you don't have to leave your job to do other work.)

No matter how you approach getting more experience, make sure you are making each year count. No years and years of the same experience for you. That's not the way to grow a career.

As the credit crunch bites, IT contractors are quickly picking up the pace as organisations look to take action as the permanent market begins to slow. Although hiring contractors can be pricier than salaried employees, it's often the case that companies are more likely to pay that little bit extra to hire someone on a temporary basis to allow them to switch that resource on and off as needed. In the current climate it's a certainly a trend we've seen developing.

For those considering a move into contract work there are certainly benefits. For permanent staff, many employment niggles lie with a lack of variety of opportunities available. For many contractors the freedom and flexibility of their work allows them to focus on a specific project and remain 'psychologically distant' from company politics, moving on to new opportunities when the occasion arises or according to their own circumstances.

For the uninitiated - on a typical contract, you'd spend around 8 hours a day, for 5 days a week working on a specific project, with your roles, responsibilities and goals outlined in your contract description. Typically your work would be overseen and monitored by a manager within the organisation. However as jobs tumble, contractors and temporary staff are often the first to feel the effects.

One of the issues people have with moving into contract work is the very cutthroat nature of the business. As competition increases, we've also seen contract pay rates decrease over the last few weeks, so there are a number of reasons to weigh up the pros and cons of such a move before diving in. For those IT staff currently working on contract the expectation of going from one role to another in quick succession has been tempered, forcing contractors to be much more pragmatic about their work.

The overall feeling remains optimistic; as organisations seek short-term measures to offset a period of instability, opportunities will be there. It's for those with the right skills, determination and confidence to go out and take them.