Tech sector looking overseas to fill skills gap as vacancies increase

A report from the Digital Economy Council and Tech Nation, the government-backed industry lobby group, claims that the number of tech vacancies is now 42 percent higher than it was before the pandemic, with one in eight jobs in the UK now defined as being in the tech sector.

The main issue in this sector is the skills gap, and the UK’s tech is being hit particularly hard by the disparity between demand for skilled workers and available talent in the UK. This issue can be solved by recruiting from overseas.

The skilled worker list on the government website lists many excellent IT vacancies. The opportunities to build a successful career in the UK for overseas workers are growing fast, with reports of 46 percent of tech workers in the UK coming from overseas, mostly settling in the South-East and London.

Jobs on the skilled workers’ list include:

• IT specialist jobs
• IT project and programme managers
• IT Business analysts
• Programme development professionals
• Web designers and development professionals
• IT telecoms professionals

To come to the UK on this type of visa, you need to satisfy a certain number of requirements, one of which is speaking, reading, writing, and understanding English to a certain level by passing a Secure English Language Test (SELT).

Read the full report here.

Image by Joshua Woroniecki