Despite companies, organizations and institutions doing a lot to battle the digital skills gap, the problems seem to worsen. For example: the lack of cloud skills is getting stronger.
A new report from Microsoft is very telling. It shows that 38% of companies which are looking for IT pros with cloud skills have difficulties finding them. The report covers job openings for the past year.
It also reveals that 80% of technical managers see cloud increasingly important. They also say they need employees with good cloud skills to aid their digital transformation. As you can guess, this means that the need for cloud skills will only rise for the time being. This will widen the cloud skills gap even more.
The report even goes on to say that the lack of cloud pros is a “skills chasm”. “It is to be expected that with the dawn of any new industrial revolution, it will take time to ensure that there is a sufficiently skilled workforce to meet the demand for people with those skills”, the report says.
It goes on: “But in an era of mass globalization, lower barriers to entry and customers who are less loyal than ever before, it has never been more critical to evolve business models, and do so quickly. Organizations that are forced to stall their transformational journeys due to a lack of skills will find themselves facing significant challenges.”
About 50% of IT managers and leaders think that in two years, more people will attain cloud skills and it will make finding the right candidate easier. 30% though, think nothing will change. As a whole, the industry expects that the gap will grow in the future. The pace of growth is much faster than the pace of which people can learn new skills. As a result, catching up will always be difficult.
This is why more and more companies are turning to trainings. 60% of tech managers say they have organized trainings for their current staff in order to improve their cloud skills. More than half also add they plan to use external partners to train workers. Only 46% hope they will manage to recruit someone skilled from a competitor. So, that’s pretty telling. If you want to have more employees with better cloud skills, you will have to create them with trainings.
Image credit: Flickr (CC) / George Thomas