ICT job postings elevated by 14% between 2016 and 2021 and have outpaced the general employment market by 15% for the reason that pandemic started, the newly printed ACS Information to IT Professions 2022 discovered, however many employers are limiting themselves by demanding that ICT staff have college {qualifications}.
Absolutely 97% of ICT job postings in Australia stipulate that candidates have not less than a bachelor’s diploma, in response to the report – which is predicated on a Lightcast evaluation of thousands and thousands of job postings between 2016 and 2021 – however that is a lot increased than comparable economies just like the UK (90%) and US (86%).
“Though globally ICT occupations historically require increased ranges of training, the necessities in Australia are noticeably extra stringent than the necessities for related postings within the UK and US,” the report notes in reviving a long-simmering debate across the college sector’s dominance over ICT {qualifications}.
“Since abilities and obligations throughout these occupations are typically related no matter geography and in gentle of the worldwide labour scarcity, the evaluation means that by loosening training necessities, employers of ICT occupations might open themselves as much as a a lot bigger potential workforce.”
Australian ICT job postings have been additionally extra more likely to request three or extra years’ expertise than different occupation households, with simply 21% categorised as ‘entry degree’ – a lot decrease than within the UK market, the place entry-level ICT jobs comprise just below 35% of all marketed roles.
The evaluation explores demand in areas comparable to cyber safety – through which job postings almost doubled between 2016 and 2021, with greater than twice as many cyber safety roles within the ACT as nationally.
The ACS Information to IT Professions 2022.
The state governments of Victoria and NSW, in addition to the Australian authorities, posted probably the most cyber safety associated jobs whereas Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, CBA, Accenture, PwC, Amazon, Macquarie Group, and the ANZ Banking Group rounded out the highest 10 cyber safety employers throughout 2021.
“For college kids in search of a profession in know-how, the Information is designed to function a pointer to business demand and put them on a path to a productive profession,” mentioned ACS president Dr Nick Tate.
“For established professionals, it may well function a information to wages, and abilities, displaying them the alternatives which can be accessible and the talents which can be most in demand. And for employers, it’s designed to be a assist in the case of understanding the market, to benchmarking wages, and to understanding hiring.”
Charting Australia’s ICT abilities scarcity
The report consists of detailed profiles of 28 completely different ICT professions – together with probably the most frequently-requested abilities and certifications, wage expectations, and adjustments in occupation demand between 2016 and 2021.
Whereas demand for net directors declined by 21.1% over that point, for instance, there have been 4,776 Enterprise Intelligence Analyst roles marketed in 2021 – marking an 8.5% improve over the evaluation interval.
Candidates for these roles can count on common salaries of $116,000 this 12 months if they’ll deliver abilities comparable to Microsoft Energy BI, DevOps, Python, Confluence, and Atlassian Jira.
The fastest-growing profession space was Software program Developer/Engineer, which noticed a 21.5% improve within the variety of job postings through the evaluation interval and a median wage of $112,000 – echoing new Census figures that discovered programmers signify the only largest tranche of ICT roles.
Essentially the most requested certifications for ICT jobs embody ITIL certification, CISSP, Salesforce certification, Cisco CCNP, Cisco CCNA, CISM, TOGAF certification, and Cisco CCIE {qualifications}.
But at the same time as employers in high-demand areas like cyber safety wind again their expectations round certifications, candidates shouldn’t count on to clinch their dream job simply by offering a laundry checklist of technical abilities: employers proceed to worth mushy abilities comparable to enterprise evaluation, communication, teamwork and collaboration, drawback fixing, and stakeholder administration.
“Employers are asking for way more than technical abilities,” mentioned Dr Tate, “and IT professionals must develop extra skilled abilities to succeed.”
Finally, mentioned ACS CEO Chris Vein, laying down an in depth map of business demand will probably be essential to serving to universities, coaching organisations and employers develop a extra unified strategy to addressing Australia’s power abilities scarcity.
“We have to be sure that our abilities pipelines are sending folks down the appropriate path,” he mentioned.
“If we will ensure that Australian IT staff are studying the talents most wanted, then we will be sure that Australia’s IT professionals are the envy of the world, delivering high-paying jobs for our IT professionals and the worth that enterprise must maintain Australia transferring ahead.”
