Just before Christmas, an Econsultancy survey identified a lack of staff with suitable digital skills as one of the key barriers to business growth. According to respondents, the top three most difficult skill areas to recruit for were:
- Web analytics and data
- Social media
- Content marketing
These three fields were also forecast to be the key growth areas in digital marketing in 2012, creating a potential digital recruitment time bomb. Not far behind came web design and build, which also suffered from a high turnover of talent.
The comments raised more issues. One blamed employers with unrealistic expectations, a lack of digital understanding and poor job specs for finding positions difficult to fill. Another suggested there was no shortage of eager but inexperienced juniors and digital leaders but that a missing middle layer of talent existed with few training opportunities to help them develop.
Finally, one commenter said there was no skills shortage but that employers, faced with two candidates professing to have analytics experience, didn’t know how to choose a good candidate from a bad one.
We at Firehead are working to bridge that gap of understanding.
What do you think? Are you experiencing a skills gap in your department, agency or company? Where will you focusing your work or skills training in 2012?
Full story at: The ticking digital talent time bomb
For recruitment opportunities available through Firehead, visit Candidate services. We also post Europe-based content and communication jobs via our Twitter: @FireheadLtd
