Despite an ongoing forecast of financial depression, rising unemployment and an economic crisis unprecedented since the 1930’s, one area of business seems to be bucking the trend IT is still recruiting, and it’s not just general IT management and software maintenance that the marketplace is looking for

Despite the daily reports of a country in crisis, the recession seems to be having less of an impact on certain aspects of UK PLC, particularly the IT industry Whereas many markets were overstretched before the recession kicked in, the IT industry was desperately short of suitable applicants, with over 150,000 jobs being advertised per quarter – a sign of a massive skills shortage in this buoyant industry

Distance learning has been cited as being the future of mid-career retraining and skills development, but with a plethora of qualifications to choose from, it can be difficult to narrow down which certificate will open more doors for newly qualified members of the IT community The traditional choice has been between the Government-backed NVQ system and vendor qualifications such as those created by the likes of Microsoft and Cisco

Amongst all the reports of a credit crisis, a crisis in banking, a crisis in high street finances and other Defcom2-type warnings, there is yet another crisis lurking in the background that has greater long-term implications for the future of UK PLC – a skills crisis Lord Leitch’s 2006 final report into the ‘Review of Skills’, commissioned by the government in 2004, acknowledged that there is a problem

With a worldwide financial meltdown in progress, and major league players like Yahoo announcing that they suffered a 64% downturn in profits in the last fiscal quarter of 2008, is this really the time to think about a career move into IT

There is a skills shortage in many sectors of UK business, right across the board and yet there are certain industries that are experiencing a boom in the form of sustained and significant expansion, even in the face of the current economic difficulties Industries such as plumbing, construction, oil and gas, midwifery, finance, teaching, nursing, public relations, customer services and IT are all continuing to grow

IT is now an integral part of almost every aspect of modern life It is an astonishing fact that around 21 million people in the UK use IT at work each day, while the IT industry itself is responsible for the design, development, manufacture, selling, installation and maintenance of computer-based information systems in everything from laptops to power-stations

In a recent report by the Work Foundation, entitled Towards a global labour market Globalisation and the knowledge market, the issue of using skilled foreign workers to help plug skills gap in UK industries was explored

Recent research suggests that British Business requires 150,000 new entrants into IT each year Over the past few years the number of graduates in IT has halved to 20,000