Whether to manage scalability or encourage collaboration, cloud skills are in demand across businesses and industries. In fact, the Cloud Industry Forum reported that cloud adoption across UK businesses had reached 88%, with over two-thirds of survey respondents expecting this to rise in the next year.
Interestingly, we see this trend reflected in our own customer base. Roughly 80% of our clients, which comprise of fast-growing technology, media & telecommunications and e-commerce businesses, now operate entirely in, or are moving to, the cloud.
These businesses, therefore, have a critical need for skilled developers, project managers and even members of the senior management team who are proficient with cloud and can help them meet their business objectives. For most of our clients, being able to ‘talk cloud’ is the bare minimum, with many businesses today requiring their employees to be au fait with cloud-based services.
As company’s cloud strategies continuing to evolve, we’re seeing three general trends emerging amongst our clients in terms of the skills they are looking for in candidates:
Developers who can see cloud software through to deployment – gone are the days of just writing code and throwing it over your shoulder for the Testers to deal with. Instead, being able to understand the impact your code is having on the infrastructure and being able to monitor and support the software once deployed, is quickly becoming a critical skill for Full-Stack Engineers.
Many companies see candidates that can do this as the ‘full cloud package’, and as a result, prioritise them in the search for talent.
[easy-tweet tweet=”High availability experience is becoming gold dust for businesses that regularly experience large amounts of web traffic” hashtags=”Webtraffic, Cloud”]
Candidates with high availability (HA) experience – in the age of data, any internet business needs to be able to scale easily to deal with sudden colossal volumes of traffic. High availability experience is fast becoming gold dust for any business that regularly experiences large amounts of web traffic and this demand is only expected to keep growing.
For some of our clients, HA experience is vital. Currently, all our contractors working at one of our biggest clients have at least some HA experience as the company can often generate more web traffic than Amazon. This skill needs to be top of the IT agenda.
People who possess the ‘softer skills’ needed to get the job done – from our experience, having cloud engineering skills is only half of the story. Non-technical skills are just as important and our clients are searching for candidates who can work collaboratively within a team.
They need people who are engaging and can work both within their team, as well the wider business; which is critical for change facilitation. The stereotype of the unsociable IT worker slumped at their desk with headphones in all day is thankfully dying a death.
Driving technological innovation is such a core business priority, that in most cases, people from across the wider business will work with their IT team for numerous projects. Whether that’s alongside the marketing team to help update the branding of the company website, or working with HR to develop and grow the internal HR system. To this end, working across the business with many different personalities, and varying levels of understanding of IT processes and systems requires skills in collaboration, creativity and understanding to see the projects through.
Companies simply want digital teams that fit culturally with the business, and for many of our clients, having a good employer brand is critical to attract and retain talent. They want people coming in who match their values and ambition and who can eventually become Brand Ambassadors.
The industry is moving fast and these trends point towards companies looking for skills that help them meet these ever-changing demands. Whether it’s searching for the harder skills needed to easily roll out new innovations or the personal skills to make sure the projects run smoothly, recruiting the right people is critical for ambitious businesses to remain competitive this year and beyond.
James Parsons is CEO and founder of Arrows Group. Since setting up in 2003, James has led the company to international success as a leading digital workforce consultancy and solutions provider with operations that extend around the world.
