The future tech workforce

In the last 2 years, UK tech employment has grown by 40%, now accounting for 9% of the national workforce, with 2.93m jobs having been created. With this rise and growth in tech, there’s a huge importance for businesses to be attracting young talent to forge the way for the future tech workforce. It was positive to see that according to High Fliers research, there were over 1.5k tech focused roles open to graduates in the UK in 2019.

To help employers understand how they can engage more efficiently with Gen Z talent, we joined forces with tech specialist job board, CWJobs, and in total reached out to over 600 candidates, students, graduates and young tech talent this August, to better understand the future workforce and what they are looking for from a career in tech.

The future tech workforce webinar

On Thursday 15^th October, we hosted a webinar with CWJobs to share our insights. Please see the recording below:

Our key findings showed –

Reasons for pursuing a career in tech:

• Only 16% of students and graduates have always considered a career in tech, compared to 63% of young tech candidates
• 42% of students and graduates would consider a career in tech if they had the opportunity to develop tech skills
• The top three reasons young tech candidates considered a career in tech were:
  1. Long term passion
  2. Understand how things work
  3. Remote working opportunities
• For students and graduates these reasons were:
  1. New challenge
  2. Salary and benefits
  3. Tech innovation

Career confidence:

• Due to Covid-19, 43% of students and graduates don’t feel they can have the career they were planning
• 23% of students and graduates stated the pandemic has made them prioritise stability and security over pay, compared to 27% of young tech candidates
• 33% of students and graduates feel confident they will secure the tech job they are looking for, compared to 46% of young tech candidates
• What impacts their confidence?
  • 61% of students and graduates vs. 50% of young tech candidates worry there are ‘Too many candidates’
  • 49% vs. 50% stated ‘Not enough jobs’
  • 57% vs. 49% reported that the ‘Current situation with Covid-19’ has impacted their career confidence

Working life

• 1 in 2 students and graduates have taken a tech course in the last year, with top courses taken being, data analytics, coding, and cyber security.
• 42% of students and graduates prefer to work in an office environment and 46% stated they miss face to face contact when working remotely

If you would like to find out any more information about our research, then please get in touch here.