Quite an interesting piece of news today, something that we have found quite surprising. Results of a survey undertaken by OnePoll have just been published, and they show that UK companies seem to have little belief in graduates being able to provide relevant, useful Big Data skills.
The survey shows that overall, 72% of the firms question, feel that graduates lack Big Data skills necessary to be effective in the workplace. A pretty high percentage. This lake of faith in graduate skills is further demonstrated by the fact that only one in ten companies who responded to the OnePoll survey said that they would consider recruiting graduates for Big Data projects.
We believe that this is indicative of a much broader issue, that of a significant Big Data skills shortage. The OnePoll survey reveals that 45% of the companies who took part, were already working on Big Data related projects, or plan to sometime in the coming two years. Of these, 60% of them responded that they are facing a problem in finding new hires with the right skillset. Only 8% of the firms already running a Big Data project stated that they had no problem recruiting skilled staff.
Over half of the companies that replied to the OnePoll survey said that they think the reason for the problems being faced with regard to the recruitment of staff for Big Data related projects, stems from the fact that it is very hard to find people with the right spread of skills. Required skills include analytical, communication and general business.
The root of this problem can be found in the fact that many Big Data projects require skills that are not necessarily technical in nature. For example, many graduates will have few or no business related skills, these are the kind of skills they pick up with experience, working in real environment. Yet these are exactly the type of skills Big Data projects require. Of course, this deficiency can be address by changing the academic landscape, and beginning to provide graduates with a broader spectrum of skill. However, this still means that the current generation of fresh graduates will lack these skills.