The older workforce and ICT

Sometimes, IT can mistakenly be seen as a young person's career choice. ICT training in schools is today much more prevalent and people who left education in the 1990s or earlier are unlikely to have been given the same level of skills as young people currently entering the world of work.

However, with the IT industry experiencing skills shortages in many roles, there is a real opportunity for older people to re-train and pick up the skills set they need to fill gaps within the workforce.

According to e-skills, there are currently 105,000 vacancies within the ICT sector, but only 30,000 computer science graduates recorded in 2009/2010 to take them meaning that companies will have to look elsewhere to fill much-needed roles.

This problem becomes even more pressing given the fact that the IT sector is scheduled to expand at five times the national average rate over the next ten years.

However, despite these obvious issues, a recent Channel Four News report suggests that there are still some barriers to hiring older IT workers, both in terms of companies' reluctance to offer them roles and people not being aware of the opportunities available to them.

Speaking to the news provider, Jeff Brooks, chairman of REC Technology, the trade body for the IT and Comms recruitment, said that more work needs to be done to persuade employers that older employees can help them out.

"I think there is a trend that older workers are not being invited for interview," he says. "I do know of people in their early 60s, who have real skills to offer, who can't find a contract or a permanent role."

"Despite the fact that employers have skills shortages right now, jobs sit empty, projects don't get done, because they have this bias against older people," says Mr Brooks. "They don't see an opportunity to re-skill and get ten years work out of them."

One of the problems may be that training can be expensive and companies are unwilling to splash out the cash themselves.

Also speaking to the news provider, Robin Jones from the Institution of Analysts and Programmers (IAP), said: "Big companies will do a lot of training in terms of graduate recruitment. Taking on a graduate and taking on somebody older, it will cost them the same."

He added that this coupled with a perception that older people do not take to training as well as younger people is what deters employers from hiring them.

In terms of why older people are reluctant to put themselves up for ICT jobs this also comes down to a question of training in many cases. Some people have been in the same job for a long time and while they may have the skills they don't necessarily have the qualifications or the confidence to transfer these attributes to a new position.

And this is where ICT training comes in. People don't have to wait for an employer to provide training they can take the initiative and undertake a course in their own time.

There are a wide range of IT courses available in all manner of areas such as programming, website design and database administration, with something to suit everyone regardless of their level of experience.

Taking a course gives people a qualification to put on their CV to help make it more impressive and will also give them the confidence that they can apply for jobs, answer questions well in the interview and perform competently if hired.

Ultimately, the UK's population is an ageing one and with the retirement age getting older over the coming decade the nation needs older workers to bring their expertise to the table which means that a lot of older workers may want to consider retraining in IT.