The tip of an IT project talent gap iceberg? How to sail safely around it
Stoneseed Ltd
Project Management as a Service - People, tools and processes available on demand #stoneseed
“Turbulent.”
That’s how HR Director Sally described the IT Project talent market this week.
Some say she’s understating it!!!
Since the start of the year there have been a number of studies and reports that support Sally’s anecdotal evidence, we’ll touch on some of those here, but this blog is more about opening up a rich solution space and ensuring that your IT Projects are fully resourced.
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Sally’s greatest issue, when recruiting IT Project talent is a drop off in applications.
At the start of 2024, APSCo and Broadbean released data that revealed a decline in Applications Per Vacancy (APV) across consecutive months, suggesting that fewer people were applying for permanent IT roles. In the last few months of 2023, the figure dropped from an APV of 82.91 in August to 59.19 in December.
This was against a backdrop of tech layoffs and fewer vacancies, if anything you’d expect a higher APV (as more people fight for scarcer opportunities). As Ann Swain, Global CEO of APSCo noted, “With fewer jobs to apply for, we would expect to see applications remain stable, but they have plummeted. The shortage of available talent is further evidenced in the APV rates which again, we would expect to see increase when jobs fall. Clearly the talent tech crisis is far from over.”
APV rates for contract roles also saw consecutive declines, ending 2023 at 96.55, down from September’s 130.01. It’s perhaps worth pausing, and noting, the difference in APV rates between permanent and contract positions, possibly indicating that more professionals are looking for these contract roles over permanent positions, and an extra consideration for those recruiters seeking to make more permanent hires.
TRANSFERABILITY
This talent shortage underlines the absolute importance of organisations focusing in on their project management capabilities to ensure they that have the resources and skills needed to deliver successful project outcomes.
As Ann Swain observes, “Demand for IT professionals is still being influenced by skills shortages, which makes the decline in applications we’re seeing a concern.”
So why fewer candidates, if there are fewer jobs for more people?
HR Director Sally’s belief is that IT Project Management talent is waking up to the wider opportunities that their transferable skill set has to offer, both inside and outside our industry. Sally explains that her firm has lost IT project talent to project management roles in professional and business services but also to areas outside the traditional career net, in areas like media and PR.
SOME GOOD(ISH) NEWS
In April 2024, APM research,?The Golden Thread: A Study of the Contribution of Project Management and Projects in the UK Economy had positive news on the health of the Project Management industry but also some warnings on the health of the talent market.
Since the APM’s last analysis in 2019, the project profession had created an additional 190,000 UK full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs, taking the total to 2.32 million employees. Annual project management gross value added (GVA) had also grown by 19%, an increase of ￡30.3bn and, within this, IT had roughly doubled its project management GVA to ￡14.3bn, with 164,657 full-time employees.
Echoing Sally’s instincts, professional and business services remained the largest project management sector, and these areas can be attractive to project talent from other sectors looking for new opportunities and a bigger paycheque.
UPSKILL?
Strong growth is great, of course, but it does come with its own challenges, and finding enough project professionals to meet increased demand is top of many recruiters’ lists.
“A prominent concern in this report is the looming talent shortage,” said Professor Adam Boddison OBE, Chief Executive of APM, “as 56% of businesses anticipate difficulties in attracting new talent, posing a significant barrier to the profession’s expansion.”
Sally’s firm addressed their candidate shortage head on and looked to upskill existing employees for project management roles, and this has delivered some success, although Sally admits that it takes time and resources and ironically having trained a new generation of project professionals – they’ve lost some of their nurtured talent to business and professional services project too!
MORE GOOD(ISH) NEWS
The Golden Thread report, a survey of 567 UK businesses carried out by APM, PwC Research and the Academic Advisory Group, had further good news. However, it is news that also comes with a further call to action for those tasked with resourcing IT projects.
There is great optimism for future growth. Over half of the businesses surveyed (51%) predicted growth in project-based activity, with almost half (45%) predicting an increase in average project budgets. Both these figures were more optimistic than the 2019 APM study. Especially interesting were creative media and fixed capital projects, where six out of ten organisations were forecasting an increase in project-based activity.
APM believes that this growth is mainly down to a wider recognition and appreciation of the value of project management, with two-thirds of businesses optimistic that an increasing appreciation of the impact of project management will drive further growth in the profession “over the next five to seven years”.
An increase in the number of larger, more complex and more challenging projects is also a contributing factor to this and interestingly the growth of the UK’s ‘green economy’ could have an impact, with 63% believing it to be a “positive enabler of growth.”
Returning to Sally’s experience of upskilling, the APM survey revealed that over a third of businesses also considered the accessibility of training and education in project management to be a barrier to growth.
THE TIP OF AN ICEBERG
Sally’s experience of losing talent to other sectors hints at a looming potential new dimension. Sally’s project talent, and you (if you’ve crossed from one sector to another), may be pioneering a trend. The APM report suggests that this is not yet the norm though, but an incoming direction of travel as businesses need to “capitalise on transferability”.
Unlike other, more mature professions, such as HR, finance and marketing where skill transferability feels baked into the career path, APM thinks this is not the case for project talent – yet!
“Project professionals require deep knowledge and experience in one sector alone,” writes Emma Da Vita for APM, adding that in the?Golden Thread?survey, “four in 10 UK businesses said that limited opportunities for project professionals to move between sectors will likely act as a barrier to the growth of the profession.”
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Dr Andrew Schuster, one of the Golden Thread report’s co-authors, is actively encouraging project professionals to maximise their transferable skills.
“Here’s an opportunity to take your project skills and apply them in a different sector,” he says. “If you think of programme and project management as a profession and you manage your own career, that opens up lots of doors — you can work in any industry you want and migrate into these different areas.”
Opportunities to do this are likely to grow exponentially. Shuster believes that as the project profession matures, it will go from being a “peripheral profession” to one that is progressively central to organisational structures – more demand!
“Where one sector drops, another grows, so you need to be able to work in another sector,” he recommends. “The opportunities are broad and if you have that mindset, you can take your kitbag and you can migrate with it.”
All of this is great for project talent, of course, but potentially agonising for those whose increasingly difficult job it is to recruit them! We may look back on current talent gaps as the tip on an iceberg.
But …
… I promised that this blog wouldn’t be doom and gloom and that we’d open up a solution space … so here it comes.
REFRAME
Sally, the HR Director has evolved her approach.
“We tried retention, maxing out our budgets to keep people … and that worked until someone with bigger pockets came along. We tried upskilling, maxing out our budgets to train up existing talent who knew our business with project management skills … and that worked until someone with bigger pockets came along and poached them too. We even tried the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ approach, maxing out our budgets to lure people from elsewhere. Eventually, the CFO started to take a dim view of all these maxed out budgets!! I realised I was asking the wrong question.”
Sally reframed the question that was leading to those maxed out budgets!
“I’d been asking ‘how can I retain, retrain or recruit talent to resource our IT projects?’ and my mind was focussed on perms. Instead, I asked, ‘how can I resource our projects’ and that’s when we discovered ‘as a Service’. Bingo!!!”
As promised – your solution space!
PROJECT MANAGEMENT AS A SERVICE
Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) is an innovative IT project management procurement model for resources and services – a viable alternative to traditional permanent hires (or relying on contractors).
Stoneseed’s PMaaS model provides access to project professionals, resources and tools at a flexible and predictable cost, so no more maxing out budgets for the likes of Sally! Our services portfolio offers a true end to end service, from IT Technical Advisory, Business Analysis Services and PMO Services through to Programme & Project Delivery.
Stoneseed’s team already leverage their transferrable skills, being experienced across multiple technology solutions, sectors and industries, and we work on all types of projects and programmes such as Business Change, Transformation, Infrastructure, Digital and IT Project Delivery.
Stoneseed’s PMaaS on-demand resource model allows you to dial up and down IT project resources in sync with your delivery needs, giving you flexibility and control, as we love to say, “Turn it on, turn it off, turn it up or turn it down”.??We will work with you to forecast which project resources are required and then provide a straightforward rate card, with resources defined by type and skill set. Resources are called off against your demand schedule, may be flexed up or down throughout the period, and you are simply billed for the resources consumed at the end of each month (good news for the likes of Sally’s CFO!!!!).
PMaaS can?provide you with access to a wide portfolio of project skills, made available against your demand schedule, from a single Project Manager, Business Analyst, Technical Advisory or PMO?expert for a few days, right through to a large team of fully utilised project professionals, PMaaS enables you to?align resources as and when you need them, on a cost effective, full-time or part-time basis.
CONCLUSION
IT Project Management talent gaps and shortages are showing no signs of improving, if anything, they may be widening and becoming more multi-dimensional, as talent explores the broader opportunities that their transferable skills can open.
As HR director Sally found, you don’t have to retain, retrain or recruit talent to resource your IT projects … at Stoneseed we’ve done that for you and they’re ready to work with you.
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