07/12/2006

Formal IT qualifications are of little value to people looking for employment in the technology sector, a new survey has revealed.

The survey, conducted by Vanson Bourne for international IT services company FDM, found that companies continue to prioritize relevant work experience as the most important item recruiters want to see on a candidate's CV.

More than 70 per cent of HR managers surveyed said they preferred to see relevant work experience on a candidate's CV over formal qualifications.

Indeed, time spent in employment was considered to be more important than programming and technical skills, such as Java and .net, which have long been considered a pre-requisite for employment in the IT sector.

However, 38 per cent of HR managers said that candidates required basic technology training once taken on, as all too often candidates were missing these basic skills.

Online Recruitment quoted Julian Divett, chief operating officer at FDM, saying: 'This is a stark warning to the UK education system. Work experience is now seen as more important than actual qualifications by employers, meaning many courses still are not providing students with the skills they need.

'There seems to be a real gap between learning on paper and actually implementing these skills in real life scenarios. And UK businesses are currently left to pick up the pieces, either by providing training in-house or using external agencies.'

But IT departments are rarely directly involved in the recruitment of personnel. Just over half of HR departments left the final decision over which IT candidates to employ to their IT department, while 30 per cent of IT departments have no involvement in the recruitment process.