IT skills gap has led to a 'talent war'

A shortage of candidates with the necessary skills for a career in IT has led to major research companies being embroiled in a "talent war", according to Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier.

Napier told Computing that his firm's drive to recruit 350 new staff is being hampered by a shortage of suitable candidates and intense competition from other research firms looking to recruit staff.

Lot of poaching

"There's a lot of poaching. Innovation companies say ‘let's go and target this company and hire their people'. Rackspace do hire people from other companies nevertheless in the long-run, to solve our talent needs we need to develop people ourselves.

Taylor Rhodes, managing director at Rackspace, said that the company gets many applications from candidates who have good IT degrees however still lack an adequate knowledge of core operating systems and cloud computing.

Napier said that Rackspace is trying to combat this problem by collaborating with UK universities and attempting to get specific cloud computing platform training on the curriculum.

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