A Newcastle specialist recruiter is urging the Chancellor to ring fence graduate funding in the forthcoming Budget to secure the IT skills the North East needs to sustain growth.SearchBI, which recruits for BI and Agile business technologies, says the recent Tech Nation 2016 report shows how important the digital tech economy is to North East employment, where more than 280,000 people are employed in digital industries.
But with the Chancellor eyeing-up savings across the board, Mark Harbottle, director at SearchBI wants to see funding for training secured to have skilled people in place as new data technologies come on stream that are the building blocks for business growth.
“Businesses are looking for next-generation BI and analytics’ technologies that help them tap into the power of their data. This in turn is driving the demand for people at all entry levels, including graduates.
“It’s critical that the Chancellor has policies to ensure that funding for what’s seen as ‘high cost’ university subjects such as technology and scientific courses does not drop below current levels in real terms.
“It’s vital that investment in these subjects remains sustainable as we see the role of digital jobs expand and develop to power organisations forward.
“This will secure the stream of highly educated and talented young people leaving university with the specialist technology skills and acumen growing businesses want.
“This will make sure that the North East economy continues to go from strength-to-strength as a national hot-bed for IT talent.”
SearchBI is a dedicated recruitment agency servicing companies using business intelligence software systems and able to support candidates looking for work or employers wanting to recruit skilled talent. More at www.searchbi.co.uk