Whether you are a student or a parent, one of your main concerns when choosing a course will be whether it will lead to good job opportunities in the future. But where do you start? There are so many sources of information and opinion out there, and it is hard to know what the future holds. However, a recent government report gives a great insight into the likely future demand for specific skills.

Last year DEL (now part of the Department for the Economy) published its first Northern Ireland Skills Barometer. This ambitious study aimed to identify both the skills needed by employers and the level of skills that needed to be supplied by our colleges and universities.

The Skills Barometer forecasts are based on high economic growth in the private sector and lower growth in the public sector, in line with the current Government spending plans. It predicts an acute shortage of skills around NQF L3 (A-Level equivalent) and NQF L4-5 (Foundation degree/ HNC/ HND equivalent) and an over-supply of low and no skills, as demands for formal qualifications across the whole economy mean increasingly poor employment prospects for people with few or no formal qualifications.

The study also warned that lower levels of government spending and a reduction in public sector recruitment will have a significant impact on the demand for certain skills and qualifications. The public sector has historically taken a large proportion of those graduating from Further and Higher Education. So a big reduction in public sector recruitment will most likely lead to an over-supply in the subject areas it traditionally demanded.

Overall, the Skills Barometer found that the largest skills shortages are likely to be in STEM subject areas in NQF L4 and above. One possible reason for this is the technical nature of the businesses that need these skills – engineering and ICT, for example.  In order to get a job in these sectors, you will need specific, STEM subject qualifications. However, engineering and computer science qualifications are highly transferrable across a wide range of other sectors and occupations. In effect, the best way to hedge your bets is to get qualifications in STEM subjects.

The findings of the Skills Barometer echo the conclusions of the most recent MATRIX reports. MATRIX commissions regular studies on science and technology sectors with potential for economic growth in Northern Ireland. The most recent studies – Digital ICT (2016) and Advanced Manufacturing, Materials and Engineering (due for publication soon) both highlight the shortage of skilled, qualified workers in their sectors.

What is interesting about these sectors is that the companies within them tend to be high growth, high export and highly innovative. In other words, sectors that can provide well paid and interesting careers for people with the right qualifications.

Let’s take a look at Advanced Manufacturing, Materials and Engineering (AMME). This sector covers the Aerospace & Automotive Industry, Polymers, Materials Handling, Agri-Engineering and much more. There are already over 44,000 people employed in this sector in Northern Ireland and wages are 26.4% above average. Companies such as Seagate, Bombardier, Denroy, Terex and Ulster Carpets are amongst the 2,000 or so Northern Ireland AMME businesses. The Northern Ireland Skills Barometer reports that at NQF Level 4-5 (that is, HNC & HND), engineering and manufacturing are the areas with the greatest shortage of graduates, while at degree level and above, manufacturing is second only to ICT in terms of undersupply.

The need for skilled, qualified people is leading some companies to develop alternatives to traditional training paths. When Dungannon company Greiner Packaging started to find it difficult to get the right people to work in its high-technology plastic packaging plant, it decided to take matters into its own hands. The company, part of an international group with 35 manufacturing sites across Europe and the Americas, has designed and implemented its very own Greiner Gold Programme, an advanced form of high level apprenticeship combining comprehensive in-house training with day release classroom sessions organised by local FE colleges.

A full four-year programme, it leads to a third level qualification and participants are paid as full-time Greiner employees throughout the period.

“What we’re offering isn’t just normal jobs,” says Darryl McShane, Greiner’s Senior Operations Manager. “This is a professional programme which leads to a recognised qualification but it’s also an opportunity to come into engineering and manufacturing and make a real contribution right from the start.”

ICT is another area with a shortage in skilled workers. In Northern Ireland there are around 23,000 ICT professionals and their average weekly wage is over £600, compared to the NI average wage of £382.50. The MATRIX Digital ICT Report identified Northern Ireland’s main strengths as being in areas such as software engineering, cyber security and data analytics, as well as within other industries such as financial services and health.

The speed at which this sector moves means that apprenticeship style training can have real advantages for both employer and employee. Since 2013, Kainos has been running an innovative and highly effective recruitment initiative called “Earn as you Learn” in conjunction with Ulster University. This allows students to study part time for a degree while earning a salary and getting hands-on IT project experience. Experienced programmers and apprentices work side by side on real client projects, which makes for faster, better learning opportunities that are much more rewarding.

“We consider grass roots talent as being fundamental to the growth of our talent pool over the next number of years” said Tom Gray, Kainos CTO.

“To help Kainos meet the challenge of getting the right number of the right quality of people, we introduced our formal ‘apprentice’ recruitment scheme, Earn as you Learn, three years ago. Our ability to take on apprentices was constrained not by our appetite, but by the small number of people coming through the system. We weren’t sure that they were aware that this opportunity to develop a digital career existed!”

Of course, people should always study a subject which plays to their strengths and interests them. And it should be remembered that wider employability skills are also essential, such as good communication, team working, a professional attitude, good problem solving abilities, initiative and objective thinking.

But the Skills Barometer, particularly when used alongside the MATRIX reports, should really help young people (and their parents and careers advisors) when making important career decisions.

Further reading

The Skills Barometer – https://www.economy-ni.gov.uk/publications/ni-skills-barometer

This article was first published in the Belfast Telegraph STEM Supplement September 2016