Foreign IT workers solve skills shortage

I was disappointed to read Michael Gough’s views on immigrant IT workers in Personnel Today (15 February).

While Gough’s views on developing the careers of IT staff in the UK are certainly with merit – of course, we must continue to invest in growing our own IT talent – the fact is that companies need skills now.

Raising professional standards and making the career more attractive to graduates is a project with long-term dividends. In the short term, however, we are facing an IT skills crisis and for those long-term dividends to be realised, we need to boost the sector’s skills immediately.

Allowing foreign workers with appropriate skill-sets entry to work in the UK would certainly be one solution. Creating a temporary bias towards those who have skills that are in demand makes sense.

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Jackie Jones
HR director, Jobsite.co.uk