The IT profession is expanding at such a rapid rate that 140,000 new staff will be needed every year for the next five years by UK employers.

But at the same time as such ambitious recruitment needs have emerged, research by the National Computing Centre suggests that the skills shortage today is at its highest level for 10 years. Demand for IT staff is outstripping supply by nearly seven per cent.

Put those two statistics together and you get a potential shortfall of almost 10,000 IT professionals per year.

For any organisation employing technology expertise – and there can be few that do not – recruiting, retaining and training IT professionals is going to be a critical factor in achieving its objectives.

There will be huge competition for talented individuals as IT plays an ever-more fundamental role in making companies more profitable and helping government deliver better public services.

In the short term, IT contractors will be the first to benefit – hourly rates for freelance work in the technology-intensive financial services sector has already shot up by 11 per cent in the last six months, hitting a two-year high, according to the Association of Technology Staffing Companies.

Longer term, for skilled IT professionals seeking full-time roles, the opportunity to join a forward-thinking employer that can prove it cares about its staff will be a big incentive.

The companies featured in the Top IT Employers 2008 book, published this week by CRF in association with Computing, are clearly ahead of the game.

But attracting the best talents into business technology continues to be a challenge. 

The number of university students opting for mathematics or computing-related courses is dropping year by year. The same is true at GCSE and A-level.

The Office of National Statistics says there is a higher turnover among secondary school technology teachers than any other comparable role – hardly any wonder then, if pupils are failing to be engaged by the subject.

And within the profession itself, many IT leaders are warning of a looming skills gap – as more low-level technical roles are outsourced, increasingly to offshore destinations such as India, where will the next generation of managers come from? The traditional career ladder, typically starting in roles such as technical support or software programming, is being broken down from the bottom, rung by rung.

And then there is the sexist, ageist image of the industry. Only 18 per cent of UK IT professionals are women. Regular readers of Computing’s letters page will know that the two most common themes are women keen for a job in IT but struggling to find family-friendly working practices, and people the “wrong” side of 40 with bags of experience but who cannot even get an interview. Straight away, here are two important constituencies that could fill a gaping recruitment hole but are often given little encouragement to try.

IT sector skills council e-Skills UK says that half of those 140,000 entrants into the profession will need to come through people transferring from other specialisations. The need for more business-focused IT staff has long been an issue for IT directors, and such cross-pollination will no doubt help. But what is being done to convince suitable managers to change career direction into a profession that too many see as only for geeks and techies?

A two-pronged approach is clearly needed from leaders of the IT profession.

For those already working in IT, training and skills development is essential, both for the individual’s career goals and for the employer’s staff retention needs.

For attracting new entrants – a programme of education and awareness is needed to appeal to non-technologists and to the next generation of employees alike.

Central to both these aims is the recognition that working in IT is no longer simply about being a technical expert. With lower-level skills freely and cheaply available in India and elsewhere, the profile of the IT department is changing. Interpersonal skills, communications skills, and business knowledge are increasingly at the top of the list of recruitment prerequisites.

According to Gartner vice president Diane Morello: “The intersection of business models and IT requires people with varied experience, professional versatility, multi-discipline knowledge and technology understanding – a hybrid professional, in other words.”

So the demands on individuals are changing, and their expectations of IT employers will change too.

What makes an attractive workplace for an in-demand IT professional, perhaps one spoilt for choice in a jobseekers’ market?

One of the most important considerations is the company’s attitude to technology and its IT team. Is the IT department seen as a backwater, languishing in the basement, not really making a strategic contribution to the organisation? Or does the IT leader play an important role in the boardroom, with IT-enabled change on the business agenda and leading-edge technologies being put in place to maintain a competitive edge?

For ambitious IT workers, there would be only one option from the two.

At a more personal level, what is the commitment to training and development? IT changes so quickly that constant investment is needed in keeping up to date with the latest trends and technologies. An IT professional supporting Windows 2000 will hardly feel his or her career is on an upswing. Technologists are typically enthusiasts, they like to be challenged and are motivated by the new – or at the very least, by building world-class skills at the not-quite-so-new.

In the not-too-distant future, the quality of an organisation’s IT staff will be a determining factor in the success of that business. Outsourcing is fine up to a point, but ultimately it is the innovation, leadership and personal skills of in-house IT leaders and their teams that will make the difference between the technology-enabled companies that make their mark in the 21st century, and those consigned to the past.

Being recognised as a top IT employer is a pretty good place to start.

This article was originally written as an introduction to the Top IT Employers 2008 book, published by CRF in association with Computing.