As IT professionals, you may not be aware of the hard work being done on your behalf by market researchers.

Here at Computing, we daily receive press releases containing the latest research into IT workers preferences / habits / spending plans / attitudes / opinion / any other often lame way to try to get coverage in the paper. So we are uniquely positioned to draw all these often-spurious trends together to gain a picture of our readers.

Well, you’d have thought so, anyway.

If you were to rely on the pollsters opinions of the IT profession you could end up with the most dysfunctional and disturbing perceptions imaginable.

Here is the latest example, which comes courtesy of the government-backed training organisation Learndirect.

According to its “hidden skills” survey, 51 per cent of IT professionals have “untapped potential” that their employers fail to take advantage of.

Quite probably true. But let’s see what the pollsters say.

Apparently, IT workers choice of superhero boss would be Bruce Wayne, alter-ego of traumatised crime-fighter Batman. Least favourite supervillain boss would be bat-nemesis The Joker.

Are you already wondering why they bothered?

My favourite part of the research identifies the hidden skills gained through activities out of work.

It seems 29 per cent of you have writing skills – proved by the fact that you do crosswords or have written letters to a local paper.

Next, 24 per cent of you have numeracy skills – which the pollsters know because you are good at Sudoku.

And 22 per cent of you have presentation skills – gleaned from giving a best man’s speech.

I don’t know about you, but I’m wondering what abilities the 71 per cent without writing skills have, or the 76 per cent without numeracy skills. Now that would be interesting research.

And apparently you are a modest bunch too. When asked who you would turn to if you wanted to discuss you hidden skills, 17 per cent said you wouldn’t tell anyone.

If any of you – and I mean even one of you – happen to recognise yourself or your colleagues from this clearly valuable and insightful research, please let me know by commenting on this blog post. Unless of course you are part of the illiterate 71 per cent who might struggle to string a few words together (perhaps you should try a crossword instead?)

Just to round off the in-depth research, it seems 37 per cent of you wish you had the power of mind reading to use at work, followed by 24 per cent who would choose invisibility as your superpower.

Personally, I’d choose an inbuilt personal spam filter for pointless and demeaning surveys.