SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS OF HUMAN RESOURCES IN THE ICT SECTOR IN PORTUGAL

The strong growth of recent years in the IT sector has been limited by the shortage in the number of professionals available to fill the growing number of jobs that emerge in this area. This is a particularly serious problem in Europe where the shortage stubbornly persists, despite the efforts made by European leaders over the past decade.

The lack of qualified and specialized human resources in the IT sector affects the different areas of business and market competition that are increasingly dependent on IT. The fact that end-users are also using more resources, requires companies to hire more and better specialists in order to meet the market requirements (Bughin & Chui, 2013).

Aware of these needs, we carried out a study on the specific needs of human resources in the IT sector in Portugal in the view of retraining unemployed, in partnership with ANETIE, National Association Information and Electronics Technologies Companies. This study had the objective of being an instrument of fundamental importance to the training providers, for the unemployed, for public decision-makers and for the industry.

The project was divided into two main parts: a needs assessment in the IT sector and the definition of a set of training activities to promote switching unemployed for professions identified as the least profitable. In this paper we present the first part of this project.

The first part of the project began with a survey of existing IT professions across Europe, using the e-CF (European Committee for standardization, 2012), coming to a list which is a generic set of 15 professions applicable in Portugal.

Based on several European studies and in particular the work e-CF and Paul Sweetman (2012), we constructed a list of technical activities and responsibilities associated with each profession.

As the next step a survey was conducted that included the preparation of a questionnaire aimed at collecting information about the relevant professions in the IT sector, the main activities to be undertaken, the respective technical expertise and also the soft skills. The last skills mentioned represents one of the fundamental characteristics of professionals in any field, increasingly referred to as differential at the time of recruitment. Four dimensions were considered: soft skills, cognitive skills, business skills and communication skills (Le Boterf (2003, 2005, 2006), Philippa Thomas & Cadle (2012) and Jardim and Pereira (2006)).

This work presents the main conclusions of this study carried out for needs assessment in the IT sector in Portugal.