Demand for IT talent to keep burgeoning

Job seekers speak with recruiters at Hefei University in Hefei, Anhui province, at a job fair for college graduates. [Photo/Xinhua]

Market demand for information technology talent will continue to grow after seeing an increase in the past quarter, and IT companies are scrambling for talent with 5G knowledge, online recruitment companies said.

The increase comes now that the IT job market has rebounded after experiencing a decline that began 18 months ago, according to a recent report by Zhaopin, an online recruitment agency in Beijing.

The report said that job vacancies for IT-related talent began declining in early 2018 and eventually fell by nearly 60 percent in the third quarter compared with the same period the previous year.

The situation improved in 2019 as companies' demand for talent grew slightly, rising by 0.7 percent from June to September year-on-year, according to the report.

The IT job market also experienced a revolution as a result of the emergence of new technologies -- for example, 5G -- that have changed the landscape of the internet economy and the talent pool that companies require.

Zhaopin's report said that demand for talent with 5G knowledge saw a huge increase spurred by commercialization of the promising technology.

Data cited from the report shows that the average monthly salary for 5G-related positions was about 15,600 yuan ($2,220) from January to May, up over 44 percent year-on-year.

Further, positions available registered a ninefold year-on-year increase during the same period.

Boss Zhipin, another online recruitment platform in Beijing, said in a recent report that the number of positions companies offered to 5G talent from that period this year was about 60 percent of the total number of positions offered in 2018.

The market demand rose by 7 percentage points from January to May compared with the same period last year.

The development of 5G technology has also boosted the popularity of communications-related positions, according to Boss Zhipin.

For example, optical transmission engineers -- a subsector of 5G-- saw their average monthly salaries rise by 23.5 percent year-on-year to about 11,550 yuan in the third quarter this year. And those who work for telecommunications networks also saw their average salaries increase to 8,620 yuan per month, up 11.5 percent compared with the same period in 2018.

However, demand for talent with 5G knowledge who qualify for such positions far exceeds supply, according to the report by Zhaopin.

"That's mainly because of the difficulty of producing 5G-related talent," said Li Qiang, Zhaopin's vice-president. "Also, job hunters lack the skills that 5G positions require."

Li said that 5G technology includes various technologies, requiring people to possess both comprehensive academic and practical capabilities.

"We hope that standardized courses to help train 5G talent can be implemented by the government or professional organizations, to better guide people serving in areas such as communications and information engineering and help them secure jobs in the 5G industry," Li said.

Editor: John Li