The demand for sophisticated information technology and professionals who understand these applications continues to increase with regularity. However, the actual supply of IT professionals who understand these often complex concepts and are able to provide expert support and service to companies is on the downswing.
Experts say that colleges and universities have been lagging behind demand in their output of qualified IT professionals each year since the middle part of the past decade. Even the number of professionals graduating from university-provided computer training courses 10 years ago would fall behind what's currently needed on the marketplace.
Others report similar trends. The tech jobs resource Dice published a report in October that described the shortage of qualified professionals with knowledge of Microsoft .NET applications.
Job seekers told Dice that they were afraid that if they learned .NET, they would only ever be able to find jobs in that programming language. Others feared the demand for .NET developers was too low.
However, the latter concern may be particularly unfounded – according to the report, new job listings for .NET programmers increased by 25 percent from last year, and many companies report their "distress" that they cannot find qualified developers.
"Companies are looking for .NET talent and targeted talent featuring C# and .NET will not get lost in the shuffle," Alice Hill, Dice's managing director, wrote in the report.
Job hopefuls could take advantage of the dearth of qualified professionals in the industry by receiving computer training from a trusted source. Learning sophisticated .NET applications from an expert Microsoft certified instructor may prepare these workers for a career in a field that is struggling to bring in new recruits from other, traditional sources.