Research undertaken by SkillsMarket reveals that the top issue for IT recruitment companies in 2007 is the skills shortage.

With 78% of MDs and Directors of the UK's leading recruitment companies surveyed expecting the demand for IT staff to increase over the next 12 months, this issue will only get worse.

David Clarke, CEO of British Computer Society (BCS), commented: "Amazingly the number of IT graduates entering the UK job market has fallen in recent years and more and more of these valuable places have been taken up by overseas students that are expected to leave the UK when they finish their studies. This is doing nothing to help the skills shortage."

Rick Bacon, CEO of SkillsMarket, one of the UK's fastest growing solution providers to recruitment companies, commented: "Traditionally a CV database has been one of the biggest assets that a recruitment agency has, but for some years online advertising has seemed simpler and easier for recruiters to use. We are increasingly hearing from our clients that advertising no longer produces the results and as a result we're finding that the fastest growing as well as most profitable businesses are those that have and know how to make the most out of a high quality candidate database."

Ann Swain, CEO of the Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo), commented: "With supply outstripped by demand, IT recruiters are becoming much more inventive when it comes to sourcing candidates, especially as the best candidates no longer respond to advertising. Many of the UK's leading recruitment companies have already built up large databases of CVs and with fewer candidates approaching them, this information is turning into gold dust. It is vital that recruitment companies invest in keeping this information up-to-date."

With the skills shortage set to get worst, how are the UK's leading recruitment companies preparing for it?

Les Duncan, UK MD of Hays IT, commented: "The skills shortage means that employers need quality recruitment companies more than ever. The question is which ones provide employers with access to quality candidates and do not just rely on advertising that the employers can access themselves. We pride ourselves in maintaining a quality candidate database and that is why we adopted the iProfile to keep it up-to-date. With the iProfile approximately 50% of our large database is kept up to date, enabling our recruiters to locate the best candidates faster than our competitors."

Research has shown that on average only 7-10% of the information held in a recruitment company's database is up-to-date. By becoming compatible with the iProfile, the online CV, recruitment companies have seen the number of up-to-date records in their CV database increase to over 50%.

Mike Chapman, Director at Alexander Mann, commented: "There are only two ways to keep your candidate information up-to-date. The first is far too expensive because it requires getting your recruiters to maintain regular contact with all candidates and the second is by adopting the iProfile."

Chapman continued: "We now boast one of the most up-to-date CV databases in the industry with over 80% of the updates to our CV database now coming via the iProfile. With the skills shortage set to get worse any recruitment company not investing in ensuring their CV database is kept up-to-date will suffer."

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