IT training body E-skills UK has revealed it is working on a scheme to help IT graduates acquire the mid-tier skills they would have traditionally gained in roles that are now moving offshore.

Tilly Travers of the government-appointed skills body said that employers are increasingly realising that the increase in offshore outsourcing is disrupting the established career ladder for IT professionals.

“A new IT graduate used to have a career ladder of different roles that would lead to them becoming a project manager or IT chief,” Travers said. “But a lot of the middle rungs on that ladder have now been outsourced or moved to India and China.”

E-skills is keen to tackle this problem, according to Travers. The organisation has recently begun work on a new development programme designed to speed up the skills acquisition of IT staff during the first two years of their careers.

The initiative was welcomed by the British Computer Society (BCS) and the Corporate IT Forum, which agreed that offshoring and the adoption of automated systems are creating a gap in the traditional IT career path. However, both bodies insisted that IT graduates should also be equipped with a better mastery of business skills.

“The number of software professionals in the UK is declining, but the number of IT managers and business analysts is increasing significantly,” said Elizabeth Sparrow, chair of the offshoring group at the BCS. “We need to give new entrants the business skills they need to go into those senior roles more quickly.”

David Roberts, chief executive of the Corporate IT Forum, agreed that IT professionals must develop more commercial acumen. “Speeding up the technological knowledge [alone] of UK professionals will not make people more employable in this country and not necessarily provide corporates with the commercially-focused skills they need,” he argued.

The new “first two years programme” is currently in the consultation phase, Travers said, with E-skills seeking input from employers about what the accelerated development initiative should include. IT training body E-skills UK has revealed it is working on a scheme to help IT graduates acquire the mid-tier skills they would have traditionally gained in roles that are now moving offshore.