What are the top tech skills students and graduates should prioritise in order to secure a job?

According to new research from Prospects on graduating into a pandemic, 29% of final year students have lost their jobs and 26% have lost their internships while 28% have had their graduate job offer deferred or rescinded. With this worry in mind it is vital that students and graduates improve their employability.

A recent study by Haystack, a tech careers marketplace app, has identified the deficit in supply and demand when it comes to technologies employers need, discovering the tech skills students and graduates should prioritise if they want to secure a job in digital.

These are the top tech skills students and graduates should prioritise in order to secure a job

The jobs market is tough for any graduate, more companies seem to be asking for unrealistic experience for entry level roles or simply cutting the number of entry level positions offered. However, a recent study may give tech career hopefuls a leg up when it comes to their job search. 

The study by Haystack, a tech careers marketplace app, has identified the most in demand technologies from companies by analysing hundreds of job ads on their platform. By examining the experience listed by 1010 of their current users they have also been able to determine the competitiveness of various roles requiring those specific skills.

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From the full list of skills they were able to identify the skills with the highest deficit of job seeker to job ad mentions.

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These are the techs with the most job mentions but don’t have enough job seekers in the industry with experience to meet the demand:

1. AWS
2. Azure Stack
3. Kubernetes
4. Java
5. React
6. Jenkins
7. AngularJS
8. Terraform
9. C#
10. NoSQL

Through an analysis of the job-seeking users with the current experience level of ‘graduate’, the research revealed that a very low percentage have experience with the technologies that have the most job prospects and least competition from more experienced tech professionals.

With no current job seekers at a graduate level having experience in Kubernetes, Jenkins or Terraform. This shows that graduates could focus on these skills along with those with a low percentage of graduates with experience (Azure stack, NoSQL, AngularJS and AWS) in order to improve their employability.

Mike Davies, COO and co-founder at Haystack, said:

“The pandemic has altered the jobs market, more people were made redundant or let go as a result of the effects Covid has had on the economy. This means it is a highly competitive time to be a job seeker, and unfortunately, graduates have an experience disadvantage.

“As with anything, employability is dependent on supply and demand. If there are 100 people with the same tech stack going for one role, a graduate who is less experienced has less of a chance of securing the job, however if the same graduate focuses their studies on a demand that is in short supply- such as the technologies that fewer job seekers possess- they increase their employability by filling a gap in the employment market.”