Career advisors from top universities across the North East came together earlier this week to learn about jobs in the digital sector at an event run by niche digital jobs board Bubble Jobs.
The event was held at the University of Leeds on Tuesday and was attended by 15 career advisors from major universities in the region, including Newcastle University, Leeds Beckett University and Sheffield University.
The jobs board, which specialises in advertising vacancies in the digital sector from major brands such as Dr Martens, EE and Action For Children, held the event in an attempt to bridge the current digital skills gap which is threatening the industry.
It was reported by job aggregator Adzuna that there were over one million digital technology jobs advertised in 2014, and the EC Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs has predicted a shortage of up to 900,000 ICT professionals by 2020.
This proves that the skills gap is a real issue for the economy, and this event aimed to address the problem and arm career advisors with the knowledge needed to promote these opportunities to students.
The interactive workshop taught attendees about the key career options available in the digital industry, which university degrees map to which job areas in the sector and how students and graduates can successfully represent themselves online when applying for digital jobs.
The event comes after Bubble Jobs ran a similar successful workshop for HE career advisors in the North West at Manchester Metropolitan University in December.
This was part of their pledge to the European Commission’s Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs – an initiative designed to address the IT skills shortage across Europe.
Bubble Jobs’ Digital Marketing Manager Amy Edwards said: “As part of our pledge, we’re committed to doing our bit to address the current digital skills shortage and to drive new talent into the sector – and this event is a great example of that.
“Being the leading jobs board in the digital industry, we drew on a wealth of experience and knowledge we’ve gained throughout our five-year history and shared this with the attendees.
“We had a great reaction from the career advisors who attended the event in Leeds this week – many of whom had a slight knowledge of what careers were available in the digital sector but not enough to confidently advise students and graduates about their options within the industry.
“Thanks to our event, they now have a good understanding of what the digital sector entails and how students and graduates can give themselves the best chance of success in this ultra-competitive sector.”
Jessica Henderson, Careers Consultant at the University of Leeds, said: “The session provided an excellent and informative overview of the digital industry and breadth of opportunities, particularly highlighting its accessibility to graduates of all disciplines, which was great to see.
“It will definitely help me when advising students and I particularly liked the interactive format and the opportunity for questions and discussion.”
Following on from the success of this event, Bubble Jobs will also hold a similar event for HE career advisors across London at the end of May.