Colombia is Running Short of Information Technology Professionals

The demand for information technology professionals in Colombia far exceeds supply, with analysts expecting the talent shortage to reach 70,000 by 2019.

Most of the current IT professionals are working for large firms in the country’s major cities, including Bogota, Medellín, and Cali, according to Spanish language news portal enter.co, which cited various organizations including the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (MinTIC).

Considering a recent survey by Ticjob.co, a portal in which ICT professionals look for job offers, one in five technology professionals in the country is working as a programmer, one in four as an IT consultant and one in eight as a technology manager.

The expertise HR managers mostly look for in an IT professional is Java (43%), HTML (31%), .NET (30%) and PHP (19%). Professionals with experience in consulting and project management are also in high demand.

In the survey, about 32% of companies said that they were looking for professionals with work experience of between two and five years.

With companies intensifying their search for the right talent and the emergence of new technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and Internet of Things (IoT), wages for tech professionals is constantly rising.

Thanks to the lack of talent, some firms have hired people without a university degree.

However, the country’s IT industry has a strong preference for university professionals, who account for 70% of its workforce, according to Paola Restrepo, Director of the Colombian Federation of Software Industry and Related Information Technology (Fedesoft).