The technology industry must look to arts graduates to help it to tackle skills shortages, according to leading entrepreneurs and investors.
Saul Klein, general partner at LocalGlobe, the venture capital firm, said that the private sector had to “step up”, invest in training and “reach out to arts graduates”.
Technology relies on people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) skills, but rapid growth in the industry and a shortage of people with such training have led to “hundreds of thousands of job openings in tech”, Klein said. “The demand for people is profound and consistent. This is the third-fastest ecosystem globally.”
Speaking at The Times and The Sunday Times Tech Summit, the entrepreneur and former partner at Index Ventures, one of Europe’s leading venture capital funds, said that the industry could not wait for the government to tackle the issue. “Companies need to recognise they need to invest in talent, we can’t always look to the government to do all the work for us. If we want the government to do all the work, we should all move to Beijing or Shanghai.
“How much are companies investing in talent? It’s not just the salary . . . it’s taking arts graduates and turning them into developers, which The Hut Group has done at scale. I’m an English graduate and I’ve been in tech for 25 years. We have to [tackle the idea] that tech is just for people with Stem degrees.
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“If you’re doing A-level English or philosophy at university, you might be brilliant at sales, marketing, customer success, finance, even a developer.”
Joysy John, chief executive of 01 Founders, a network of free-to-access coding schools, said that only “hiring people from a Stem background is not going to solve the problem” of skills shortages or a chronic lack of diversity in the industry.
Chris Loake, chief technology and operations officer at C Hoare & Co, the private bank, said: “I don’t think you should look at engineering graduates as your only opportunity for [hiring] junior talent. Some of my greatest successes in talent development have been hiring English graduates and history graduates who, when they were picking their degrees, didn’t know they wanted to get into IT.”
Poppy Gustafsson, chief executive of Darktrace, the cybersecurity company, said: “Good technology is that intersection between technical capabilities . . . and a creative application of that technology. [In] our research and development team, we’ve got a whole bunch of double PhD mathematicians and computer scientists, and we’ve also got this brilliant woman who’s a medieval historian. That’s where you get real innovation, this combination of creativity and capability.”
