New survey tracks gaps between in-demand software skills, common occupations

software-skillsA new look at the most in-demand software skills by state could help students hone the skills most needed by employers in their area.

A survey from MidAmerica Nazarene University used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to identify the most common occupations in the country.

The investigative team used listings from Capterra, a free service that matches businesses to appropriate software, to find the 10-15 most commonly used computer programs in each industry.

The team searched for those software keywords across millions of resumes and job postings on Indeed, and then found the biggest gaps between posted job listings and posted resumes.

Next page: One of the most common software skills gaps in almost half the states

One of the most common program gaps in nearly half of the states, and especially throughout the Southeast, was Git, an open source version control system for software development. Even in states where Git wasn’t the program with the biggest skill gap, it was regularly in the top five programs.

In the web development and IT industries, Git was also found to be the program with the biggest gap between the skills employers are looking for and the skills employees have, beating out other well-known programs like Python and JavaScript.

Looking at other industries, in sales and marketing, Salesforce Pardot and Sales Cloud have the biggest gaps. These well-known customer relationship management (CRM) systems and marketing automation programs are especially desired in Illinois, Georgia, New York, and Washington, D.C. And while Marketo wasn’t one of the top five programs with the biggest gaps overall, it did have the biggest gap in Washington state and New Jersey.

Those working in business analytics and administration might look to develop their skills in Tableau, a data visualization tool. Tableau had the biggest gap for the accounting, trading, and business intelligence industries overall, with the biggest gap in Nevada and Iowa.

The investigation took place over the course of a week in late August and early September. It used a limited sample, and the team noted that supply and demand will inevitably change over time. Research was limited to one job site, and because the team could only search for software programs by name, it wasn’t able to search for programs with generic names. The team filtered out non-statistically significant resumes and job postings to ensure the ratio of supply to demand would not be misleading.

Material from a press release was used in this report.

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Laura Ascione

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