What are the main skills issues and concerns?
The ‘interactive media skill set' has a far wider application than just interactive media.
Anyone outside the sector who contributes content or uses interactive media as part of their work will need at least some of its skills. But in addition, the skill set is likely to have value across many sectors, if not the whole of industry.
In particular, the combination of creative and logical thinking necessary to perform many of the cross-disciplinary functions needed in interactive media potentially makes for a valuable foundation for any job in the knowledge economy.
The industry needs rich combinations of ‘hybrid' skills, as well as a broader cross-disciplinary awareness. Finding people with the right mix of skills can be difficult - particularly the combination of creative and technical thinking, and a solid foundation of transferable life and work skills.
While individuals with deep, specific skills (such as graphic designers or programmers) are relatively easy to find, those with the hybrid or combinations of skills needed by the industry are not. An absence of cross-disciplinary awareness and understanding of role context is particularly significant.
This need for combinations of skills, broader awareness, high-level understanding and business competencies is important across most functions. But it is especially so with respect to long-term career development.
This broad expertise is essential for practitioners to progress into senior or management roles; for example, for developers to become systems architects, designers to become producers, and so on.
To meet the industry's long-term needs, these skills need to be developed throughout young peoples' experience of the education system, and particularly at university when they will shortly emerge into the workplace. The vast majority of employers (around 90%) felt that changes to the teaching provided by schools to 14-19 year olds would better prepare them for work in the industry.
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