Kansas City’s booming tech scene comes with a downside: a tech talent shortage.
Useagility and Pointsworks Academy, both based in Kansas City, released the findings Thursday from their “State of UX in Kansas City” survey, which included respondents from more than 30 area companies.
“The biggest takeaway from the survey is that the talent gap is real, and there has been great progress on the development side in Kansas City through code schools, but coders really represent only part of the need,” Useagility CEO and founder Chrys Sullivan told the Kansas City Business Journal.
One significant gap in Kansas City’s tech scene is job-ready talent in the product strategy and user experience fields, she said.
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Nearly half of the survey’s respondents plan to add net new UX staff in 2017, and the skills most in demand include interaction design and strategy, followed by visual design and user research. The survey validates the demand for UX designers, Sullivan said.
“Technology is the high-growth sector right now, and companies are realizing that technology design and user-centered design is a very different skill set than engineering and coding,” she said. “So companies are really realizing the need to balance their teams with user experience designers as well as developers.”
But in the Kansas City market, there aren’t enough UX designers to go around. So it puts 15-person firms like Useagility in competition with companies, such as Cerner Corp., for talent. It’s part of a broader shortage of tech talent, and it’s a challenge, she said.
It’s one reason why Sullivan co-founded Pointworks Academy. It’s an avenue to not only create a pipeline of talent for Useagility but an even bigger pipeline for local employers. The academy, which launched in June, fulfills a repeated request from Useagility clients, which said they needed someone to train their employees on how to be better UX designers.
“I think part of the issue is that universities aren’t teaching the skills that employers need from coders and developers right now,” Sullivan said.
Traditional universities tend to lag behind the tech trends; although they’re great at teaching the theory behind design, they’re not always great at giving students the hands-on experiences they need to hone their skills and develop a portfolio, she said.
Pointworks, however, is designed to arm entry-level UX researchers and designers with in-demand skill sets to “hit the ground running.” The program also welcomes feedback from area employers to help shape the curriculum. In short, the academy’s big goal, she said, is “building our talent pool for Kansas City’s employers.”
Date: January 21, 2017