A large event organised by Manchester Digital, an independent trade association for the digital sector in the North West of England, aims to open up the industry to young people. The digital skills shortage is such that businesses are sometimes forced to turn away work due to a lack of available talent.

The Digital Skills Festival will take place next week in various locations across Manchester. As well as discussing trends and challenges in the industry the event aims to directly tackle the shortage of talent by showing young people around digital businesses, giving them hands-on experience and providing them with access to the North’s largest recruitment fair. 

The Digital Skills conference, which takes place on Tuesday 10 February 2015 at Manchester Town Hall, is aimed at education providers and businesses looking to develop the right talent pool of digital candidates in the region. The remaining three days are tailored towards young people with an interest in the digital industry.

Katie Gallagher, managing director at Manchester Digital, says, “Manchester has an ambition to become a digital city and in order to achieve this we need a large, highly skilled digital workforce and a pipeline of talent that will leave school, college and university with industry-standard, work-ready, digital skillsets. Digital Skills Festival is a fantastic opportunity for both students and businesses and we can’t wait to see the positive results from the event this year.”

Last year’s event helped to place 97 people into new jobs and there has been a steep increase in the amount of businesses signing-up to take part. Many, including Amaze, Barclays, Sage, Space 48 and Rentalcars.com, are signing up to attend the Talent Day careers fair in search of new recruits.

Jon Woodall, founder of Space 48, who attended the event last year, says, “Digital Skills Festival is a fantastic opportunity to speak with students that are really keen to break into digital. It can sometimes be difficult to attract new talent in this industry. However by taking part in the Open Studio Day and the Talent Day careers fair last year, we were able to meet so many talented individuals interested in digital, and we received a huge surge of CVs as a result.”