Employers struggling to hire engineers and IT professionals in South Africa

Luis

Luis

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Employers struggling to hire engineers and IT professionals in South Africa

The latest Pnet Job Market Trends Report for April 2026 found a significant and persistent disconnect between talent available in the South African labour market and the qualifications employers sought.

Pnet is one of South Africa's largest online job portals and recruitment platforms, with a database of more than seven million job seekers and more than five million monthly visits.
 
Pnet found that about 54% of job adverts posted on these platforms in the last 12 months required candidates with a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree.

However, only 36% of applicants had these qualifications. In addition to the medical and health sectors, the information technology (IT) and engineering industries faced the most significant talent shortages.

“Some 60% of advertised IT jobs require a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree, but only 42% of applicants have these qualifications,” Pnet said.

Recruitment bottlenecks were evident for highly specialised roles such as technical and business architects.

In addition, demand for experienced software developers was also constrained by limited talent availability.
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AI has obliterated any prospect of someone teaching themselves to code and getting a decent job. You are going to need a CS or engineering degree from a proper university to get a junior programming job. Just knowing how to code isn't good enough anymore.
 
Pnet also found that some sectors experienced the opposite problem: an oversupply of candidates, including overqualified job seekers.

“Entry-level and lower-skilled occupations such as call centre and customer support roles receive exceptionally high application volumes,” it said.

Some candidates applying for these roles were overqualified. Around 15% seeking call centre jobs had degrees, and 51% had certificates or diplomas. 83% of the roles did not require tertiary education.

Pnet head of data, Anja Bates, described the mismatch between the available talent and labour market demand as a serious structural challenge for businesses, jobseekers and the broader economy.
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Them saying which degrees, certificates or diplomas would be illuminating.
 
konfab said:
AI has obliterated any prospect of someone teaching themselves to code and getting a decent job. You are going to need a CS or engineering degree from a proper university to get a junior programming job. Just knowing how to code isn't good enough anymore.
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Problem is that CS is quite a wide field, hardware, db, math and and. I mean relational database design still floats in my brain, don't know if it's relative now.
 
Lupus said:
Problem is that CS is quite a wide field, hardware, db, math and and. I mean relational database design still floats in my brain, don't know if it's relative now.
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How is that a problem? You are looking for someone who has demonstrated understanding of at least how computers work. The maths part is the important part because it is an intelligence/hard work metric for logical thinking and pattern recognition.
 
konfab said:
How is that a problem? You are looking for someone who has demonstrated understanding of at least how computers work. The maths part is the important part because it is an intelligence/hard work metric for logical thinking and pattern recognition.
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In SA company terms, that means you're now the IT department, not just the developer ;-). You know how PC works oh good our sys admin left, oh you know math, my kid is failing...
 
I've seen many job roles recently that want what is effectively a Senior Infrastructure Architect/Network Architect/Cloud Architect, and for them to do monkey IT work for a pittance .
 
ToxicBunny said:
I've seen many job roles recently that want what is effectively a Senior Infrastructure Architect/Network Architect/Cloud Architect, and for them to do monkey IT work for a pittance .
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Yup, have seen the same. Must have 10 years experience, must know 4 languages, must know linux, windows, solaris, bsd, must know fortinet, cisco, juniper, three flavours of storage, ess, powerscale and you'll get paid R14k a month.
 
Just been through a month of interviews and discussions with a company, they wanted me to confirm with my current company that I wont be breaching my restraint of trade as they are a partner of one of our group companies, went all the way up to the CFO and now everyone knows i'm looking for a job, just to not get the position and be kindof left in a crappy spot.

Its not the employers, its the recruiters making life hard
 
Lupus said:
Yup, have seen the same. Must have 10 years experience, must know 4 languages, must know linux, windows, solaris, bsd, must know fortinet, cisco, juniper, three flavours of storage, ess, powerscale and you'll get paid R14k a month.
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Sounds about on the money really, and then SA companies wonder why nobody is interested in the role.
 
“Some 60% of advertised IT jobs require a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree, but only 42% of applicants have these qualifications,” Pnet said.

As someone with a post-grad, I can tell you this is BS.
Most people I know right now who are way better at what I do than I am do not have degrees.
Me not doing/having certs seem to be the thing that's nailing me these days.
 
RaptorSA said:
“Some 60% of advertised IT jobs require a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree, but only 42% of applicants have these qualifications,” Pnet said.

As someone with a post-grad, I can tell you this is BS.
Most people I know right now who are way better at what I do than I am do not have degrees.
Me not doing/having certs seem to be the thing that's nailing me these days.
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Yeah certs seem to be the new thing. What gets to me is I need to re-do a whole stack of them cause they expire. Problem is when I tried to do courses I kept getting interrupted by work and now well my team is basically me and one other guy.
 
RaptorSA said:
“Some 60% of advertised IT jobs require a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree, but only 42% of applicants have these qualifications,” Pnet said.

As someone with a post-grad, I can tell you this is BS.
Most people I know right now who are way better at what I do than I am do not have degrees.
Me not doing/having certs seem to be the thing that's nailing me these days.
Click to expand...
For me it seems to be not what you know, but who you know.

Networking seems to go a long way into getting the proverbial foot in the door, especially in smaller circles.

It's (generally) always a good idea to give your something your best shot no matter where you work, as you never know who is watching.
 
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