skills - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

This summer’s Digital Marketing Graduate Academy gave us the opportunity to meet some of the people who will be shaping our industry in years to come. But while they spent time in the classroom, what did we learn?

Last week saw the first residential part of E-consultancy's Graduate Academy at Reading University and I can honestly say that it was both a pleasure and to some degree, a surprise.

We had three days of intensive teaching lined up for our successful 28 delegates with the aim of making sure they have a sound grounding in all things digital. Eight trainers, three client speakers and 30 hours of teaching later and we hope the process is well under way.

Chinwag's Digital Skills Survey at the end of 2007 proved yet again what we all know, that our industry is struggling to find and retain the best candidates which is leading to spiralling wage inflation in our sector, undermining growth and restricting profits. The figures, afterall, speak for themselves:

• 97% of respondents find it either difficult or impossible to attract the right digital staff for their businesses
• 57% of respondents reported that the digital skills shortage impeded the growth of their business in 2007
• 75% of businesses are planning to increase the salaries of digital staff

Last month, the Web Analytics Association (WAA) released a global survey showing that seven in ten companies were planning to increase their spending on web analytics this year.

We asked WAA president Richard Foley a few questions about where that cash is likely to go at a time when companies are struggling to recruit experienced analytics staff.

If you’re in web analytics, you're probably looking forward to your salary negotiations for 2008.

There are currently around 2,000 job opportunities that require web analytics experience on SimplyHired.com, according to this blog post by Eric T. Peterson.

And the picture’s pretty similar this side of the Atlantic – over 450 positions are up for grabs on Indeed.co.uk.

Developing a new digital strategy can be a daunting experience, especially considering the lack of case studies and benchmarks out there.

We spoke to Sharon Shaw, e-commerce manager at Standard Life, and Avenue A/Razorfish's Adrian Gans about their experiences of strategy creation, including budgets, KPIs, incentives and structures. 

Bad news for online ad companies battling a shortage of skilled workers - Google is apparently planning a big recruitment drive to create an R&D team in Europe as large as the one it has in the US.

The FT reports that the web giant aims to expand its workforce by a third, with most of the new staff to be based in Europe as it bids to improve its image on this side of the Atlantic.