More than 230 thousand applicants from the regions were assessed for IT competencies

In the five months since the launch of the national IT competence validation system, 367,000 people have assessed their skills. Of these, 235,000 people (64%) are applicants from the regions. This was announced by Dmitry Sergienkov, CEO of HeadHunter, the company that launched the system together with the Ministry of Finance.

Speaking at the session "Skill-centric market: how business, education and the state can develop it in the age of AI", which was held as part of the Digital Solutions Forum, Sergienkov noted that a total of 86 thousand people had successfully confirmed their IT skills. Despite the growing number of IT vacancies in Moscow, the pool of applicants is stably distributed across the country: 50% of all IT specialists live in other regions, the CEO of HeadHunter stated.

"Now the IT industry is moving far beyond the boundaries of the traditional IT business. IT companies account for only 38% of the demand for IT specialists. The other part is the financial sector (10%), retail (7%), business services (6%), construction (4%). This indicates that our economy is already at an advanced stage of digitalization, and IT competencies are deeply embedded in business," Sergienkov emphasized.

According to him, the AI-related segment of the specialist market is growing exponentially in the wake of the development of generative technologies. At the same time, the business is already moving from the phase of superficial investments in AI to the stage of meaningful construction of a sustainable IT infrastructure. "Real implementations are taking place, and next year we will see even greater demand for new AI competencies," Sergienkov believes.

According to the data hh.ru More than 250,000 specialists mention skills related to artificial intelligence technologies in their resumes. "The level of these competencies has yet to be assessed and developed, but it can already be concluded that, as with other breakthrough technologies in the past, the Russian consumer exhibits high digital flexibility and adaptability. And this is a springboard for the formation of new sustainable markets in our country," said the CEO of the company.

The session participants also discussed methods for assessing the competencies of specialists in the era of generative AI. "There are three layers of knowledge and skills: fundamental knowledge, knowledge of engineering and technology, and a layer of skills directly. They should all have different flexibility. Fundamental knowledge should be "in granite" and rigidly formed. Knowledge of engineering and technology, for example in the field of GenAI, should change more often: it is a reasonable idea to update the strategy on them once a year. But skills should be as mobile as possible. There are already prerequisites for the irrelevance of those skill assessment models that appeared just a year ago," said Evgeny Sluchevsky, CEO of Magnit.

Ivan Lobanov, Rector of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, added that the IT industry is rapidly developing, and the global labor market is also transforming. "That is why we are not just following, but forming a vector of development, continuously modernizing our educational programs. This is possible thanks to close and strategic cooperation with our leading industrial partners. Moreover, we see an urgent need for modern business to receive real mechanisms for active participation in regulation and the formation of professional standards," Lobanov said. In his opinion, this will allow universities to produce not just graduates, but truly sought-after specialists whose competencies perfectly meet current and future market demands.

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