21-09-2011: Kinsale, Ireland based learnpipe.ie takes a close look at the IT Courses that are most in demand in Ireland.
In Chris Anderson’s 2004 Wired article “The Long Tail” he outlined how the economics of the Internet – near zero storage costs and digital distribution – were fueling endless consumer choice. If there is any area in the education sector where endless choice applies, it has to be in IT Courses / Information Technology Training.
We are going to cover only a small portion of the topics that fit neatly within the broad “IT Courses” category. We are focusing only on the topics that our Google and learnpipe search traffic analysis has helped us to determine are most in demand.
Believe it or not IT Courses is searched for circa 1,000,000 (Google Ireland data) times per month in Ireland. The top 10 most searched for “IT Courses” related searches in Ireland are as follows:
1. Computer Training (4,400s/m)
2. IT certification course (3,600s/m)
3. MCP (2,900s/m)
4. MCSE (2400s/m)
5. Technology Training (1900s/m)
6. IT Skills courses (1600s/m)
7. Microsoft Training (1600s/m)
8. PC Training (1000s/m)
9. Office Training (880s/m)
10. Excel Training (880s/m)
Note: s/m relates to searches on Google in Ireland every month.
When we combine the raw search data from Google with our own search stats, we found that most searched for IT Courses in Ireland were:
1. Microsoft Training – including the major products within the Microsoft Portfolio (Windows 7 Courses, Windows Vista Courses, MCP programmes, MCSE certification, etc.)
2. ECDL Courses – European Computer Driving Licence
3. Cisco Courses – which includes searches for the Cisco certification programmers: CCNA, CCNP & CCIE.
4. CompTIA training – including searches for CompTIA A+ courses, CompTIA Network+ courses, CompTIA Security+ courses & certifications.
5. Java courses – includes search data for java programming courses, java7 courses, J2EE courses & Java E E 6 coures.
John Dineen, CEO @ learnpipe commented “Despite the well publicised difficulties for the Irish economy over the last 24 months, the IT sector in Ireland has continued to push ahead. Where unemployment figures have reached record highs for the economy as a whole, in the IT sector, Ireland is actually experiencing a severe skills shortage. We have seen this in our own recruitment efforts and we also see the continued demand for skills in the IT sector being reflected in the high monthly search volumes for IT Courses.”
Learnpipe is a web based application that helps people to find great courses around the world. We put the fun back into choosing the right College / Degree / Evening Course / Casual Class / any other training option. We call it social Q&A for education. We operate 4 domains: http://www.learnpipe.ie (Ireland); http://www.learnpipe.co.uk (UK); http://www.learnpipe.com (USA) & http://www.learnpipe.in (India).
