In addition to reporting their personal levels of proficiency, employees also reported their need for training in each skill.

On average, IT employees said they need some level of training in 42 skills. The level needed ranged from basic to advanced and generally employees chose the level that is one step above their current proficiency. Many commented that they need ongoing training in their particular specialties plus general familiarity with a variety of other areas in order to keep up with constant changes in technology, to understand the broader context of their assignments, and to do a good job of contributing their particular expertise to larger efforts that combine skills and technologies from several specialty areas.

Overall, the greatest demand for training occurs among management skills, followed by skills associated with the web and with security functions. Strong demand is also present for skills associated with system design and development and networking. Lesser demand is present for information analysis skills followed by operations support and mainframe-oriented technologies. Among the top 25 skills for training demand, eleven are general management skills, eight pertain to security functions and infrastructure, and six are associated with the web.