Social Skills Contracts

Social Skills (Interpersonal, Communication)
UK

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Social Skills in contract job vacancies. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Social Skills over the 6 months leading up to 20 January 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Jan 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 1 1 3
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 0
Contract jobs citing Social Skills 7,814 9,349 14,141
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 24.98% 21.57% 20.25%
As % of the General category 40.47% 36.61% 34.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,573 6,008 9,195
10th Percentile £225 £217 £250
25th Percentile £393 £395 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.40% -4.38% +4.58%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £650
90th Percentile £738 £725 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 305 573 555
10th Percentile £15.62 £12.87 £12.67
25th Percentile £16.75 £14.22 £14.25
Median hourly rate £24.18 £18.80 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.65% -10.50% +20.00%
75th Percentile £44.04 £48.00 £59.84
90th Percentile £71.00 £65.00 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.09 £16.50 £18.50
% change year-on-year +46.00% -10.81% +21.39%

All General Skills
UK

Social Skills falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring common skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for common skills 19,306 25,535 41,313
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 61.72% 58.92% 59.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,487 16,655 28,238
10th Percentile £285 £270 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.42% -2.18% +4.76%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £675
90th Percentile £763 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - +9.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 648 1,327 1,158
10th Percentile £15.62 £13.41 £13.41
25th Percentile £20.00 £15.44 £16.54
Median hourly rate £27.50 £28.25 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.65% +13.00% +25.00%
75th Percentile £53.75 £56.49 £58.75
90th Percentile £72.82 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £26.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +1.92% +15.56% +33.73%

Social Skills
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Social Skills as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Social Skills.

Daily rate trend for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Social Skills over the 6 months to 20 January 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Social Skills.

Hourly rate trend for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Social Skills over the 6 months to 20 January 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Social Skills in the UK

Social Skills
Top 18 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Social Skills within the UK over the 6 months to 20 January 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England 0 6,684 £515 -1.90% 7,678
UK excluding London +1 3,725 £475 - 4,844
London 0 3,330 £550 - 3,111
Work from Home +1 2,476 £500 - 4,929
South East +1 890 £500 - 1,086
North of England 0 821 £485 +2.11% 1,557
Midlands 0 643 £450 - 784
North West 0 484 £475 -0.52% 956
South West +1 475 £501 -9.00% 559
Scotland +1 462 £438 -6.32% 306
West Midlands 0 457 £475 +2.70% 488
East of England 0 338 £475 - 498
Yorkshire 0 258 £476 +0.21% 451
East Midlands 0 175 £400 +44.80% 296
North East +1 87 £525 +133.33% 159
Wales +3 83 £425 +17.24% 113
Northern Ireland -1 50 £431 +7.81% 87
Channel Islands - 5 £450 - 1

Social Skills
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 327 (4.18%) SharePoint
2 274 (3.51%) Confluence
3 142 (1.82%) Microsoft Exchange
4 76 (0.97%) CMS
5 62 (0.79%) Apache Spark
6 43 (0.55%) Apache
7 28 (0.36%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 26 (0.33%) SAS
9 25 (0.32%) IIS
10 22 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
11 20 (0.26%) Apache Airflow
12 17 (0.22%) Drupal
13 14 (0.18%) nginx
14 13 (0.17%) Skype for Business
14 13 (0.17%) WordPress
15 12 (0.15%) CICS
16 11 (0.14%) Tomcat
17 9 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 8 (0.10%) Umbraco
18 8 (0.10%) WebSphere
Applications
1 497 (6.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 469 (6.00%) Microsoft Office
3 252 (3.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 118 (1.51%) MS Visio
5 103 (1.32%) Microsoft Project
6 35 (0.45%) Trello
7 32 (0.41%) Spreadsheet
8 22 (0.28%) Sketch
9 21 (0.27%) Photoshop
10 18 (0.23%) Adobe XD
11 16 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 13 (0.17%) AutoCAD
13 10 (0.13%) Chatbot
14 9 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
14 9 (0.12%) Camtasia
15 7 (0.090%) Simulink
16 6 (0.077%) Adobe Premiere
16 6 (0.077%) InDesign
17 5 (0.064%) Stateflow
17 5 (0.064%) UserZoom
Business Applications
1 181 (2.32%) SAP S/4HANA
2 62 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
3 46 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
4 36 (0.46%) Oracle EBS R12
5 34 (0.44%) SAP FI
6 33 (0.42%) SAP CO
7 31 (0.40%) SAP FI/CO
8 23 (0.29%) Maximo
9 22 (0.28%) SAP EWM
10 20 (0.26%) SAP HR
11 19 (0.24%) Endur
11 19 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
12 17 (0.22%) SAP ERP
12 17 (0.22%) Shopify
13 15 (0.19%) NetSuite
13 15 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
13 15 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
13 15 (0.19%) SAP SD
13 15 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 14 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,155 (14.78%) Azure
2 669 (8.56%) AWS
3 517 (6.62%) Microsoft 365
4 444 (5.68%) Power Platform
5 274 (3.51%) GCP
6 197 (2.52%) Azure DevOps
7 184 (2.35%) GitHub
8 152 (1.95%) Entra ID
9 150 (1.92%) SaaS
10 144 (1.84%) Dynamics 365
11 142 (1.82%) Serverless
12 132 (1.69%) Power Automate
13 126 (1.61%) PowerApps
14 95 (1.22%) Amazon S3
14 95 (1.22%) Cloud Computing
15 76 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
16 71 (0.91%) PaaS
17 70 (0.90%) Figma
18 65 (0.83%) Azure Data Factory
19 63 (0.81%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 313 (4.01%) Firewall
2 170 (2.18%) VPN
3 164 (2.10%) DNS
4 158 (2.02%) Network Security
5 130 (1.66%) LAN
6 121 (1.55%) TCP/IP
7 117 (1.50%) WAN
8 101 (1.29%) DHCP
9 85 (1.09%) BGP
10 69 (0.88%) Internet
11 66 (0.84%) MPLS
12 65 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (0.83%) Wireless
13 60 (0.77%) SMTP
14 54 (0.69%) SSL
15 52 (0.67%) VLAN
16 48 (0.61%) HTTP
17 47 (0.60%) SAN
18 46 (0.59%) Ethernet
18 46 (0.59%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 354 (4.53%) Power BI
2 213 (2.73%) SQL Server
3 180 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
4 132 (1.69%) Tableau
5 129 (1.65%) PostgreSQL
6 125 (1.60%) Relational Database
7 94 (1.20%) NoSQL
8 87 (1.11%) Big Data
9 86 (1.10%) MongoDB
10 68 (0.87%) MySQL
11 59 (0.76%) Data Lake
12 54 (0.69%) Metadata
13 52 (0.67%) Oracle Database
13 52 (0.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 48 (0.61%) DB2
15 43 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
15 43 (0.55%) Hadoop
15 43 (0.55%) RDBMS
16 41 (0.52%) Power Query
16 41 (0.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 501 (6.41%) JIRA
2 236 (3.02%) Git
3 191 (2.44%) Jenkins
4 112 (1.43%) GitLab
5 68 (0.87%) Selenium
6 52 (0.67%) Cucumber
7 42 (0.54%) Bitbucket
8 41 (0.52%) Postman
8 41 (0.52%) TeamCity
9 39 (0.50%) JUnit
10 37 (0.47%) Visual Studio
11 35 (0.45%) Cypress.io
12 30 (0.38%) Eclipse
12 30 (0.38%) SonarQube
13 22 (0.28%) JMeter
13 22 (0.28%) Subversion
14 21 (0.27%) CircleCI
15 20 (0.26%) ERwin
16 18 (0.23%) Maven
17 16 (0.20%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,936 (24.78%) Analytical Skills
2 1,843 (23.59%) Finance
3 718 (9.19%) Public Sector
4 565 (7.23%) Banking
5 407 (5.21%) Presentation Skills
6 366 (4.68%) Marketing
7 316 (4.04%) Legal
8 298 (3.81%) Organisational Skills
9 292 (3.74%) Telecoms
10 244 (3.12%) Manufacturing
11 207 (2.65%) Retail
12 168 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 164 (2.10%) Influencing Skills
14 147 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
15 143 (1.83%) Investment Banking
16 128 (1.64%) Front Office
17 127 (1.63%) Financial Institution
18 120 (1.54%) Electronics
19 114 (1.46%) Law
20 96 (1.23%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,125 (14.40%) Analyst
2 767 (9.82%) Developer
3 688 (8.80%) Architect
4 672 (8.60%) Senior
5 543 (6.95%) Lead
6 530 (6.78%) Consultant
7 517 (6.62%) Project Manager
8 377 (4.82%) Business Analyst
9 224 (2.87%) Solutions Architect
10 199 (2.55%) Support Engineer
11 161 (2.06%) Administrator
12 141 (1.80%) Data Analyst
13 139 (1.78%) Data Engineer
14 136 (1.74%) Service Analyst
15 132 (1.69%) IT Manager
16 118 (1.51%) Network Engineer
17 117 (1.50%) Senior Manager
18 112 (1.43%) IT Support
19 111 (1.42%) Senior Developer
20 109 (1.39%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 194 (2.48%) HTML
2 188 (2.41%) .NET
3 175 (2.24%) CSS
4 163 (2.09%) React
5 119 (1.52%) REST
6 110 (1.41%) Kafka
7 100 (1.28%) Node.js
8 97 (1.24%) Web Services
9 82 (1.05%) RESTful
10 72 (0.92%) AngularJS
11 71 (0.91%) Middleware
12 67 (0.86%) Oracle Fusion
13 64 (0.82%) JSON
14 63 (0.81%) XML
15 62 (0.79%) PySpark
16 61 (0.78%) Spring
17 47 (0.60%) SOAP
18 43 (0.55%) ASP.NET
19 42 (0.54%) .NET Core
19 42 (0.54%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 331 (4.24%) Management Information System
2 267 (3.42%) Product Ownership
2 267 (3.42%) Self-Motivation
3 181 (2.32%) Data Centre
4 173 (2.21%) Onboarding
5 144 (1.84%) Data Protection Act
6 125 (1.60%) Data Structures
7 112 (1.43%) Virtual Team
8 105 (1.34%) Algorithms
8 105 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
9 103 (1.32%) Mobile App
10 95 (1.22%) Cloud Native
11 93 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
12 92 (1.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 83 (1.06%) PKI
14 77 (0.99%) Driving Licence
15 73 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
16 69 (0.88%) Public Cloud
17 67 (0.86%) Video Conferencing
18 66 (0.84%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 857 (10.97%) Windows
2 396 (5.07%) Linux
3 259 (3.31%) Windows 10
4 186 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 182 (2.33%) Unix
6 78 (1.00%) Apple iOS
7 72 (0.92%) Android
8 54 (0.69%) Mac OS
9 50 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 31 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
11 25 (0.32%) Windows 7
12 22 (0.28%) Solaris
13 16 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 15 (0.19%) CentOS
14 15 (0.19%) Mac OS X
15 12 (0.15%) Embedded Linux
15 12 (0.15%) Windows Server 2019
16 10 (0.13%) AIX
16 10 (0.13%) zOS
17 9 (0.12%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,737 (35.03%) Problem-Solving
2 1,636 (20.94%) Agile
3 1,186 (15.18%) Project Management
4 1,150 (14.72%) Stakeholder Management
5 685 (8.77%) Migration
6 666 (8.52%) DevOps
7 550 (7.04%) Customer Service
7 550 (7.04%) Risk Management
8 543 (6.95%) ITIL
9 542 (6.94%) CI/CD
10 540 (6.91%) Analytics
11 535 (6.85%) Continuous Improvement
12 512 (6.55%) Computer Science
13 492 (6.30%) Decision-Making
14 484 (6.19%) Project Delivery
15 482 (6.17%) Change Management
16 480 (6.14%) Business Intelligence
17 442 (5.66%) Collaborative Working
18 403 (5.16%) Scrum
19 386 (4.94%) Data Modelling
Programming Languages
1 983 (12.58%) SQL
2 892 (11.42%) Python
3 396 (5.07%) Java
4 380 (4.86%) JavaScript
5 347 (4.44%) PowerShell
6 242 (3.10%) C#
7 143 (1.83%) C++
8 128 (1.64%) Bash
9 110 (1.41%) TypeScript
10 90 (1.15%) R
11 71 (0.91%) Perl
12 60 (0.77%) PL/SQL
13 57 (0.73%) Scala
14 54 (0.69%) C
15 53 (0.68%) Shell Script
16 44 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 44 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 44 (0.56%) T-SQL
17 36 (0.46%) Go
18 35 (0.45%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,173 (15.01%) Degree
2 1,025 (13.12%) Security Cleared
3 770 (9.85%) SC Cleared
4 311 (3.98%) Computer Science Degree
5 196 (2.51%) DV Cleared
6 160 (2.05%) CISSP
7 157 (2.01%) PMP
8 156 (2.00%) PMI Certification
9 143 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
9 143 (1.83%) Master's Degree
10 122 (1.56%) Microsoft Certification
11 101 (1.29%) CISM
12 86 (1.10%) AWS Certification
13 81 (1.04%) Azure Certification
14 80 (1.02%) CCNP
15 79 (1.01%) ITIL Certification
16 78 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
17 69 (0.88%) CCNA
18 63 (0.81%) CISA
19 50 (0.64%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 431 (5.52%) QA
2 265 (3.39%) Data Quality
3 169 (2.16%) PMO
4 165 (2.11%) GDPR
5 145 (1.86%) SLA
6 135 (1.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 133 (1.70%) Accessibility
8 118 (1.51%) NIST
9 65 (0.83%) GRC
10 64 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 51 (0.65%) PCI DSS
12 33 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
13 31 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
14 29 (0.37%) COBIT
15 26 (0.33%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.33%) NCSC
16 22 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials
17 20 (0.26%) WCAG
18 15 (0.19%) MiFID
19 11 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 477 (6.10%) Active Directory
2 258 (3.30%) Docker
3 142 (1.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 82 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
5 66 (0.84%) Hyper-V
6 46 (0.59%) Microsoft App-V
7 37 (0.47%) BitLocker
7 37 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
8 33 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 29 (0.37%) Terminal Services
10 25 (0.32%) Firmware
11 22 (0.28%) Virtual Desktop
12 20 (0.26%) vSphere
13 10 (0.13%) NFS
14 8 (0.10%) Microcode
14 8 (0.10%) RACF
15 7 (0.090%) Veritas Volume Manager
15 7 (0.090%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.064%) KVM
16 5 (0.064%) Veritas File System
Systems Management
1 296 (3.79%) Kubernetes
2 219 (2.80%) Terraform
3 207 (2.65%) Ansible
4 134 (1.71%) SCCM
5 132 (1.69%) Microsoft Intune
6 71 (0.91%) Grafana
7 50 (0.64%) Prometheus
8 45 (0.58%) vCenter Server
9 33 (0.42%) Puppet
10 29 (0.37%) Progress Chef
10 29 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
10 29 (0.37%) vMotion
11 23 (0.29%) WSUS
12 21 (0.27%) Jamf Pro
13 18 (0.23%) Dell DRAC
13 18 (0.23%) QRadar
14 15 (0.19%) Kibana
15 14 (0.18%) Red Hat Satellite
16 13 (0.17%) FortiGate
16 13 (0.17%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 1,537 (19.67%) Microsoft
2 578 (7.40%) SAP
3 477 (6.10%) Oracle
4 296 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 264 (3.38%) Cisco
6 225 (2.88%) Google
7 222 (2.84%) VMware
8 178 (2.28%) Salesforce
9 118 (1.51%) Adobe
10 98 (1.25%) Databricks
11 84 (1.07%) IBM
12 83 (1.06%) Splunk
13 77 (0.99%) Citrix
13 77 (0.99%) Palo Alto
14 63 (0.81%) Atlassian
15 61 (0.78%) Apple
15 61 (0.78%) Dell
16 59 (0.76%) Red Hat
16 59 (0.76%) Workday
17 55 (0.70%) CyberArk