Your skills are highly sought after, but in order to keep your options open, you need to always be assessing the state of your industry. 

And in 2019, DevSkiller was used to measure, test, and assess the skills of over 213,000 developers. 

What we learned is presented below. 

But how can you use this?

This information is an insight into what companies are looking for. You can see which skills are more in demand, and which skills are used with other skills. 

Plus, you can take a closer look at what companies in your country or after, as well as assess foreign employment opportunities. 

Let’s get into it!

JavaScript is the most in-demand IT skill of 2020

JavaScript, quite unsurprisingly, is the most used front-end language, being used in 40% of tests.

After JavaScript is SQL, Java, HTML with CSS, and .NET/C# are the 5 most popular IT skills of 2020. 

Stack Overflow’s 2019 Developer Survey found JavaScript to be the most popular language amongst professional developers. This explains why it’s so commonly used in DevSkiller coding tests. 

It’s interesting to note that these IT skills are used in a much higher percentage of tests than they were last year. This shows that generally fewer companies are looking for developers with highly specialized skills. Developers with a wide range of skills are more versatile, leading to a higher demand for developers with a wider skill set. 

While ASP .NET is used in 55% of the tests, MVC architecture is used 42% of the time and Entity Framework in 28% of cases. .NET’s open-source portable version is gaining popularity, coming in 5th position. 

CSS and HTML are together in 63% of the time

Over the last few years, we’ve seen CSS and HTML tested alongside each other more and more regularly. This trend continues this year. 

What’s most interesting about this statistic is that HTML is still treated as its own entity. 

What does that say?

That while HTML is easy to learn and use at an adequate skill level, it requires multiple other skills and loads of experience to truly master. Something to keep in mind if you’re trying to improve your employment opportunities.

Following HTML, WCAG 2.0 is used in about 25% of all CSS test. 

React, Spring, C#, MySQL, HTML, Data Analysis with Python, and Laravel are the most popular technologies in their respective tech stacks

RealLifeTestingTM allows HR recruiters to create tests in the languages that their candidates (you) will use on the job. But more importantly, it also tests their ability to understand the tools needed to successfully work with a specific stack. 

Thanks to this, we saw the following:

• React is used in 32% of JavaScript tech stack tests, followed by ES6 in 26%

• Spring appears in almost half (46%) of all JavaScript stack tests

• Unsurprisingly, C# appears in 92% of .NET tests, followed by ASP.NET at 55%

• MySQL and MSSQL appear in 37% and 35% of SQL tests respectively

• HTML makes an appearance in 63% of CSS tests but was tested separately in 2019 much more often

• Data Analysis with Python was tested in 29& of Python stack tests, followed by Django (21%)

• In PHP stacks, Laravel appeared in 28% of tests and Doctrine in 12%

Latvian developers score the highest (54.65%) on coding tests

Developers from Latvia score the highest on coding tests. The Dutch come in next (52.32%), then Italy (52.26%), Romania (51.92%), and the Dominican Republic (51.69%) round out the top 5.  

Interestingly, only 4 of the top 10 countries are outside of Europe. 

Looking a little deep, this information shows that coding tests are being used differently by recruiters. 

Recruiters are creating tests that are better suited to the role that’s being interviewed for. This is a contrast to the dying theory that coding tests are used to test the overall skills of a developer. 

In summary

The above information is regularly used by HR recruiters to assess what’s on offer in respective technical development talent pools. 

As someone who is a part of this pool, you can use the information to further your career. 

Be it increasing your soft skills, hone in on one language, or perhaps even look abroad for work, the “Top IT skills report 2020: Demand and hiring trends” can help you become some of the best talent out there. 

Author bio:

Tom Winter

Tom Winter is the CRO at DevSkiller, a developer screening & online interviews in one platform powered by RealLifeTesting™. Madly in love with everything tech, Tom specializes in streamlining the hiring process of tech talent and data-driven recruitment. He’s also an avid conference speaker.