Recruiters for the UK’s creative and cultural industries have given a mixed response to a report that there was there was a lack of people with the rights skills in the sector.

The internal report by Cultural Skills, the sector skills council for the sector, found that there were particular shortages of make-up artists, set designers and wardrobe specialists, despite nearly 700,000 people studying creative and cultural courses at universities and colleges. 

Stefan Ciecierski, European managing director at Aquent, told Recruiter that he agreed with the report’s findings that there was lack of people with the right skills.  “Our research show that as many people leave the creative professions fairly soon after graduation as continue,” he explained.

He said the two main reasons people left were a lack of status and lower salaries compared to professions such as IT and finance, as well as the lack of a recognised career path to the top echelons of management. “That’s why the people who have the skills won’t stay in the creative industries.”

However, Chris Timms, a director of Stage Jobs Pro, a job board told Recruiter: “I don’t think there is too much of a mismatch. There are a lot of skilled people out there, if you know where to look.”

Dominic Berry from job board London Theatre Jobs Team, said the problem wasn’t a shortage of people with the right skills, but because so many jobs were notified by word of mouth they often went to people already in work, at the expense of a new person with more skills.