An online employment skills competition aimed at assessing the world’s technical talent pools has shown that Eastern European nations such as Romania, Latvia, Bulgaria and Belarus lead Western countries such as the U.K., Australia, Germany, and France in total certifications, according to Brainbench, an online employment assessor.
Dubbed the “Bench Games,” the competition counted more than 100,000 testing certifications spanning more than 150 countries.
As a percentage of total population, Latvia, Estonia, and Bulgaria lead the world, along with some extremely small nations such as San Marino and American Samoa, with the highest total number of certifications. Traditionally tech-savvy nations such as Singapore, Israel, and Sweden score farther down the list.
Within the U.S., Virginia, Delaware, and Vermont rank highest as a percentage of total population. Oklahoma and Kansas make the top 10, while California, and New York don’t rank in the top half.
Top-ranking nations include those with Slavic, Arabic, and Turkic majority languages, but very few of those are Asian countries other than English-influenced India, Pakistan and the Philippines.
As in 2003 and 2004, the United States, India, and the Russian Federation still lead the list in total certifications, while California and Texas are the largest overall within the U.S.
The tests are conducted in English, which according to Brainbench’s President and Chief Executive Officer Mike Russiello creates both limitations and insights. “Much of Eastern Asia – most obviously China – is missing from this picture. Of course that’s partly a test bias due to the English limitation, but many non-English-speaking countries still show up in very high numbers,” said Russiello.
“We’re used to hearing in the press about technology skills being outsourced and concentrated in Asia, primarily India,” continued Russiello. “But considering how relevant English is to things like programming languages, the strong results across nearly all of Eastern Europe are fascinating. Looking at the numbers makes you rethink some of the usual assumptions about the global workforce skills pool. And within the US, it makes you wonder if states with large non-English-speaking populations may eventually be left behind as centers of advanced skills labor sources.”