Apparently there is a skills shortage in IT...

Actually it is more like businesses in general won't take risks when hiring people... This makes it especially difficult for people entering the industry but also causes issues for more experienced IT professionals who may have a broader range of skills but not the in depth skills the employer is looking for right now. So how can you tilt your job application in your favour? Well, in the same vein as one recruiter said to me, 'you need to be more active online'... and how can new IT professionals do that? By using GitHub and GitLab to document their contributions to open source projects and build an online portfolio of work to show prospective employers.

Unfortunately GitHub was bought by Microsoft and has become somewhat tainted amongst the community but, as with everything else, there are alternatives like GitLab. And don't think that vaid contributions are restricted to developers... the community is desperately short of people who can document these projects and provide help and support as well as how to integrate various projects to deliver an overall service to a business.