zt - There is no tech skills crisis, say IT chiefs

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There is no tech skills crisis, say IT chiefs
By Steve Ranger, April 16, 2012, 9:17 AM PDT

Takeaway: There is no widespread skills shortage, says TechRepublic’s CIO Jury - but IT workers with business skills are hard to find.

It often claimed we are suffering from an IT skills crisis, with employers struggling to find properly trained and experienced candidates to fill IT roles.

But could it be that the skills crisis is over - or perhaps was a myth to start with? Academics have pointed to a steady unemployment rate - and wages - among IT professionals, which suggests the skills shortage may not be as widespread as is often thought.

And when asked “do you think there is an IT skills crisis?” TechRepublic’s exclusive panel of tech leadesr voted ‘no’ by a margin of seven to five.

For many CIOs it seems that basic IT skills are easily available, even if they report candidates with cutting edge tech skills and business understanding remain in short supply.

Some IT chiefs do still see a general shortage of good candidates: Mike Roberts, IT director at The London Clinic “There is a significant lack of relevant training at all levels. We need more people with practical experience.”

And Shaun Beighle, CIO at the International Republican Institute said while there are plenty of candidates, they lack experience and qualifications: “When we post an opening for an IT position, even a senior IT position, we’re flooded with the resumes of people whose only work experience includes a coffee shop and perhaps a retail store.”

College graduates with unrealistic salary expectations and a lack of real world knowledge are another issue, he said: “Despite going through the gauntlet of getting those degrees, which is very commendable, if you sit them down in from of a server they can’t even tell you what a NAT is.”

Looking to the future, Michael Spears, CIO at NCCI Holdings, warned there could be trouble ahead, especially when it comes to filling junior roles: “IT enrolment in universities appears to be significantly lower than just five years ago. This tells me the problem ahead lies with entry-level positions.”

With the decline in entry level jobs, thanks to automation and the offshoring of some more junior roles to destinations such as India, IT workers have been encouraged to boost their business skills. But it appears this is still an area that many candidates are falling down.

Kelly Bodway, VP of IT Universal Lighting Technologies: “Potential staff members have the technical skills but lack the integration with business skills. We have evolved to this over the last 20 years by focusing on developing the technical skill base but missed the ’so what’ portion of the education and skill development.”

New technologies including the cloud will mean the skills crisis becomes less of an issue, said Kevin Quealy, director of information services and facilities for Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia. “There may be some specific, niche areas of IT that are lacking in skills but overall I think it’s not a big issue. On the flip side IT continues to be more streamlined, standardised, and easier for the non-technical professional. This, combined with more cloud service, should decrease the need for professional IT training in a lot of areas.”

Rob Neil, head of business change and technology at Ashford Borough Council, said a bigger issue is the perception that most IT jobs are now graduate positions: “The profession does not need to be a 100 per cent graduate profession by any stretch of the imagination,” he said.

“Couple that with degree level IT/computing courses concentrating on more commodity areas of the subject (at the expense of theoretical underpinnings) and you end up with a workforce that is skilled in some areas but without the supporting in-depth understanding that is required.

He added: “Don’t get me started on the shockingly poor level of report writing and other business skills exhibited by graduates.”

Jeff Cannon, IT director of Fire & Life Safety America said it remains hard to find staff with a high level of skills across multiple disciplines.

“More often, I find someone very skilled in programming, or security, or networking, or customer service/helpdesk, exchange, etc, but fewer people that are really good at all of them.  People confuse that with a lack of skillsets. There’s so much to learn, retain and keep up with that today’s IT disciplines require a degree of specialization - hence, the push for cloud computing and outsourcing.”

He said there is also a shortage of experience: “Just because a person happened to build a ‘Hello World’ app over the weekend does not qualify him/her as a developer.  Likewise, just because an employee successfully completed bootcamp and passed a Cisco or Microsoft exam doesn’t mean he/she will be turned loose on my network.”

David Wilson, director of IT Services at Vector CSP put the blame on managers for making bad hiring decisions: “There is a decided lack of IT understanding and knowledge in the administrative and operational branches of companies that can lead to under-hiring of IT talent, or mismanaged IT.”

Gavin Megnauth, director of operations and group IT at Morgan Hunt: “There isn’t a skills crisis for those organisations that have embraced both outsourcing and offshoring models with regard to how they obtain the skills they need. The supply of IT talent on a global basis is readily available and competitively priced compared to onshore skills.  The supply of either infrastructure provision and management or development expertise is increasingly becoming a “utility” to enterprises.