ICT leaders can overcome the skills shortage

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ICT leaders can overcome the skills shortage Warwick Davenport -- 16/07/07

I think your last paragraph is the key to staff retention. Its about a career. When faced with high HECS and high house prices people want a career. Companies often refuse to train staff as they might leave. This is a false economy as the investment is often repaid with loyalty. Not training staff and not providing a career path is a sure fired way to get staff to leave. The other way to reduce staff retention is to pay new staff more than the existing staff. This is often done in the larger outsourcing companies. Staff members quickly learn to switch jobs to get a pay rise.
It needs leadership to shake off the accountants and return ICT to its traditional career based employment model.

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ICT leaders can overcome the skills shortage Anonymous -- 19/07/07 (in reply to #320082831)

I agree and would add that some of the expectations that management have for IT staff are ridiculous. I don't know how many job adds I have read that ask for a degree, many years experience and more certifications than you can poke a stick at. All this and not a word about training or a career path.
As an example an add for one of the large banks required a University Degree, MCSE, Unix Training at a high level, CISCO certification, ITIL at the level of Foundation certificate or better, Java development experience, extensive JavaScript and VB scripting experience and the list goes on. With requirements like this they must get very disappointed as there are few people who could satisfy the essential criteria or they get applicants who have no idea and just apply.
Here is a tip why not write realistic job adds with realistic expectations and then you might just get applicants who can do the job.
.

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Spot on there Anonymous -- 19/07/07 (in reply to #320083029)

your spot on there and all those certs at the employees expense.....

unfortunately a lot of IT jobs are gatewayed by dumb **** recruiters who donte have a friggin clue.. and wouldnt last a day in a real IT job..

i hope one day an IT skills shortage really does hit - who the frig would want to do IT as a career now anyway - and the tables are turned and IT people can really put the knife in....

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Skills Shortage Anonymous -- 01/08/07 (in reply to #320083034)

Try stupid HR concepts such as Cultural fit and age discrimination which is certaInly rife in sunny Queensland plus recruiters' policy of giving the young people a go whether they can do it or nor. Management is actually locking out a whole skilled generation who built what we've got.. Get rid of the bigots and cull the power of HR Departments

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Skills Shortage Ian McDermid -- 02/08/07 (in reply to #320083678)

You are spot on. I am also in Queensland and cannot get past the recruitment "consultants".

Anyone over 55, in their opinion is past it and cannot possibly know anything. The experience and judgment found in older workers is being wasted by people who have no idea about what skills are valuable.

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Skills Shortage Anonymous -- 08/08/07 (in reply to #320083825)

I agree that IT recruiters are a big part of the skills shortage problem - and not just because of age discrimination. I've found their level of experience and professionalism to be generally woeful. If you are lucky enough to be looking for a specialised role with a very well defined skillset, they might just manage to help you. But if you are a generalist and need to get into discussions on transferrable skills, forget it.

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Too old Raymond Morley -- 04/02/08 (in reply to #320083825)

Do you know Laurie Preston in Clontarf,

He arrange my first interview with ICT

Ray

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Too old Raymond Morley -- 04/02/08 (in reply to #320083825)

Must be too old. I do not think you received my first mail, so.

Joined ICT in 1961.
Worked in Bribane for six months, decimialisation.
Worked in Melborne 68 to 69 for ICT/ICL

Retired when 50, lost years with the demised ICL.

Now in Kenya running my own ICT business.

At the young age of 63, my skills and experience are appreciated here. I am un-employerable else where.

Ray
Worked

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IT Leaders can overcome skills shortage Anonymous -- 02/08/07

Attitudes need to change against older workers. I have over 30 years experience in the industry, but am rejected by recruiters, they never answer my applications.

I still have a lot to offer, but cannot attract any interest even though I have top notch references.

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IT is a tough business Anonymous -- 03/08/07

I do not doubt the figures, in fact I would say they are lower than I would have thought given the nature of working in IT. Consider:

Education / certification expectations
Unrealistic experience expectations
Unsocial hours
Wildly varying pay rates
Customer demands
Management demands

This is before you consider that the nature of IT means you always have to learn - none of this getting in a comfort zone and chilling out for the next 15 years - learn or be left behind.

It is a tough call to lay all this at the feet of managers but it is also correct to do so. As managers we have to step up and try to address these issues.

If I was to suggest a solution it would be to try to educate the non IT workforce as to the challenges we face.

We are expected to know everything to do with every computer and every application and we are expected to fix it now - this is what leads to pressure on managers and this often flows down to the staff.

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ICT Management tony -- 08/08/07

In my experience of decades in the IT industry, ICT management is often very poor and shows little leadership. It's often an example of the 'Peter Principle" - IT people get promoted in the hierarchy until they reach their level of incompetence.

Few have specific training in management of ICT, let alone staff and often don't have clue how to treat people or look after staff or look after the company's precious skills base (too often locked up inside someone's head).

The problem is exacerbated by tendency of many IT specialists to be lacking in social or communication skills (or at least to focus on technology at the expense of all else). Perhaps not a bad trait in an IT specialist, but a recipe for disaster in a manager...

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We need to make IT sexy again Anonymous -- 09/08/07

Having worked in the ICT industry for more than 30 years, that last comment is especially true for me. The techies of the 80s and 90s have almost been pushed into IT stereotypes and havenâ??t been given the opportunities to develop in other areas, like social or communication skills. Well guess what, these people are now managers.

So what are we really trying to address here? We need to fundamentally change how ICT, as a career, is viewed. We need to make it sexy again. ICT workers need to have the support of not only their managers, but the business community. This starts by providing adequate funding for training so the focus is on the career, not just a job.

Is the ICT industryâ??s staff retention issue due to the poor quality of leadership in our sector? I think the issues are wider than that. It is due to rapidly changing expectations of businesses and somehow, the workers have been forgotten

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ICT lack people skills Anonymous -- 17/08/07

Like some of the previous writer I also have over 30 years experience in IT. In my experience a major part of the problem is the promotion of some highly skilled technical people into management roles that they are not mentally suited for. In my experience the majority of really good techs lack people skills yet get prompted to management (where they need good people skills) because its the natural career path.

A manager who lacks people skills (an in some cases actually hates dealing with people issues) tend to become fixated with the end result. They micro manage. Become unrealist about work loads, and think everyone else should be the same social outcast and workaholic that they are. I've worked for some that refuse to take holidays because they are so obsessed with the job.

Why would anyone who wanted a realist work life balance ever want to work for these people.

Also re the age thing. One of the problems I come up against (I'm 50 this year), is that some younger people seems to be willing to promise anything or deadline. Whereas I've seem the disasters this can cause and generally have a more realistic view of what can be done in what time frame. Unfortunately some people view a realistic outlook as being a negative 'no can do' rather than being 'realistic outcome focussed'.

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Leaders? What leaders? Andy Goss -- 28/08/07

The last big IT department I worked in had a forward-looking and credible CIO. But nobody seemed to pay any attention to him, while he talked about flattening the structure and getting rid of silos, the managers under him invented new layers of management and reinforced the "team", that is to say "silo" imperative.
I entered the field in the days when ICT meant Internation Computers and Tabulators, whose badge was still on the card readers. I left when I allowed my skills to become obsolete, by which time IT was no longer any fun. A couple of years ago I was talking to a careers advisor, who told me that programming had just been officially demoted from "creative" to "clerical".
I found, during my last IT job, that the idea of training anybody for anything significant was not comprehensible, and that collating the existing skills base was a definite no-no. Even access to manuals was effectively denied, resulting in extraordinary ignorance of our everyday tools, such as the OS, even in people who had been using it all their working lives.
I'm out of it now, doing something much more amusing, but very much computer-based. I wonder, if someone phoned me with a VME or VMS job, would I be tempted?

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