Dennis Tebbut, the company's Australian Managing Director and Chair of the Australian Computing Society Foundation's NSW Chapter, says the program has successfully assisted several developers to upskill.
-We have found it has revitalised people and their businesses," he says. InterSystems' willingness to work with people making a career change is shared by other employers, who recognise the achievement that certification or degrees represent but don't rule out candidates whose background is less conventional.
-I would not be so elitist as to exclude people who have not been to university or do not have a compuer science degree," says Peter Menadue, Dimension Data's National Business Manager for Application Integration. -We would not necessarily exclude someone who started writing some code while they were in an unrelated occupation and went through a career sea change. But there has to be some structure and discipline involved, because programming is not just a skill, and it's funny how people with a more formal background can often have a deeper understanding of all the considerations required to create a really good solution."
For Menadue, quality also means an understanding of business issues, which he labels -commercial maturity."
-Development today is not just about writing code by yourself at three in the morning while eating cold pizza," he says. -It is about understanding how to develop and test to make software that is easy to maintain," so that it meets a business' needs for many years into the future.
Ambition's Bianchini says this kind of long-term view demonstrates a profound change in the job market for developers that has made business skills as important to a developer's career prospects as the ability to quickly cut clean code. -Soft" skills are also increasingly important, as few employers will tolerate surly coders who rely on technical skills alone.
-We see a very strong trend of employers looking for competencies like customer service over and above technical skills," she says. -Because technology is now blended into the business, you also need to be a very good team player with influencing skills and a good customer service ethic." Universities increasingly include training for these skills as part of their courses, while private educators even offer standalone courses to complement their technology offerings.
-We often see very highly qualified people, even people with tertiary qualifications, come to us for soft skills training," says Campbell Johnston, general manager of Computer Power Institute of Technology. -The days are gone of being a purely technical person," he adds. -What differentiates an effective software developer is that they are someone who can work within the formal discipline of software development, but not follow it so blindly that they create software that doesn't meet a business' needs."
And to deliver on that need, candidates need to be flexible, a trait Dimension Data's Menadue rates above all others.
-Sometimes you'll meet someone that might not even be familiar with formal coding practices or methodologies," he says. -But they clearly have an ability to grow and learn and stretch into other areas. Those sort of people are worth their weight in gold."
Very frustrating! I have applied for more than 20 jobs with on 1 job interview. I am lack of experience to get a job. To get a job, I need to have experinece! What the hell!
So, I finally do something myself and build the first Australian Online Auction site which has potential to beat eBay. Nobody want to see my capability, so I prove this to myself. I will hire people instead of being hired!
www.OZtion.com.au is coming .......watch out eBay!