Australia's Mexican standoff over IT training - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Australia's Mexican standoff over IT training

By Vivienne Fisher, ZDNet Australia
March 13, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Australia-s-Mexican-standoff-over-IT-training/0,139023166,120264007,00.htm

IT staff are screaming for more skills, while Australian businesses are trying to cut costsâ€"-who is going to win the stand-off over retraining IT departments?

A spokesperson for local employment Web site JobNet said that evidence seemed to imply there was a raft of jobs out there waiting to be filled.

-But the people flooding onto the employment market are not suitable to fill them," the spokesperson said.

-The pivotal problem seems to lie, most typically, with training," he said.

-There's a form of Mexican stand-off when it comes to training. Employers are worried that the more training they give their staff then the higher the risk they will be poached. But employees are asking for more to improve their skills base."

The JobNet spokesperson believed shortage of candidates proficient in J2EE, XML, and other e-commerce related skills would continue unless employers looked more at in-house training.

-There are a lot of professionals in the market with a lot of specialist skills, but employers want a more rounded pool of knowledge," he said. -Employers want jacks of all trade who are easy to train and can change disciplines as quickly as the technology changes."

But not everyone is looking at retraining as a means of staying in the IT sector.

Grant Montgomery, managing director at search company E.L Consult, said that some IT professionals are also looking at moving back to industries they worked in before moving over to IT.

Montgomery agreed that some seem to think that biotech is going to be -the next new new new thing". However, he doesn't personally believe that it will necessarily be a huge employer of IT professionals.

Likewise, Tara Daniel, customer relationship manager at IT&T Careers, said she'd heard of a lot of workers stepping outside the industry as well. -It's very tough - it's accepted in IT that you work very long hours," Daniel said. -They start to look and think, 'maybe I should try something else'."

But a spokesperson from industry body Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) said that training and retraining had always been a feature of the IT sector.

As well as adding technical skills to their personal portfolios, the AIIA spokesperson also believed that some IT professionals were skilling up in related disciplines - such as MBAs, business studies, economics and law - to broaden their skill base.