Looking for solutions
Some big companies are tackling the skills problem at the source, by partnering with universities and providing specialised graduate programs. This gives them the pick of the graduates and allows the students to begin their industry-specific training as part of their university degree. While this approach is a long-term solution, it is not necessarily a viable one for small to medium sized companies which have neither the time nor the budget.
Nor do SMEs always have the big budget to outsource their recruitment requirements to an agency which may charge the equivalent of between 15 and 22 per cent of the salary of the workers they find for employment.
However, it is important to seek advice before they go ahead with their e-commerce project.
Brad Argent, who heads up Web developer Spike, says many of the dot-com collapses were a case of the employer not knowing that what was being done by their IT staff was wrong.
-It is always a challenge to find the right skills particularly in the Internet arena, because you are not drawing on an extensive body of knowledge as you would if you were looking for a COBOL programmer or a mainframe administrator."
According to Argent, the first problem any company wanting to get onto the Internet faces is cost. Despite a 30 per cent drop in demand, IT people are still expensive.
Use your own Web site
While there are several ways of finding staffâ€"such as going through the standard recruitment processâ€"one of the cheapest methods is to use your company's existing Web site.
-That will automatically give you a filtering process, because if somebody applies for a job online at least you know they use the Internet," Argent says.
The site can be used for carrying out much of the recruitment process, from receiving an applicant's CV to carrying out psychometric tests before there has to be any face-to-face interview with the prospective employee.
Argent backs up his advice with statistics from the US, where analysts estimate that hiring an employee via the Web costs an average of US$183 per employee compared to US$1383 through traditional recruiting channels.
Saving time
One of the best examples of a company using the Net for employment is Cisco Systems which last year hired 66 per cent of all its new employees and received 81 per cent of all resumes via the Net, cutting the average time taken to fill a job from 113 days to 45 days.
And that, says Argent, can have a major impact on productivity.
One of the other advantages of using the Web is that it is reaching a global market and while the skills being sought might not be available in Australia, they may be found in Ireland, UK, Europe or the United States.
Peter Stokes, business development manager for tmp Worldwide in Brisbane, agrees with the online strategy.
-You absolutely have to be online," he says. -You must have an Internet strategy for finding your staff. The majority of our applications come across the Net because people in the IT sector are more Internet savvy."
However, he admits that it still may not find the staff you are looking for.
-What you find with Internet employment portals is that the people they attract are the ones who are looking for work," Stokes says. -It may be that the person or people you want are already employed, which is when you may need to call in a recruitment consultant."
A pox on this continued garbage of a "skills shortage". There are thousands of skilled I.T. people who used to live in Australia, who are now working elsewhere in the world. Why? Because the "managers" in Australia get the latest technology but REFUSE to train anybody, and expect fully skilled people to roll up to their door. People with experience, who'd take a couple of days to get on with the job, are refused by know-nothing "agents" who demand "must have". Result? an unemployed person, and a client screaming "skills shortage". And if you're over 40, you're a dinosaur, can't do this new stuff. Absolutely pathetic!
Explain to me why there is not a "skills shortage" in Europe, and why there are Australians working over here? Yes, I am one of them.
The sooner the recruitment "industry" is dispensed with, the sooner this lunacy will dissipate, and then maybe Australia will become an I.T. country, instead of the global idiot!
I despair.