Searching out talent
However, managing director of Melbourne-based recruitment consultant Humanity, Caroline van Til, takes a more scientific approach.
She says her own research has shown that IT people generally do not read newspapers and do not frequent the same job Web sites as the rest of the job-seeking population. They have to be hunted in their natural habitatâ€"universities, Internet cafes, professional organisations, chat rooms in sites deemed cool and in networking groups.
-You have to go where they hang out," she asserts.
The chances of finding the skills and experience the employer wants are still slim.
-Even when you find the people you need, they want an incredible amount of money because they know they are so much in demand," van Til says. -Invariably a lot of smaller or newer companies do not have the capital to be able to invest in that kind of talent.
-Companies tend to get very young applicants who can program, but have no commercial experience. But they sit down in front of the employer with four contracts and say 'well, I've been offered this, this, this and thisâ€"what are you offering?' " van Til believes employers are saying, -Hell, we don't want to have to go through this every time we want to employ someone". But the skills are very scarce and our universities are not turning out technically proficient people quick enough.
-Employers are seeking maturity that does not exist because the skills have not been around that long. It is a very unusual circumstance," says van Til.
Who should you employ?
Ironically, as more people become available as a result of the dot-com crash, employers have become wary of employing them. According to van Til, this is a credibility issue. -Employers are saying to themselves 'do I want to employ somebody from a company that has crashed?'. There may be no foundation to itâ€"the person may not have been responsible in anyway for the collapseâ€"but employers are wary."
Recruitment companies play down claims that the IT industry is rife with staff poaching. However, it is hard to deny that employers sometimes go to great lengths to lure staff away from other companies. It is one of the reasons why many skilled IT workers with 10 years or more experience have changed jobs on average every two years.
Executive director of IT training and HR consulting organisation Spherion, Peter Johns, says he doesn't think the IT industry is any more prone to staff poaching than accounting, finance or banking.
Johns explains that there is a difference between the IT industry and other sectors. He says that if you look at the resume of a bright 30 to 35 year-old IT person they have probably had five jobs. And the employer who is looking to take them on for the next job would expect them to have had that number of jobs. -It simply means they have moved and enhanced their technology and got new skills. In other industries if you said you had had five jobs in 10 years employers would say you have moved around too much."
However, this frequent turnover of staff makes having the right retention strategy just as, if not more important, than finding the staff in the first place.
Coping with a crisis
It is a problem that has been highlighted by industry analysts IDC. Michael Boyd, program manager for IDC's human resourcing strategies research program, says companies not only have to deal with a momentous lack of skilled IT workers, they also have to learn how to manage a significantly changing workforce.
Boyd says the way work will be accomplished this millennium will be very different than in the past because of a very different workforce.
-Generation Xers don't seem willing to make the traditional commitment to a business enterprise and work as the highest priority in life, and baby-boomers are leaving the corporate life at an increasing rate. Their relationship with a company is based more on an individual than a group agreement. Only those firms that understand and meet the expectations and needs of workers at the individual level will continue as long-term business entities," says Boyd.
Ironically, while the IT industry is synonymous with high paying jobs, remuneration is not the highest priority for workers. Instead, it is often things like having access to the latest technology or lifestyle benefits that will rank equally or ahead of a fat pay packet.
Johns says IT workers are most excited about the technology platform.
-It does not come down to money or the size of their office or any of the things that might be important in other industries. The key criteria for an IT worker is staying fluid and alive with technology that is changing quickly. They are very much focussed on staying ahead of the pack, what they are going to be working on and what the technology outcome is. Then it is about how the organisation is going to implement the project they have been employed for and how they are going to make it work from a business point of view.
-Technology people have moved very much into the core of business rather than being adjunct or a service centre. They very much see themselves as making a difference to how a business operates and I think the organisations that are succeeding in keeping good people are those that understand their people need to see the technology being utilised and being successful," he says.
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.