The problem, according to those prepared to snap-up failed dot-commers for new roles, is that many tech workers who shone in the dot-com galaxy still lack the fundamental business acumen necessary to make them attractive to mainstream industry.
"We rubbed our hands with glee" at the prospect of high quality staff coming into the market after the tech wreck, said Owen Baker, projects delivery manager at Australian enterprise application integration consultancy Kanbay.
The company is still struggling to find the senior consultants, business analysts and team leaders it needs, despite a hard-target search for suitable applicants.
Kanbay is currently on the hunt for -solid project managers and analysts" to fill five vacancies, along with a further four positions it anticipates will become available through an expected recovery of the IT market next year. Despite this, the company has become concerned by the lack of traditional business skills held by many of the dot-com stars it has approached to fill its staffing void.
A consultancy engaged in many long term projects, Kanbay is also unimpressed by people who rode the dot-com wave by job-hopping several times a year in pursuit of spiralling salaries, but nevertheless it did manage to find "a few technically very strong and personally mature" people among the ranks of the 'dot-bombers.'
In addition to being disappointed by the number and quality of unemployed candidates, Kanbay finds many people are unwilling to change jobs in the current uncertain climate, even with offers of increased salaries.
To get around this shortage of experienced staff, the company started a graduate recruitment and training program that Baker said is already yielding "quality solutions, happy customers and good revenues."
The US experience is also mixed. Robin Purohit, vice president of product management at software house, Veritas, refers to a "lost generation" of former dot-com employees who are now out of work and finding it very difficult to secure new jobs because their titles and salaries shot too far ahead of their skills and experience.
On the other side of the coin are companies like Neulevel -- the company operating the new .biz domain name registry -- which was able to hire some "great staff" as a result of the dot-com fallout, according to its CEO, Doug Armentrout.
Another issue in the IT labour market is the apparent glut of older staff who were retrenched after the completion of Y2K projects or following the retirement of legacy systems.
While Kanbay doesn't discount the value of older candidates -- it recently hired an "over 40" former contractor for his experience in managing technical staff and is giving him the opportunity to refresh his technical skills -- Baker finds many of them lack management skills and have been stuck in a single technology area that is no longer in demand.
It's been said before, but the moral is clear: don't get pigeonholed in an outdated specialty, even if you have to change employer to gain new and marketable skills. A short-term drop in salary might be necessary, but that's generally better than becoming nearly unemployable in a year or two.
Additional writing by Cass Warneminde
