With a general decline in IT skills, the jobs market needs a shake-up to attract specialists.
Irish businesses are finding it increasingly challenging to find suitably qualified candidates to fill information technology (IT) vacancies, due to a skills shortage in the market.
“There is a skills shortage across the board,” said David Burke, infrastructure services team leader with Rescon.
“It is an extremely candidate-driven market at the moment and has been for the last 18 months. People have options and there is a lot of work out there. There is a large shortfall in sui candidates.”
Burke said 22 per cent of companies that responded to Rescon's biannual IT salary survey, to be published later this month, said they had difficulty sourcing and attracting IT specialists with specific industry and emerging technology experience.
According to Burke, there was a particular shortage of skilled software development candidates with experience in web-enabled applications and languages.
“The trend over the last few years, after the dotbomb crash, is for web-enabled, interface-driven programmes and applications,” said Burke.
“People are not just browsing the internet, they are interfacing with quite complex applications and tems in the background. So, from the technology side, the focus is all going towards web-enabled technologies. Where that comes in is Java, J2EE and Microsoft .Net.”
According to Peter Kirby of Eolas Recruitment, the increasingly close links between IT and business means companies are trying to find senior people who can understand and manage both.
“There is also a serious skills shortage in the business analysis and tems analysis arenas,” said Kirby.
“That is a very broad area, it depends on what sort of business you have, but the skillset is very generic. They are looking for strong business people to work on projects, with analysis skills.
“It involves requirement gathering, organising workshops between IT and the business, and gathering information about how to put tems together. A lot of organisations are looking for serious strong skills in this area.”
Burke said a significant trend in the market was that companies were looking for their support staff to come with a certain amount of development skills. This was coming from the potential for customisation and optimisation within many newer applications. According to Burke, people with the skills to bridge both these areas were difficult to find.
“Supporting an application may now mean that you need to go in and customise the code or if there is a problem be able to perhaps make some changes,” he said. Someone who just does support is not going to have the skills to be able to do this. Alternatively, a developer is not going to want to take a position that is focused on support.”
Retraining and Upskilling
Ross Bolton, sales manager with SureSkills, said some people in the IT sector were comfor where they are and did not see the need to continually upgrade their skills.
“I have noticed that there are a lot of people out there who are not particularly well trained, demanding bigger salaries than they were a number of years ago,” he said.
Kirby said that from a recruitment point of view, people should be continuously looking to improve their skillset.
“We would love to see people more and more do retraining,” said Kirby.
“We do not see enough of that, a lot of people are staying where they are, but their skills are a bit redundant for us. If they got themselves reskilled, they would probably get a new job and more money.”
Mark Kuhne, regional manager with Manpower Ireland, said that a certain amount of inertia within larger IT departments meant that staff were not getting experience in using newer technologies.
“You have people working perhaps in government institutions or in large banks where mainframes are still used to a certain extent,” he said.
“If you are purely based around the older technologies, then it would be more difficult to find those guys jobs.”
Kirby said some IT managers were wary of upskilling their staff too quickly.
“If they bring in new technology they will train for it, but if they do not, they will not,” he said.
“The problem is the person might move elsewhere where they can use that.”
Certification
Kuhne said that one way candidates can impress potential employers is to equip themselves with the relevant certifications in their position.
“Companies tend to look for people with professional certifications,” he said.
“Experience alone would not necessarily be enough.”
A wide range of certification is available, covering a huge range of different competencies within the IT sector.
“The Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) programme offers multiple certifications, based on different areas of technical expertise,” said Burke.
“To attain these certifications, a candidate must pass a series of exams within the program.”
Other vendors have their own certification programmes, including Sun, Red Hat Oracle, Cisco and Apple. Burke said that taking the time to progress through these certification programmes can really pay off for IT professionals.
“Salaries for Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts (CCIE) are up around €80,000 or €90,000, regardless of how much experience they have,” said Burke.
“For example, if I am a network engineer and come straight out of college and then spend the next five or six years pursuing these certifications to the top level, my salary can jump to the level of someone who has been in the business for15 or 20 years, but has not pursued that certification.”
Senior IT staff, who are looking to improve their opportunities for career progression, can obtain certification to show they have project management skills.
“Service level management people might do the likes of ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) practitioner, or manager-type certification, where they follow with a service-management certification in addition to their hardcore IT certification,” Bolton said.
Bolton said employees are generally keen to improve their skills and gain certifications.
“Generally speaking, people are enthusiastic about taking a course,” he said.
“Whether it is technical or applications-type training, people do not see it as a punishment - they see it as a way of bettering themselves.”
Burke said some individuals pay the costs of their own training or certification, while others can persuade their company to cover the course fees.
“If you can do a cost benefit analysis for your employer and show that your certification will help you perform your job better, they will generally cough up,” he said.
“Some will pay for a portion, others will expect the employee to pay up front and then compensate them if they pass the exam.”
Skills shortage Kirby said there were historical reasons why the Irish IT labour market was tight at present.
“We had a huge flux of graduates, back in1999 and 2000,’'said Kirby.
“IT was the in-thing, it was the way to go. We find now that a lot of them went into IT, but did not have an interest in it. There was then a fall in the sector in 2001 to 2003, and that put a lot of students off and now we are finding a lack of grads coming out now. There is a cycle in everything, and a lot of lecturers and career guidance people are telling students to get back into IT. We will probably see that flux in another two or three years.”
In the meantime, companies will continue to look abroad for candidates to fill positions in their IT departments, said Kirby.
“We go abroad to fill gaps,” he said.
“We look for anybody that is eligible to work in Ireland. It is getting increasingly more difficult to go outside the EU now, because of the new greencard tem that came in January 2007.”
Burke said the presence of foreign workers was now unremarkable in the Irish IT sector.
“I think most employers in Ireland have now had at least one successful experience with a European employee working out very well,” he said.
“Roughly 15 per cent of Rescon's placements this year have been non-Irish nationals.”
Kirby said that generally non-Irish candidates fitted seamlessly into place within Irish companies.
“IT is IT across the world,” said Kirby. “All the main technologies come from the US, so the way development is done is generic right around the world.”
One way that IT departments can deal with the lack of available skills is to outsource work to other locations or countries. Burke said that this typically took place in non-core or lower level roles and responsibilities.
“What we have in Ireland is highly skilled, trained workers,” he said.
“What larger companies especially will do is outsource positions a bit further down the chain, for example call centres and support of their services. Companies have found that if they outsource the development function or core IT functions of their business, they cannot control the productivity or manage the process as closely.”
Salaries
In a tight labour market the law of supply and demand holds sway.
“We are seeing an increase in salaries across the IT sector of 10 to 20 per cent in the last twelve months,” said Kirby.
“When there is a shortage, you have to pay extra. We see situations with offers and counter-offers which can push up salaries considerably.”
However, Burke said individuals had to be realistic about what was potentially available.
“Candidates can have an exaggerated expectation of their value,” he said.
“Ireland is still a small community. People talk and the ‘Chinese whispers' effect means people feel they have a right to demand far inflated increases. A large part of what we do at the moment is to educate and manage peoples' expectations.”
Graduates
Kirby said most of the larger employers still saw the third-level education sector as a most useful source of skills, and continued to attract the best graduates.
“There is a huge emphasis on good people getting good results,” he said.
“Good grads who come out with a first or a 2.1 tend to walk into positions because of the milk runs, where the big companies all go around the colleges.”
Those considering a career in IT should look for third-level courses that are focused on the requirements of the Irish IT marketplace, said Kirby.
“Software development is the big one,” he said.
“In my opinion, people on the IT side should try to specialise in mathematical and physics-based courses.”
Bolton said that moving from a third-level degree into the professional certification structure is generally relatively straightforward.
“There is obviously still a learning curve,” he said. “Most people would have done some general IT within their course, but it would not be within a particular technology.”
Who is hiring?
The market is being squeezed both by large enterprise-level organisations and smaller businesses who are looking to expand.
“The larger multinational-type companies, the blue chips - there is a steady demand from those,” said Kuhne.
“We have several start-up organisations that are looking to expand to the next level.”
Kirby said skills shortages in certain areas were always going to occur, given the always-evolving nature of the IT sector.
“IT is always changing,” said Kirby.
“Microsoft, Sun and all the big technology organisations will be bringing out their newest development language in two or three years' time. IT would not be IT if it was not always changing. People are always coming up with better ideas and staff have to get reskilled all the time. There will always be skills shortages somewhere.”
Will Web 2.0 revolutionise the internet?
Web 2.0, the loudly trumpeted second-generation of web technology that includes such zeitgeisty features and concepts as blogs, podcasts, youtube, myspace and bebo, is said in some quarters to be revolutionising the way people produce and consume information through the world wide web.
“Web 2.0 can be a vague, broad and nebulous termwhich has come tomean lots of things to lots of different people,” said social media consultant Tom Raftery.
Raftery said businesses are increasingly seeing the importance of both internal and external facing blogs.
“Internal blogs are a phenomenal way for companies to share information within the company,” said Raftery.
“People who are in similar job roles but do not get to meet up and talk very often, can start sharing war stories through internal blogs and share solutions to problems they have come across.”
Raftery said individuals within an organisation could use their blogs to advertise their skills to colleagues and managers.
“It is a fantastic way for employees to promote their expertise within the company,” he said.
“The flip side of that is that if they are bluffing they will be found out very quickly.” Raftery said external-facing web 2.0 technologies were also increasingly being used by Irish businesses.
“External-facing blogs, podcasts and videocasts are a great way for a company to humanise itself,” said Raftery.
“Blogs are also a fantastic way for companies to get product feedback on their current product set and also on products that are in development.”
However, Peter Kirby of Eolas Recruitment, said these kinds of web 2.0 technologies are not having too big an effect on the type of skills that Irish businesses are looking to bring to their IT departments.
“People have been talking about multimedia through the web for a long time, it is just now that it is being marketed better,” he said.
“Blogs and podcasts are more for people who are not necessarily IT professionals.”
David Burke, infrastructure services team lead with Rescon, said that web 2.0-type skills in demand were not particularly those involved with hyped consumer web technologies such as podcasts and blogs.
“These are not for recreational activities, these would be business applications and functions,” he said.
Burke said candidates with existing development experience were upskilling to take advantage of particular new opportunities in the web 2.0 area.
“You would have people who have worked on client server applications in C++or Visual Basic and they would now try and move towards C# or Visual Basic.net, which are the web-enabled extensions of that previous coding,” he said.
Kirby said web-design skills were not really in demand from Irish businesses at present.
“Web design is not brain science, it is very much copy and paste these days,” he said. “It is a far cry from what development is.”
Raftery is presently running a web 2.0 training course for the IT@Cork group. He said most people taking the course were not IT professionals.
“It is a basic enough course, bringing people up to speed on blogs, podcasts and videocasts'‘ he said.
“It is very much aimed at beginners, people who know very little about these tools and technologies. A lot of the training is about best practices and procedures, as opposed to anything at all to do with coding or programming. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use a blog.”
