Threatening the economy?
If any of you are enthralled at my stories of travelling all over the world it may interest you to know that we are hiring. You would need a background in either consultancy or the telecoms industry (fixed or mobile operator, or a telco manufacturer for example) and be willing to spend up to 60% of your time travelling. Up your street? Then drop me a line. Going through me is especially important as there is a referral scheme in operation here.
Interestingly none of last four people that we hired to the consulting group came from Ireland. There were two from the UK, one from Canada and one from Malaysia. Why is that? Because we can’t find qualified people in Ireland. There seems to be a serious shortage of good people with IT skills. And it is not just in my current job I am finding this. Back when I was still working for Accenture we struggled to find Programmers, DB Admins and IT Project Managers. We were recruiting directly from the UK or Eastern Europe to try to fill vacancies. There seems to be a serious shortage of talent out there.
Now twice a year my mother helps out in UL supervising exams. During the week she supervised the Graduate Diploma in Computer Engineering exam. This is the course I did from 1998 to 1999 when I decided I wanted to get out of manufacturing and into IT. When I did it there were 28 students. This year there was 1!
From what I am hearing low take up is a problem across a range of IT and technical courses. And this is leading to the shortages of qualified Irish people in the market. What is particularly disturbing is why there is such a drop off. The guy my mother was supervising gave the same story that I have heard elsewhere for why there are less and less people doing these courses – because their career guidance teachers told them there was no future in it in Ireland.
This is absolutely crazy. It seems that on the basis of a few scare stories about the Chinese and Indians an entire sector of the Irish economy is being throttled by this group of people. I am not sure where they are getting their information from but someone needs to set the record straight with school kids making career decisions and CAO choices.
This country will continue to need well qualified “techies” for the economy for some time. These are excellent service jobs with a bright future. So would someone tell the career guidance counsellors to stop threatening the future of the IT industry in Ireland!
7 comments SK | General, The rest of the world
What happened to all that talk of separating your blog from your work?!
just on the note of finding qualified people etc etc etc…You work in the industry…you should know that “IT industry” is unspeakably broad as a label. Take me, for example. I’m hopelessly not qualified for either your consulting or telco roles despite 7 years experience in mission critical IT systems and some postgraduate qualifications in same. I’ll bet you’d be useless in my role though.
You also want experienced people. No matter how many IT grads are coming out of the college, they won’t fit your profile either. This is what happens – to some extent – when employment in a sector tightens up – the supply fills with inexperienced staff but demand is limited to experience..and cos there’s a nominal excess of supply over demand, you find yourself in your position. In truth, you need to start looking at hiring in at bottom level and giving the experience rather than exploiting it.
On the subject of the numbers doing IT – I can’t swear to it but if guidance counsellors are saying “no future” it would be interesting, economically, to find out what they are saying does have a future. It couldn’t all be construction. The truth is people should also have an eye on what they are interested in, not just on “what’ll make me more money”. Aptitude rather than greed should be a key indicator. That it often isn’t is a reflection of our society.
Guidance Counsellors have two jobs for females:
Nursing
Hair Dressing
I can’t speak for male student recommentations. I did myself a favour in school. I ignored the guidance counsellor the school had to offer. I went to the guidance counsellor in the university I was applying to. She asked me what I was interested in. That is the most important thing.
It’s hard to believe the current generation aren’t interested in studing computer science, or telecoms or engineering. Its hard to believe guidance counsellors have a bigger influence over fifth and sixth year students than their parents.
Who knows why they aren’t taking up these courses.
In my case it was marketing tbh. But I still went off and did translation and interpreting.
Guidance counsellors should also be saying “and it doesn’t matter if you decide in five years time you want to try something different”.
but that’s a whole other story.
Hi Treasa, you are right about the experience thing. But other parts of my company are hiring grads too.
I was sloppy in using IT as a descriptor. I have given out to people about it in the past. It is like saying “I work in healthcare”.
I should have said in telecoms. But in my IT days we struggled as well.
Matt, I said I would annonomise, more than seperate!
My guidance councilor said I couldn’t go to college.
Should have listened to her then I wouldn’t be stuck here doing a PhD in Physics with a degree and masters behind me. She knew her stuff alright.