The skills deficit
This week has been, challenging. I doubt I would want to relive these moments again but I know I will next week, and possibly the week after. Work has been piling up and we need more bodies to take on the brunt of it all. One person from our team retired recently and another moved onto different pastures within the company. There is obviously a resource problem and trying to rectify this has been an uphill struggle. We have seen many CVs, quite a few were so glowing that doubts started to creep in. As you begin to quiz them on how they actually obtained this expertise, it becomes blatantly obvious that what they are saying at the interview is in stark contrast to what’s written on paper. Therefore, begins a vicious cycle of reading to interviewing to showing them the door. They cannot realistically expect to be hired solely based on what they have declared in a Word document. But this seems to be the case as one technical question after another is followed by a look of blankness. Rinse/repeat as we see one after another like Ground Hog Day. Afterwards, we felt so deflated that even my boss was asking if I knew anybody that knew how to turn on a PC so we can just hire somebody, anybody. I cannot say that I am a veteran in the I.T industry, but has it always been like this? What happened to the days when there were more skilled people than jobs? Now the concern is that there is less skill and even less jobs to go around with the current economic climate. Fortunately, we did manage to hire someone towards the end of last year, but people have moved on since then so we are back to square one. For those who are skilled, there’s a worrying factor that they are out of work because of companies going into administration or from massive layoffs. Their talents are left unused and dormant, and as the opportunities shrink the need for any type of work (even outside of their field) is necessary.
How can the government plan to fix this?
I am not just talking about the I.T industry, many skilled jobs could fall into the same category. Perhaps investment in apprenticeships would help, or increase the accessibility of higher education and better support for small businesses. The problem is this is an extremely bad time to invest in anything, as money is ploughed elsewhere into things such as saving banking institutions and digging us out of a crisis as our economy continues to be crippled. Having said all this, I believe agencies are also to blame for trying to hire as many candidates as possible to get maximum commission, whether they fit the bill or not. All I can hope for is that over the next couple of weeks, I will get to see a potential candidate more than once.
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email Tags: CV, I.T, jobs, skills deficit