Does NZ really have an IT Skills shortage?

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2135 posts

Uber Geek

#1596434 21-Jul-2016 18:01

vexxxboy:

i see these articles and comments and worry because my son is finishing his degree in computer science this year , hes coming out of it with first degree honors specializing in Metaheuristic algorithm's and Cryptography, he loves writing code he tells me. Are there openings or shortages for what he can do in NZ or does he have to go overseas. he also has a degree in Chinese, so can speak, read and write Mandarin. Just interested .

If he's looking at Crypto and forensic type roles, the will be hard pressed to find something in a market that is basically the Police (10 roles?), the big 4 corporates (KPMG, Deloitte's, etc.) and a few other companies. Police have heaps of work without budget constraints of having clients, corporates have less work but with budget constraints of paying clients.

There are LOT more roles coding, however what kind of code? Web/Desktop, Microsoft/Java/etc.?

I would say the Mandarin however is a major bonus in NZ.

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Coil

6614 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1596450 21-Jul-2016 18:42

Currently being someone who is seeking employment in the IT industry I am yet to understand what "Skills shortage" we are currently having, Having a diploma, N+, A+ and my experience with Telco im at the very bottom of the whole IT sector. I have been seeking for 3 months now on the absolute most entry level roles one could fathom and even applied to be a "Call centre monkey" with no success.

Oh yeah, If anyone has any work on the shore or central please be sure to message me.

surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#1596455 21-Jul-2016 19:03

TimA:

Currently being someone who is seeking employment in the IT industry I am yet to understand what "Skills shortage" we are currently having, Having a diploma, N+, A+ and my experience with Telco im at the very bottom of the whole IT sector. I have been seeking for 3 months now on the absolute most entry level roles one could fathom and even applied to be a "Call centre monkey" with no success.

Oh yeah, If anyone has any work on the shore or central please be sure to message me.

As someone alluded to before, IT encompasses such a wide range of varying disciplines.

It would seem to come to to very specific skills that are in demand.

I'm thinking about changing career (to a different branch of IT) in the near future, but , at 44 I'm not even sure if it is even possible.

I see these news headlines and I wonder what the true reality behind them might be.

spearsniper

133 posts

Master Geek

#1596459 21-Jul-2016 19:23

Yep - totally a skills shortage in a few fields.

It is a buoyant market at the entry level, and as you get into specialties, the gap between supply and demand widens vastly.

Data Science / BI, Big Data, Public Cloud (dev ops, architects, engineers, security), Security Architects, seem to have the all of the vacancies and nobody to fill them.
IOT will be the next one i'm guessing.

It's never too late to re-train. I have had to do this. Granted it took 10 years from leaving one very niche field in IT, to be earning the same money in another field, but it was well worth it. I now have a much better understanding of IT all the way from answering calls, desktop support, infra engineering, Public Cloud engineering, and Cloud Architecture.

hio77

'That VDSL Cat'
12999 posts

Uber Geek

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Lizard Networks

Subscriber

#1596489 21-Jul-2016 20:13

TimA:

Currently being someone who is seeking employment in the IT industry I am yet to understand what "Skills shortage" we are currently having, Having a diploma, N+, A+ and my experience with Telco im at the very bottom of the whole IT sector. I have been seeking for 3 months now on the absolute most entry level roles one could fathom and even applied to be a "Call centre monkey" with no success.

Fair point on the skill shortage, IT is such a huge thing that IMO its unreasonable to say there's a shortage in IT, to me it is like saying there is a shortage in the Service industry....

spearsniper:
IOT will be the next one i'm guessing.

is IoT really becoming that much of a thing that you could produce a job for it really..

its simply a buzzword afterall..

Be it, very fun to tinker around and play with once you get past the fact that your dealing with equipment thats often smaller than your hand doing amazing things!

currently awaiting my next shipment of ESP8266s to land for a few more IoT projects myself....

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

spearsniper

133 posts

Master Geek

#1596496 21-Jul-2016 20:30

Watch the IOT space. Networks are being deployed in NZ so they can service this technology.
If you are dabbling with the tech today, you can only assume others in the future will need to play catchup. Your ability to get someone / a company up to speed (or just do it for them) is a desirable skill. i.e. Consultancy :)

I would not ditch my day job to do it today, but it would not be a bad skill to have in the future.

A customer engagement for Compute, turned out to have a "what if we could do this cool stuff - IOT discussion". A bit of thinking outside the square, will open this technology right up.

BigMal

996 posts

Ultimate Geek

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Trusted

#1596504 21-Jul-2016 20:48

I'm regularly on the look out for quality Java Devs and Test Engineers. Lots of applicants don't live up to their CV's.

I'd definitely say there is a skills shortage in these areas.

dryburn

429 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1596522 21-Jul-2016 21:36

BigMal:

I'm regularly on the look out for quality Java Devs and Test Engineers. Lots of applicants don't live up to their CV's.

I'd definitely say there is a skills shortage in these areas.

What level are those roles?

AHitman

85 posts

Master Geek

#1596549 21-Jul-2016 22:08

spearsniper:

Watch the IOT space. Networks are being deployed in NZ so they can service this technology.

I for one welcome the day people can hack my microwave because the manufacture stopped releasing security updates...

I personally feel we are importing too many entry level "IT" workers into the country, this is going to end up preventing many Kiwis from progressing after graduating from their study.

Employers want experienced staff and graduates have to get real world experience somewhere.

atomeara

324 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1596551 21-Jul-2016 22:11

The company I work for has found it hard to find high skilled workers.

We have been looking in a few fields and it is really hard to find people with the right experience, skills and attitude.

Your lower level roles are not so hard to fill like helpdesk and generic support Level 1 / Level 2. They also have a high staff turnover.

We have been looking for both enterprise network and service provider network engineers. As well as some other roles. Making sure they are the right for the company is just as important as skills. I have seen some basket case engineers start at other companies and they caused no end of pain for there co-worker's and customers, needless to say they did not last long. Also having good English is important, it doesn't have to be a first language but communication skills are also something we look at.

I guess there other thing we look at is where they have worked previously, some companies have a black dot against there name. They are known for siloing there workers into one field or area. When they move to a more dynamic company it presents challenges.

toyonut

1508 posts

Uber Geek

#1596553 21-Jul-2016 22:19

We are really struggling to find anyone who can do Devops at the moment where I work. It is just me and another Dev and we need more people. Looking at grads at the moment to see if we can find anyone with some passion and skill for working with a team and delivering applications and then teach them the skills on the job.

I would take either a sysadmin with Powershell, Windows Server and some knowledge of IIS and SQL or a dev who wants to do more than just write code. I learned on the job and I am happy for someone else to as well as long as they are keen. We need automation, application build, test, deployment, scripting and VM configuration management and moving into deployment into Azure. Those kind of skills are not easy to come by.

The quality of CV's that come through are rubbish so far and the few I have called that look ok have not made it through a phone interview. Lots of yes of course I know about that and when pressed they have once copied a script from the internet and run it.

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surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#1596565 21-Jul-2016 22:50

toyonut:

The quality of CV's that come through are rubbish so far and the few I have called that look ok have not made it through a phone interview. Lots of yes of course I know about that and when pressed they have once copied a script from the internet and run it.

Ha ha at least you get to interview the people you will be working with.

I was leading a team a while back but the structure of the arrangement meant I did not get to interview new recruits.

Ended up with people in my team i did not want and who could not do the job. It would have been better to put them in the corner doing nothing to prevent them damaging the system.

timbosan

2135 posts

Uber Geek

#1596567 21-Jul-2016 22:58

toyonut:

We are really struggling to find anyone who can do Devops at the moment where I work. It is just me and another Dev and we need more people. Looking at grads at the moment to see if we can find anyone with some passion and skill for working with a team and delivering applications and then teach them the skills on the job.

I would take either a sysadmin with Powershell, Windows Server and some knowledge of IIS and SQL or a dev who wants to do more than just write code. I learned on the job and I am happy for someone else to as well as long as they are keen. We need automation, application build, test, deployment, scripting and VM configuration management and moving into deployment into Azure. Those kind of skills are not easy to come by.

The quality of CV's that come through are rubbish so far and the few I have called that look ok have not made it through a phone interview. Lots of yes of course I know about that and when pressed they have once copied a script from the internet and run it.

Devops is an area I find fascinating, being a developer with a reasonable understand of the operations area (i have dabbled in dealing with SCSI arrays that drop disks and cause applications to run slowly, automation of production lines, firewalls, setting up VM for POC's, etc.) it seems there is no end to what can be learnt. However I also think that an enterprise developer (I was going to say senior but I think enterprise is a better classification) should know a lot of this stuff anyway. Its not possible in my opinion to be isolated from web severs, ports, certificates, database management, test scripts/plans, etc. and still do a proper job.

I am currently involved in a project setting up SharePoint + TFS + SQL Server + all the integration parts, and it requires knowledge of AD accounts, SQL authentication methods, powershell scripts for getting perquisites right and disk IO's to make sure it runs fast enough. No actual development work (until it's done, then we can do SharePoint dev) but I think an example of what an enterprise developer should be able to do.

(Sorry for taking the thread so far off topic).

dryburn

429 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1596576 21-Jul-2016 23:17

It really seems that there is a shortage of competent people that are capable of rapid on the job training.

I know this is unorthodox but I have been here since June and been applying for entry level positions, IT Support roles, to be honest is really lower level and really basic IT. These roles required simple A+ N+ etc. Certificates.

English is my only language, So I have no problem with that. Over 5 years of work experience with transferable skills. I sent my CV, which was catered for a Software Dev Role, to an excellent international NZ company and even had an interview this morning, but they only had entry level junior support roles that don't even require any qualifications beside half a brain.

I have a degree and thus want to be challenged accordingly. I don't have commercial development experience but want to get into Software Development as a career (I have worked with a few languages and would be able to pick up another pretty quickly) or at least something that is a lot more challenging than "Is it plugged in?, Is it turned on?"

By the way, I have a work visa and willing to do some temp work for "NZ experience"

spearsniper

133 posts

Master Geek

#1596608 22-Jul-2016 06:07

dryburn:
It really seems that there is a shortage of competent people that are capable of rapid on the job training.

I know this is unorthodox but I have been here since June and been applying for entry level positions, IT Support roles, to be honest is really lower level and really basic IT. These roles required simple A+ N+ etc. Certificates.

English is my only language, So I have no problem with that. Over 5 years of work experience with transferable skills. I sent my CV, which was catered for a Software Dev Role, to an excellent international NZ company and even had an interview this morning, but they only had entry level junior support roles that don't even require any qualifications beside half a brain.

I have a degree and thus want to be challenged accordingly. I don't have commercial development experience but want to get into Software Development as a career (I have worked with a few languages and would be able to pick up another pretty quickly) or at least something that is a lot more challenging than "Is it plugged in?, Is it turned on?"

By the way, I have a work visa and willing to do some temp work for "NZ experience"

All of the skilled people who would be providing on the job training are too busy doing their job. This is why companies ask for staff with experience. Training someone is a burden on a company, as you are removing an expensive resource from paying work to do the training. Large companies with skilled staff on the bench are the best bet if you want this, but most smaller companies do not have the capability to do this.

Sadly, I run into a lot of people with a sense of entitlement because they have a degree / some paper certificate etc. If you are not prepared to start at the bottom and work your way up to the role you want, you will remain unemployed for a long time.

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