Outsourcing Toolkit

Story: Experts warn migration rules may fuel IT offshoring

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No IT skills shortage, just inadequate recruitment

As has been commented countless times before by myself and many others, there is plenty of native IT talent in this country, but the current ultra-low-cost no-humans-involved trend in IT recruitment practice is simply not matching people to jobs. In fact it's not really interested in people at all.

A decade or so ago, employers acknowledged that there is a real skill in finding good people and they paid the price. In return they found people that fitted their teams (first priority) and were close enough to the "perfect" knowledge profile to be up and running in a month or two.

The IT industry represents a particular problem for recruitment as there are a dazzling array of products that roll versions with monotonous regularity. The likelihood of finding someone who has recent relevant experience of your particular basket of products at your particular array of versions, who also fits in with your team is vanishingly small. None the less, the HR departments and recruitment agencies are still banging on trying to do this; and then bleating about IT skills shortages when they fail.

Here's a message to them all. Stop trying to recruit software operators and start recruiting people. It may cost a little more in the short term, but longer term you will get what you want and you won't have to keep repeating the process when the misfits you do eventually get, by the current process, inevitably crash and burn.

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