Certification Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 36)

While entry-level skills such as desktop support, end-user application skills and hardware repair can be found in abundance, more intermediate and high-level skilled workers are becoming rare as the baby boomers retire. As a result, there is already a major shortage of high-end engineers, developers and project managers. survey, is that more than 80 percent of respondents have not even surveyed workers approaching retirement age to determine their intentions, and 42 percent have not identified who within their company would be responsible for the transfer of knowledge from retiring employees to potential replacements. The feeling among many CIOs, as reported in CIO, is that the aging workforce issue is merely hype and the potential skills shortage problem is still many years away. Steve Kraus, CIO of Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Olan Mills, said, “Our nearest retirements are 10-plus years away at this point.” Kraus is more concerned about losing skills to forced layoffs than retirements. Even many baby boomers themselves are not so sure the issue is as severe as IT analysts claim. They feel there are many boomers out there who wish to keep working after retirement, but complain that CIOs don’t want them because their skills are not fresh. The prevailing view of IT executives is that technical skills can be learned relatively quickly by a new hire or simply can be outsourced. But can today’s complex IT skills really be learned that fast, and is sending work offshore to fill the looming skills gap really an option? While entry-level skills such as desktop support, end-user application skills and hardware repair can be found in abundance, more intermediate and high-level skilled workers are becoming rare as the baby boomers retire. As a result, there is already a major shortage of high-end engineers, developers and project managers. As Richard Cole, founder and CEO of Geeks On Call America, put it, “The infrastructure and complexity are growing faster than the technician base, especially in the mid level and at the high end.” High-level IT skills cannot be trained overnight. As technology becomes more complex, it often requires years of experience and in-depth, on-the-job training. Is Global Outsourcing the Answer? According to Gordon, simply filling the gap by outsourcing jobs overseas or increasing the number of H-1B visas to help fill the shortage of skilled workers will not be the quick fix it once was. The reason? “As wages and demand for technical talent grows in developing economies like China and India, more of these immigrants are returning to their countries of origin,” he said. These workers will not necessarily be inclined to work here anymore. “Thus, raising the number of H-1B visas is not necessarily the answer to the labor shortage issue,” he said. As wages rise in emerging economies, many developing countries are beginning to experience their own shortage of skilled workers. “Though China graduates 400,000 engineers a year from its institutions of higher learning, only 100,000 of them are educated at world-class standards,” Gordon said. “And in India, investment firm Goldman Sachs predicts a shortage of 500,000 qualified IT workers by 2010.” There is a silver lining to this problem, though. According to Gordon, companies in developed coun- 36 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE March 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - March 2008

Certification Magazine - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Mastering IT: Choosing Between an Immediate Job and Higher Education Inside Certification Virtual World Administrators: Service Requests in Cyberspace Interface Boomers in IT: Will the Talent Shortage Affect Techies? Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - March 2008

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