Biggest challenge is persuading high school grads to study computer science
Darcy Keith, Canwest News Service
Published: Saturday, June 14, 2008
The information technology industry, in a desperate rush to head off a critical labour shortage, wants to change the perception once and for all that jobs in technology are best suited for geeks and social misfits.
It has launched a vigorous campaign to convince today's youth that a computer-related career is the ticket to stable, high-income employment -- and is kind of sexy, too.
The stakes are high. A recent Conference Board of Canada study predicted that the country would need to fill 90,000 information technology jobs within the next three to five years. It suggested these unfilled jobs and resulting productivity losses would cost the Canadian economy more than $10 billion a year.
A number of factors are converging to create this talent gap, including an expected bulge in retirements, low fertility rates, and under-representation of females. But perhaps the most serious dilemma facing the industry is a lack of interest among young people.
"Our biggest challenge with high school kids that are making decisions on what programs to take in university is changing perceptions like the geek factor," says Craig Boutilier, chairman of the University of Toronto's computer science department. "That long-held hacker stereotype of somebody sitting in their basement banging on a keyboard is the last thing that computer science and IT is all about.
"Most of it is about engaging with users and going through the design process rather than just programming."
And that's where the sexiness factor comes in. IT is now just as much about communications -- interactions within businesses and their clients -- as it is about technical skills.
Interest in IT careers took a big hit when the tech bubble burst at the start of this decade and fears arose over the growing trend of technology jobs being outsourced overseas.
With layoffs and tech-company bankruptcies making daily headlines, many parents and guidance counsellors persuaded teenagers to seek careers elsewhere.
But many of the better paying, higher-skilled positions remained in Canada, and in the meantime, demand for IT workers has been growing rapidly.
"At any given point in time, we have far more job requirements that are open with our customers than we have people to fill them," says Terry Power, president and chief operating officer of Sapphire Technologies, Canada's largest IT staffing firm.
"We're extremely concerned."
In the first quarter of 2008, for instance, demand for new IT jobs rose seven per cent from just the fourth quarter of 2007, according to Andrew Cornell, manager of market operations for Sapphire.
Particularly alarming has been that some educational institutions, such as Laval University in Quebec City, have recently experienced a drop of up to 70 per cent in the number of students enrolling in their computer and electrical engineering programs.
To help promote IT as a career, a group of 70 technology companies and organizations teamed up earlier this year to form the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow's ICT Skills.
Biggest challenge is persuading high school grads to study computer science
Darcy Keith, Canwest News Service
Published: Saturday, June 14, 2008
The coalition released an action plan in May detailing a number of short- and long-term objectives that will include visits to schools, company tours, and the production of informative videos.
It will also engage in lobbying efforts to ramp up the number of foreign skilled information and communications technology workers that are allowed to enter Canada.
"There's a lot of misinformation that exists and this is an opportunity to address these issues and re-create the brand that is IT, so people see it for what it is: exciting long-term careers that have major impact on a business and whereby people interact with both customers and people internally," says Power.
Email to a friend
Printer friendly
Font:****Stephane Boisvert, president of Bell Enterprises, which is spearheading the initiative, says one of the most important priorities is capturing the interest of high school students.
"Because of the technology all around them -- the instant messaging, web calling, social networking -- many kids feel we've solved all the issues in IT," said Boisvert.
"We have to cultivate a certain level of interest, so that while it's so pervasive, there's still a lot of research that needs to be done by humans in making a secure environment. It's not all automated."
Because it takes two to five years of university or college training for most IT jobs, a lag exists before new employees will be able to enter the workforce. It is hoped Canada will be able to fill some of the technology jobs that need filling on a short-term basis by bringing in skilled workers from overseas.
Some efforts will also be made to retrain existing employees, but that can be daunting given that many jobs are highly skilled and require considerable education.
Another goal of the coalition is to bring educational institutions up to speed with both the technical and business skills required by employers.
"I think they have to find a way to marry the business skill with the technology so that kids can gain exposure to multiple facets of a business and start to understand how technology is driving the business, what it is doing to make companies more competitive, and what it is doing to help companies reach customers and reach global markets," says Power.
Power says there are still some challenges that new IT grads face in securing employment -- and outsourcing may be partly to blame.
"I think one of the sad realities of some of the offshoring that's happening is we don't have as many entry-level roles as we might need to," says Power. "If you look at the profile of offshore jobs, a lot of that is in call centres and lower technical-skilled areas that's been conducive to offshoring.
"I think organizations need to think about that more. If they are not in a position where they can bring some of those jobs back, they certainly I think need to look more aggressively at co-op programs."
The University of Toronto has already taken steps to bridge this gap between the academic and workplace worlds. Its computer science department offers a Professional Experience Year program that incorporates a full year industry internship after the second or third year, says Boutilier.
Biggest challenge is persuading high school grads to study computer science
Darcy Keith, Canwest News Service
Published: Saturday, June 14, 2008
The faculty has also started incorporating more writing assignments and now offers specialized courses in communications and presentation skills.
Boutilier says all these efforts are starting to pay off. The number of students applying for university admission who are choosing computer science programs at the U of T is up about 68 per cent this year. "Things have turned around a little bit and we're getting the same sense from other schools across Canada. We do have companies beating on our doors asking 'Where are your talented undergrads?' We're hopeful things are going to turn around."
For more information about technology jobs, go to working.com/technology
IT EVOLUTION
Technology is always evolving -- and so are the types of jobs that are most in demand in the industry.
Web development skills were the most requested by information technology employers in 2007, according to a recent report by Sapphire Technologies, with demand for those roles rising 16.3 per cent from 2006.
But the greatest growth in IT employment came from elsewhere.
"Where we see greatest uptake is not around specific technologies but business skills," says Power with Sapphire Technologies. "Project managers, business analysts, systems analysts -- those types of higher-level roles are by far where we see the most critical gap in terms of supply versus demand, and we don't see that changing at all."
Demand for business analysts rose 32.8 per cent last year and was the second most commonly requested IT role. This was followed by project managers, which accounted for one in 10 requirements throughout the year.
The roles with the largest increases in demand in 2007 included ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) specialists, technicians and administrators, with requirements for each of these roles increasing 400 per cent over the previous year.
Perhaps surprisingly, of the top skills sought by employers in 2007, bilingualism was the fastest growing. Fluency in two languages, which just two years ago wasn't even in the top 10 most requested skills, is now in the top five and particularly important to employers in Eastern Canada.
The U of T's Boutilier said employers are expressing the most interest in graduates that have "large-scale software engineering" skills.
"Companies aren't looking for very narrow programmers who are given concrete specifications," he says. "They don't tend to ask for programmers anymore. They tend to ask for software engineers, or designers, or things like that. By and large they expect students to be flexible and do pretty much anything right now."
