Employers not addressing business analyst skills shortage

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 06 June 2007 18:36

IT People - Enterprise

Andrew Williams is one of the most senior account managers for first tier Australian technology recruiter Paxus. He says employers are still not taking the steadily worsening ICT skills shortage seriously, especially in a climate of red hot demand for business analyst roles.

The most in demand skills according to Williams, are in business analyst roles, particularly those that require experience in the financial industry. Williams says there are simply not enough people to fill the roles and employers have yet to come to terms with that fact.

"Employers have got to make a choice," says Williams. "They've got to decide whether they want to train people on the business functionality and bring people in from university or from lower skills roles. Alternatively, they can train them on the specifics of how to take functional requirements and present them appropriately."

Williams believes that employers should also consider looking for potential candidates outside the ICT professions, such as accounting and engineering.

"They may need to look beyond the base skill set and look at people who they can train, mentor, and develop into better qualified (IT) people," he says.

According to Williams, the acute skills shortage is enabling his agency to place qualified people in business analyst roles with relative ease.

"Many of them are getting multiple offers with different clients and have good choice," he says.

Despite the shortage of candidates, however, Williams says employers are still resistant to the idea of investing in training people.

"We're still finding resistance in the larger organizations," he says. "That's the challenge they're going to face. Do they keep looking and try to survive with what they've got or will they change and take a longer term vision of bringing people in. We're trying to encourage them to take more junior people but they have immediate needs so they tend to keep looking for people with the right skills."

Is the skills shortage measurably worse than this time last year?

"Absolutely, vacancies have been open for longer and we're advertising for more positions," says Williams. "It's only going to continue to get harder."