Major projects beckon in 2009 says Finite

Stan Beer
Sunday, 23 November 2008 17:02

IT People - Enterprise

While a number of pundits are talking doom and gloom about jobs because of the economic downturn, the message from one of Australia's largest IT recruiters is surprisingly upbeat. Finite IT Recruitment says a number of huge projects are due to come online in early 2009.

Finite MD Tracy Thomson and General Manager Duncan Thomson told iTWire that there are some very large projects in the financial services, telecommunications and government areas that will require considerable numbers of skilled IT staff.

"We are very fortunate in that we have a lot of preferred supplier agreements in place with longstanding clients," says Ms Thomson.

"There is one particular project in the financial services industry that is likely to involve a major ramp up of activity involving a large amount of integration and transformation work.

"We think this project alone will require substantial numbers of people, which will create significant demand across Australia for Project Managers, Business Analysts and other specialists with a combination of financial services and IT backgrounds."

According to Ms Thomson, the sort of numbers required for such projects can't be satisfied from any single Australian city.

"For that project, we'll fill as many roles as we can from the local market but we expect that we'll have to source people from all over Australia, as well as offshore," says Ms Thomson.

Another industry big sector that is likely to require large numbers of people, according to Ms Thomson, is telecommunications.

"We are a major supplier to the telco sector and with projects such as the National Broadband Network due to be announced, we expect a lot of demand to come from that area," Ms Thomson says.

In the area of Federal Government, Duncan Thomson expressed doubts about whether the recruitment objectives of the recently released Gershon Report could be achieved quickly.

The Gershon Report, among other things, recommends halving of contractor numbers in Federal Government and replacing them with permanent staff.

"I don't think in reality they'll be able to achieve their objectives soon, this initiative will need to be carefully thought through and detailed planning will need to be put in place.  This is bound to take some time to work through," Mr Thomson says.

"The Federal Government has always been a large user of contractors. Contracting has some clear advantages over permanent employment and not everyone will want to convert. The challenge of recruiting specialist IT permanent staff in Canberra is also quite tough. When we're staffing for the Federal Government, we're pulling people from all over the country."

However, Mr Thomson believes that the New Year will hopefully see the Federal Government market open up again in a big way.

 "While the Canberra market is tough right now, we're hoping to see some recruitment opportunities in the new year as budgets get allocated. I think we'll see a bounce back in the second quarter and you have to remember that even the economists are predicting that we'll still see growth in the Australian economy in 2009. Notwithstanding, the Canberra market could really benefit from a much needed kick start," he says.

According to Tracy Thomson, while the market is getting tougher for many IT recruiters, Finite is in a better position than many to ride out the downturn.

"We have a good spread of clients across financial services, government and telecommunications and our policy has always been to focus on preferred supplier agreements (PSAs)," she says.

"Suppliers who have been working on high margin ad hoc business during the good times, are not so fortunate now that the market has turned.

"We have more than 80 PSAs in place across Australia and we're still hiring recruiters ourselves.

"In fact, we're looking to open an office in Perth in Q1 2009. We're already doing a lot of work for mining, engineering, telecommunications and systems integration sectors over there and our clients are keen for us to establish a physical presence there."