Asian ICT jobs market exploding: consultant

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 29 May 2007 09:47

IT People - Recruitment

An exploding ICT jobs market in Asia has prompted newly merged Australian recruiter TRA Group to set up offices in Hong Kong, Hyderabad and Singapore. TRA, with revenues of $120 million and 72 consultants, aims to focus on providing local technology professionals opportunities to work on major projects in places like China and India.

TRA, which brings together Sydney recruiter JKM and Melbourne-based VTR Consulting, as well as vendor management firm MVS Australia, will be headed by Vincent Teubler as CEO and Julian Moss as executive chairmaqn.

"Our next step is building seemless bridges in Asia, through our offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and India," Mr Teubler. "There's a massive expansion going on in China and HR requirements run into tens of thousands, with thousands of requirments for IT skills."

According to Mr Teubler, Australian based IT workers now have to be prepared to broaden their horizons and view the global marketplace rather than just Australia for their career opportunities.

"Gone are the days where you can just look around and say 'my career is going to be in Australia'," says Mr Teubler. "India and China offer enormous opportunities. Just in the two months since setting up in Hong Kong we've identified more opportunities than the whole of Australia and tied in preferred supplier agreements. They simply can't get the volume of people to meet their demand and that in turn is driving up pay.

"For Australian IT professionals, it gives them the opportunity to work on bigger and in many cases more advanced projects. Australian skills that are network focused and in the area of project management are highly sought after."

According to Mr Teubler, TRA's rapid expansion has led to a requirement within the newly merged firm for more IT recruitment consultants. The high demand has led TRA to look at providing more lucrative compensation schemes.

"We're looking at putting in more of a base salary component as well as commission," he said.