NBN would provide hundreds of needed jobs says recruitment boss

Stan Beer
Thursday, 05 March 2009 03:53

Opinion and Analysis

"In Canberra and Queensland we are seeing a reduced demand for contractors while in other states we are seeing the demand for contract IT staff remain strong," said Mr Stewart.

“The demand for contractors is principally being driven by major blue chip companies, and tends to relate to major infrastructure projects or to large merger related work,” Mr. Stewart added.

“New roles are primarily Infrastructure related (reflecting business as usual maintenance and turnover of Helpdesk and System Admin people),” he said.

“These are closely followed by CRM/Business intelligence or Data warehouse types of roles. This may reflect businesses are rationalising spend, analysing clients and customers to maximise efficiencies and customer information types of projects are taking priority due to the global economic uncertainty.

“We’re also seeing the use of Business Intelligence tools and extracting historic information/viewing dashboards of data out of their data warehouses using skills/products such as Oracle, Cognos, Informatica.

“Also Warehouse Builder & SQL experts, represents demand for contractor skills at similar percentages to our traditional ‘business as usual’ Infrastructure demand.”

Skills in demand SAP, Oracle, Cisco and so on indicate a need for skills on ongoing projects but less demand for project managers as new projects are not being commenced.

Demand for ICT professionals may have peaked but skills shortages continue to persist as employees shy away from risking job changes, according to Clarius research based on labour force data supplied by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

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{mospagebreak)According to Clarius research shows that Australia still needs 8,000 more skilled ICT people to fill jobs in December 2008. However, the gap between supply and demand is shrinking - September the gap was 9000.

Since the previous quarter, there has been a reduction in supply to fill permanent positions but this has been accompanied by an increase in the number of skilled IT personnel seeking new positions, including quality candidates, particularly project and program managers and testers, according to Mr Stewart.

“These tend to be professionals who have been ‘let go’, as those in roles are increasingly reluctant to seek new positions – less likely of taking the risk of jumping to an unknown entity. This reluctance to move is contributing to the continued shortages of good candidates in some areas.

“There has been a tendency for contractors to start looking for the security of permanent positions; however these are now few and far between."

A State breakdown according to Clarius shows:

o    In terms of shortages WA is still finding it hard to source SAP, Cisco, Oracle and Sharepoint people, SA also note a particular shortage of CISCO.

o    While in Canberra and Queensland we are seeing a reduced demand for contractors, in other states we are seeing the demand for contract IT staff remain strong.

o    In terms of supply, ACT is seeing more project managers, program managers and testers looking for work now than there were before.

o    SA report that roles for PM requirement's are dwindling due to delay/cancelling projects, SA also note a particular shortage of Business Analysts and SAP.

o    Qld report report we are starting to see an increase in roles come through in the infrastructure space, infrasture PM's, voice and data as well as Business Analysts with a clinical/health background.

o    In Victoria SAP & CISCO are still in short supply. Vendors & Telco’s are continuing to pursue existing projects, though new projects are increasingly being put on hold.