Don Tennant spoke with Scot Melland, CEO of IT career services provider Dice Holdings, about the current IT labor outlook, and found Melland extremely bullish on the market.
Tennant: Many unemployed or underemployed IT workers blame offshore outsourcing and the high number of non-U.S. tech workers in this country for stealing the profession away from them. Do they have a legitimate beef at all?
Melland: There are probably individuals who have stories of their own and may have been impacted. But despite all the talk we’ve heard about offshore outsourcing over the last couple of years, what we’ve seen is that there’s definitely an industry there for offshoring, but it’s not the full answer. The amount of offshore activity has not been growing appreciably, and hasn’t had a large impact on the domestic labor market.
If you look across the industry, employment in technology has increased; there are shortages in various skill sets in various parts of the country. In fact, one of the biggest pieces of advice that we give tech pros who are looking for employment is to be flexible on location. There are, literally, thousands of positions available, and they may not be in your neighborhood. But they’re certainly in somebody else’s neighborhood. So if you’re able to be flexible on geography, you can find some wonderful opportunities out there.
Tennant: Is a lack of in-demand skills a realistically solvable problem for people over, say, 45?
Melland: Absolutely. The wonderful thing about technology and people who work in technology is that in general, they’re very used to learning new skills, because the pace of change is so rapid. It’s very much a skills-based occupation, so I would definitely encourage people who are over 40 to get their skills current, because there’s demand for them out there.
Tennant: So they’d be better advised to update their skills in IT rather than change careers?
Melland: Yes. Technology is one of the strongest sectors of the economy today. And if you look at the long-term forecast for employment that’s put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, many of the fastest-growing occupations are technology-related. There are many wonderful training programs out there. It’s an occupation that, on average, pays much more than the national average in terms of salaries. In fact, the average salary on the Dice.com site is over $70,000 a year across the country. These are good-quality positions.
Tennant: Are employers rehiring laid-off employees or finding fresh talent?
Melland: When you go back about 18 months ago when the economy really fell off, you had a number of companies that did downsize – there were layoffs of in-house technology talent. There were also consulting projects that were cancelled or put on hold. What we’re seeing today is that a number of consulting projects have been brought back, and an interesting thing happened starting about the beginning of this year. We started to see a shift to more full-time hiring. Typically what happens is as the work and the labor market come back, you see a surge in temporary or contract hiring, and that’s definitely true in technology. We saw that during the latter half of last year. In about March of this year, we started to see a shift in more full-time hiring. So what we think is going on out there is hiring overall is up in tech, but we’re now starting to see companies shift from just hiring contractors or consulting firms to creating and managing their systems through hiring full-time professionals. Some of those full-time professionals are people that they laid off in the past, but I think the majority are brand-new hires.
Tennant: What’s your advice to parents who are inclined to steer their kids away from a technology career due to factors like layoffs and offshore outsourcing?
Melland: I’m probably biased, but I think technology and engineering careers are terrific careers. They pay more than the national average; they’re exciting; they’re merit-based. There’s an opportunity for flexibility in terms of contract work or full-time work. It’s a great career for women, in that the pay gap between men and women in technology is very small – I think it’s the smallest among all the different [professions]. I guess my advice would be to pursue the career if you have an interest in technology – you have to have a passion for technology to begin with. Pursue it, keep up to date with the latest technologies.
Tennant: Shortages in specific high-demand skills aside, is there an overall IT skills shortage in the U.S. right now?
Melland: I think we’re seeing the beginning of a shortage. Obviously, over the last 18 months to two years, there were a number of layoffs, and a number of technology projects were put on hold at both large and small companies. What’s happened in the last nine months is that many of the projects that were put on hold have been greenlighted. So you’ve got a number of companies that are implementing various new technologies and new services. On top of that, we’re at the beginning of a technology upgrade cycle. When you look across corporate America, a number of companies have let their infrastructure, whether it’s their laptops or their PCs, or their more complex infrastructure, really age. A lot of the tech infrastructure out there today is three or more years old. So we’re at the beginning of a cycle to really upgrade that infrastructure.
You add those two things together – big projects that have been put on hold for a while that are now getting greenlighted because the business conditions are better, combined with a technology upgrade cycle, and we’re starting to see some very strong demand for tech skills out there in the market. On the supply side, if you play this out over the next couple of years, we really don’t have a lot of new people coming out of school with technical skills. In fact, the number of people coming out of college with math, science and engineering degrees is lower today than it was 20 years ago.
So you have an interesting situation where the demand for technical skills is going up, and the supply is restricted. We are seeing, I believe, the beginnings of tech skills shortages, and I think we’ll really start to feel it in 2011 and 2012.
Tennant: You’ve been the CEO at Dice for almost 10 years now. What are the most significant changes you’ve seen in the IT job market in those 10 years?
Melland: Over those 10 years, we’ve seen technology change from being part of a company to being an essential part of the company’s business and business systems. Ten years ago, you didn’t have a lot of online transactions; today, B-to-B and B-to-C online transactions are the norm. Ten years ago, you didn’t have complicated customer resource management systems; today, they’re the norm. The role and importance of technology within business have grown tremendously over the last 10 years.
The other part of it is that we have seen fewer younger people moving into the tech area, so companies are looking everywhere to build their tech talent – some of it here in the U.S., some outside the U.S.
Source:http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/community/features/interviews/blog/stay-in-it-dice-ceo-advises/?cs=42496
