|
Page 1 of 3
Stephen Pickett is vice president and chief information officer at Penske, the automotive, trucking and transportation services company based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and the past president of SIM, the nation's leading association of chief information officers.
Pickett spoke recently with CIOZone's John McCormick about the talent shortage and the ways SIM is trying to alleviate the problem. This is an edited version of their conversation.
CIOZone: In the latest research from SIM, hiring and retention is, for the second year in a row, the No. 1 issue. But, from your perspective, from a practical standpoint, how does it hurt the everyday operations of an IT department?
Pickett: If you've got to spend a lot of time interviewing different candidates to find the skill level you're looking for, it takes time and effort and energy to do that.
And in MIS (management information systems)job searches, we're trying to find people who have some type of business background or some type of business education, so the group of individuals available to us is narrowing a bit.
Is there also an increasing sense of urgency when it comes to hiring and retention with the baby boomers getting set to retire?
Well, I look more at the reduction of the number of students taking MIS or computer science courses. Some areas of the country have improved, but in many areas of the country—at least as indicated by SIM members—enrollments are still down in those technical programs.
It's our job as technical executives to beat the bushes and convince these kids that technical careers are really a lot of fun.
I hear that many of them are worried about eventually being outsourced, but I believe only about 3% of IT employees work in outsourcing companies. So it would seem that there are plenty of corporate jobs out there.
And it's interesting, the translation issue that occurs with the word outsourcing. Many kids hear that and they translate it to offshoring and think there are no jobs.
Outsourcing actually is job neutral with respect to the kids in the U.S. and the universities in the U.S—or it can be job neutral if there's enough capacity in the U.S. to fill the jobs. When I talk to a group of kids, I try to make sure that they understand the significant distinction between outsourcing and offshoring.
And the tight labor pool isn't just a U.S. problem.
I'm a firm believer in the fact that this is not just a U.S. problem. There is a need for technologists all over the world. Now you're hearing about situations in India where there's a lot of job turnover. So some companies are now moving their work to China. Well, you know, we're going to run out of planet.
The fact that, right now, there seems to be available talent overseas isn't the permanent solution. It's a temporary solution. And, in the long-run, this problem is going to have to be solved with real kids going to real programs and graduating with real technical degrees.
|
