Tech jobs go unfilled as worker skills lag
By Tim Feran THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
In a dramatic reversal from the darkest days of the recession, thousands of high-paying information-technology jobs are going unfilled in central Ohio. The problem, affecting big and small companies alike, persists even though the state’s jobless rate remains high. “It’s a mismatch between the need of the industry and the skills of the workers,” said Bill LaFayette, vice president of economic analysis at the Columbus Chamber. While technology-worker shortages are a national concern, it might be surprising that university-rich central Ohio is in the same situation.
It says more about the boom-and-bust nature of the tech world than it does the educational opportunities in the Columbus area, experts said. The industry has seen booms in the past, such as the buildup for Y2K, only to be followed by downturns that made the field less attractive. Today, the supply of newly trained workers is still catching up with the jump in demand. “We’ve been studying this a lot,” said Tim Haynes of technology business incubator TechColumbus. “Companies doing the recruiting are finding it challenging to get people who fit the specs for the positions. There are just not enough workers who have been trained in these skills and aren’t already employed.”
A quick search for information-technology jobs on a help-wanted website such as Indeed.com reveals that thousands of such jobs are available within 100 miles of Columbus. Jobs that are in high demand usually require a degree, some require advanced degrees as well as a few years of experience. However, for those people who are out of college, “there are ways to get retrained,” Haynes said.
The demand, while startling, is not entirely unexpected. A study released early this year predicted that increased reliance on technology by Ohio companies would translate into a big jump in tech jobs this year — even at non-tech businesses. Most companies, after all, use computers for a variety of tasks. The jobs pay well: The most recent average wage for tech jobs, from 2009, was more than $68,000, compared with more than $40,000 for all occupations, according to statistics from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
Part of the surge in efforts to hire tech employees can be attributed to pent-up demand. Many companies avoided hiring IT workers during the recession, said Mark Pukita, founder and chief operating officer of Fast Switch, a Dublin-based provider of information-technology services and executive recruitment. Companies that have been slow in hiring coming out of the recession are finding themselves in a tight spot. “You can only go so long without hiring someone before — sooner or later — you start to lose your competitive advantage,” Pukita said. “Then you’re suddenly behind the eight ball, and what used to take two years to do, you need to do in one year or less — and you’re forced to do it. That’s where we are now: There’s this huge, pent-up demand along with the normal demand to deal with fast-changing technology.”
Companies are investing more in technology and need IT professionals to stay competitive, whether it’s Web development, mobile devices or application development, said Heidi Higgins, branch-office manager of staffing firm Robert Half Technology in Columbus. Some candidates, depending on their skill set, “are receiving multiple offers,” especially from companies in manufacturing, finance and health care, Higgins said. The hiring challenge extends to the public sector, too.
“IT is one of the specialized fields for which our customer state agencies most frequently ask for our recruiting help,” said Molly O’Reilly, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services. Demand is likely to grow, especially considering the industry is expecting a wave of retirements, said Dwight Smith, founder and CEO of Sophisticated Systems, a Columbus consulting firm focused on information technology.
For example, a Detroit automobile company, one of Fast Switch’s clients, has “about 80 percent of their mainframe staff within five or six years of retirement,” Pukita said. “If you don’t think they’re scrambling, you’re crazy. … But few people are working to satisfy that demand. It’s not sexy, it’s old technology, and no one wants to be in it. That’s another (hiring) challenge.”
Another “monster on the horizon,” Smith said, “is when businesses move from American-based to international-based financial-reporting standards in the next few years. It’s going to be a major shift, another Y2K, and it’s all IT stuff — and people don’t even talk about that.”
Cardinal Health, a big user of information technology, is finding that while it has plenty of applicants for the 55 or 60 IT openings that it has at any one time, the slots take awhile to fill. “We have a really high bar of talent and experience and their technical level,” said Brian Moore, vice-president of global talent acquisition.
“I would say that … when we spoke to candidates in the past few years, maybe they didn’t have other opportunities; now they may have one or two other opportunities,” Moore said. Companies newer to the area have the same problem. Technology services firm VisionIT said on July 5 that it needed to hire nearly 100 people to fill information-technology positions in its Columbus and Dublin offices. As of last week, 80 of those jobs remained open.
VisionIT is so hard pressed to fill those positions that the Detroit-based company, which is one of the largest Latino-owned tech firms in the nation, is recruiting in Mexico, VisionIT President Christine Rice said. “We’re actually tapping into some of the (Hispanic) ethnic groups in Columbus to help the folks we’re bringing in from Mexico get adjusted,” she said.
To overcome the challenge of finding people or retraining them, Haynes said, “we need all sources of talent — such as universities, recruiters, staffing companies — to know where the gaps lie, so that they can supply the right talent.”
To help alert universities and others to the needs, TechColumbus will release a study before the end of this summer that assesses central Ohio IT talent. One thing is certain: “IT is a key field of demand right now,” Rice said. “A lot of clients that had budgets and projects on hold are loosening up again. Eight to 10 years ago, you would see signing bonuses, and for some years during the recession that went away. Now, we’re starting to see that increase.”
tferan@dispatch.com
Job opportunities
These information-technology skills are in the highest demand:
• Analytics: Analytics people put systems in place that allow companies to collect information in an automated way. More companies need people who can figure out how to either tap into existing systems or install new systems that tell them how well the business is doing and where the issues lie.
• Web development: Web developers work on the nuts and bolts of developing a website for the Internet, a private network or anything that ties into the Internet, such as mobile applications.
• Business analysis: Especially difficult to find, business analysts not only have technical skills in working with data (provided by those in business intelligence), but also have “soft skills” such as communications and management, which allow them to do something with that data.
• Business intelligence: These workers know how to find and report such data as sales revenue by products or department.
• IT security: These vitally important employees protect information and information systems from unauthorized access, disruption or destruction.
Source: Dispatch research
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