High-tech employers are perpetuating the skills shortage by failing
to cross-train experienced IT staff in e-commerce skills, it was
claimed this week.
Bill GoodwinIT professionals with 10 or 15 years' experience risk being
pushed out of the jobs market because their employers are not
willing to invest in continued training, according to the Institute
for the Management of Information Systems (Imis), which represents
11,000 IT professionals.
Speaking on the eve of a major IT skills summit, Imis' strategic
advisor Philip Virgo said that too many employers only offer
cross-training in new IT skills to a select group of high-flying IT
professionals. This has left many experienced professionals with
increasingly outdated skills.
"What appears to be happening is that those flagged as
high-flyers get the cross-training. Those who are not high-flyers
or not in employment cannot get the training unless they pay for it
themselves," said Virgo.
Even when staff are able to pay for their own training,
employers' need for staff with two or three years' experience in
the latest skills means that it is often difficult for otherwise
experienced professionals to find work.
Computer Weekly regularly receives letters from IT professionals
who have invested in training courses in only to find that
employers are unwilling to hire them because they lack relevant
experience.
In one case, an experienced ITworker who took a year out from
leading-edge IT work to fix Y2K problems on legacy systems sent out
more than 1,400 unsuccessful applications. Potential employers said
that his skills were a year out of date.
The skills summit, organised by IT lobby group Eurim, takes
place next Monday (26 March). It aims to bring employers, training
organisations and universities together to establish the extent of
the problem and to work on potential solutions.
One of its aims will be to find ways to encourage employers to
offer more work experience and on-the-job training to existing
staff and job hunters.
"Employees undergoing training should be exempt from national
insurance and income tax. It could make a very big difference to
the cost of structured work experience," said Virgo.
The chancellor Gordon Brown indicated his willingness to
consider tax incentives for training in the budget earlier this
month.
bill.goodwin@rbi.co.uk