ITers are only as good as their skill sets but knowing what skill
will be most wanted in six months' time is a constant guessing
game. Nick Langley considers how best to stay in demand.
Training specialists, with their need to plan ahead and invest in
trainers, courseware and facilities, have been struggling to
survive in the turmoil of the industry downturn. The first half of
this year has been littered with stories of training company
collapses and struggling firms being picked up at bargain-basement
prices by the survivors.
If training specialists have been struggling, how can IT industry
professionals hope to make the right decisions about investing the
time and money needed to keep their skills up-to-date?
The latest quarterly review from E-Skills UK, the national IT
skills development organisation, says, "The accelerated pace of
change means that the skills which are in demand [in IT industries]
change much faster than in any other industry."
The more volatile end of the market has lost its glamour and much
of its premium. But while Web specialists may be the most
high-profile casualties of the dotcom crash, more mundane
occupations have also suffered. The Computer Weekly/SSP Quarterly
Survey of Employment Data and Trends found demand down 84% in the
first quarter of this year, and the Information Technology
Association of America's (ITAA) May 2002 Skills Report says, "It is
technical support workers who were most likely to be let go within
the last year."
Get it wrong and you could kiss goodbye to the £3,000 to £5,000
cost of traditional classroom-based training or an intensive
"bootcamp" course. And who can predict how the picture will change
during the six months that it is likely to take you to acquire a
new skill if you study in your own time while still employed?
Although online or CD-based courses are cheaper, it takes
tremendous discipline to structure in the 10 to 20 hours a week
these courses demand.
Future-proofing
The best way of protecting yourself
against the fickleness of IT industry fashion is to acquire
generic, rather than proprietary skills.
At the start of the dotcom boom, the late Gordon Ewan, director of
E-Skills UK's predecessor, the IT National Training Organisation,
warned about the risks of highly focused proprietary training given
by software suppliers at the expense of the more general principals
underlying all software.
"One of the characteristics of our industry is that people need a
broad underpinning knowledge," he said. "If you go down the
generalist route, it is then very easy to graft on the latest
version of Oracle or Microsoft. But if you come down the Microsoft
tube, it is much more difficult to switch to a different
development platform."
This view is echoed in a recent E-Skills review, which says,
"Inevitably, software practitioners will face a constant struggle
to maintain their skills as technologies and applications advance.
Thus those who have a good general understanding of software
technology will be best able to adapt and will clearly fare better
than those with limited specialist skills."
With SQL, which is consistently among the Computer Weekly/SSP top
five skills, you could go on to work with any of the major
relational databases. Train in Unix and you could specialise in
Linux, Solaris, HP-UX or IBM AIX.
With current league leader C++ under your belt you could easily add
Visual C++ or gain a flying start with Java. There are many "Java
for C++ developer" courses, and if the current decline in demand
for Java continues, you will have something solid to fall back on.
XML, which is almost universally adopted by software suppliers, has
joined the ranks of these generic skills. But this is something you
should be adding to your skill set anyway. "The spread of XML means
that it will quickly become a required skill for all application
software builders," says E-Skills UK.
The certification trap
You might consider getting your
existing or new skills certified. However, there is still some
scepticism about the value of certification. While it does provide
a benchmark for technical knowledge, it does not say anything about
your ability to apply it in a real-world situation. Supplier
certification is also considered by some to be a money-making
racket.
Over the past year we have seen some suppliers threatening to
withdraw recognition for earlier releases of their product even
though they are still in use. This is forcing IT professionals that
want to stay certified to go on courses to update their skills
beyond what they actually need.
Until recently, most employers prized experience above paper
qualifications, although if what happens in the US happens here,
this is about to change.
"Overall, certification has grown in significance for each of the
job categories, while general job experience has declined in
importance as an entry-level skill credential," says the
ITTA.
However, as a general rule, you will not be able to break into a
new industry sector on the back of a recently-learned skill. For
example, unless you are a Sybase or Oracle database administrator,
or have some other rare and prized ability, you cannot break into
the City without a financial sector background.
People found this out the hard way in the late 1990s when
enterprise resource planning (ERP) products such as SAP were
commanding four-figure weekly and sometimes daily rates for
contractors. Hopefuls clamoured to get SAP training, but many who
went through it found themselves being turned down because of their
lack of experience.
In practice, no one with less than two years' experience was likely
to find work as a SAP contractor. After a couple of years in the
doldrums, SAP has jumped from 76th to 13th place in the Computer
Weekly/SSP skills league. But unless you already have experience
with an ERP product, you still should not be tempted to spend your
own money on SAP training.
Avoiding the "can't get a job without experience, can't get
experience without a job" trap is something that IT employers have
yet to get to grips with. They need people with skills but have a
preference for people that have been trained by someone else.
If you have the time and commitment, one solution is to volunteer
to work for a charity to build up your real-world experience. Or
you could take a job using your old skill, offering your new one as
a second string, and gain on-the-job experience that way. And you
still occasionally see adverts from employers offering to
cross-train new recruits in the skills they need.
However, before you decide to invest in technical training,
consider whether improving your "soft" or management skills might
not be a better way forward. Some surveys indicate that employers
are most interested in IT people who can also offer team-leading or
project management abilities.