IT staff shortage leaves 17,400 jobs to be filled

I dont know about 17000 vacant positions in IT but i have annecdotal evidence of trying to find staff since January and not being able to. I have advertised on monster, irish jobs and with several recruitment agencies for 2 programmer positions (albeit with specific skills) and over the past 5 months i have found maybe 6 people worth interviewing.

Most of the CVs are from graduates that are extemely weak in most aspects of programming and IT skills in general, those applying with experieince dont have what we are looking for or are not able to explain what they have done in clear terms and the rest of the applicants are IT grads with Help desk and call centre or localisation experience which is not of use to us.

At least 60% of the CVs i have read are from outside ireland. We have narrowed it down to 3 or 4 candidates none of which are irish. I posted up the job spec in a few of the colleges in Dublin and not one person applied. It seems to be there are far more jobs out there in IT than there are people to fill them.

I know there are good candidates out there but they must be already employed in good jobs.
 
We had the same experience. But IMO it seems like theres loads of graduates, stuck in support jobs because no one will take graduates and train them up. We weren't willing to pay extra for people with experience and wouldn't take on a graduate because we didn't want to train them. So we hired contractors, who have now left, and two experienced guys one of who left after a few months because it he got a better offer. If we'd taked on graduates to train up we'd still have them, or paid much better we'd have got better people.
 
homeowner said:
I have advertised on monster, irish jobs and with several recruitment agencies for 2 programmer positions (albeit with specific skills) and over the past 5 months i have found maybe 6 people worth interviewing.
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I'm intrigued whether you were possibly looking too narrowly, for example a "Hibernate developer" instead of a "Senior Java Programmer", or likewise someone with "Warehousebuilder Paris Edition" or "2+years Cognos Impromptu" instead of a "Senior Oracle Engineer".

I think that some companies are being too picky or that people are being filtered out by the agency if they don't have buzzwords, despite having many years of experience.
 
gearoid said:
I'm intrigued whether you were possibly looking too narrowly, for example a "Hibernate developer" instead of a "Senior Java Programmer", or likewise someone with "Warehousebuilder Paris Edition" or "2+years Cognos Impromptu" instead of a "Senior Oracle Engineer".
I think that some companies are being too picky or that people are being filtered out by the agency if they don't have buzzwords, despite having many years of experience.
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We advertised directly on monster and irish jobs without going through an agency and we used generic terms like you suggested. I have no problem with training a graduate but when you ask in an interview where do you see yourself over the next few year most of them mentioned going to australia, some mentioned they wanted to start their own business (!) and others couldnt even explain the basic concepts of OO. Maybe the cream of the crop has been snapped up by the large companies who recruit in colleges but pickings are slim these days.

Another trend I noticed among the irish applicants in particular who had a few years experience was that on their CV it looked like they had some solid experience but they couldnt back it up in the interview so I didnt believe them.

For example one chap said he had been designing a small websystem with another developer. So I specifically asked did you do some design work or were you programming to someone else's spec (which would have been fine with me as I would have expected that to be the case for someone 3 years out of college) but he said he did the design. So I asked him a few questions about the design he did and he couldn't even draw a diagram and this was supposedly an ecommerce system that he designed. I have 13 years experience and i would struggle to design a full scale ecommerce shopping cart application from scratch.

I eventually asked was this an off the shelf shopping cart that you adapted for the product (which is a reasonable thing to do as a developer) but he insisted he designed it himself. Yet he couldnt tell me one single thing about how the system worked except to detail what the screens looked like. I knew he didnt have a clue what he was talking about. That was an extreme case but many of the other applicants were completly spoofing their experience quite obviously, yet put themselves as "expert level" on their cvs. Its amazing.
 
I take your point. It may be time for me to go back java coding then! I gave up because the standards were so immature (no MVC) and in such a state of flux at the time 00/03. On another point an even cursory knowledge of database principles seems to elude most front-end programmers at the moment... but that's for another day.
 
gearoid said:
"Hibernate developer" instead of a "Senior Java Programmer",
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Funny, the company I am currently contracting for are looking for somebody to take over when the project I'm working on goes live. They showed me their Job Spec after weeks of not finding a suitable candidate. Hibernate, Weblogic Integration and Oracle Process Manufacturing.
Told them to change it to J2EE with Application Server Expertise and experience of Database Concepts including JDBC. Suddenly got several excellent candidates.
 
There are many problems with the IT industry in Ireland today. Chief amongst these is the appalling state of the jokers commonly referred to as "Recruiters". A sorrier bunch I have never met. HOw some of these people (and I have dealt with my fair share) can even hold down a job is beyond me. They fall down particularly badly in relation to IT. I have not met one yet who can do more than just spout buzzwords.

Companies are equally as guilty. There is something rotten in how development is treated in Dublin (and further afield I would hazard). I've worked in IT for many years and seen how poorly many companies operate, treat developers, surround them with idiot project managers (a previous poster mentioned the poor standard of IT Project Management in this country - IT'S TRUE!!!!).

So...to get to my point. When you say you keep interviewing these half-arsed developers who lie, cheat and steal to get into jobs - you need to look at each layer to understand why!!

Good Software Development is an artform (not an engineering process) and justifies the respect it deserves. However, the greatest problem with software development is not the developers...it's the people who surround it...who just don't get it and never did. That's why hundreds of Irish companies still outsource to India and get sh*t code back and wonder why their cost cutting measures haven't worked.

If you want to weed out the bull****ters from the cream...conduct some simple tests before doing any interview. This test can be done online to give you an idea of who you actually want.
The market is fairly buoyant at the moment so that is one possible reason why pickings have been so poor. However, ask yourself are there other reasons why you've had such little interest from good people? What's the money like...and what kind of reputation does your company have in the marketplace amongst developers??
 
cousin_borat said:
Hibernate, Weblogic Integration and Oracle Process Manufacturing
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Anyone with Oracle Apps is unlikely to have Java/Hibernate. I have operated as both a Java and an Oracle developer, and I have previous Oracle Manufacturing experience, though brief. I wouldn't say there's one person in the country fits that specification.

I got disillusioned when I was asked to interview candidates for a Senior Oracle Architect/Developer role and found the specification was asking for a DBA. We got DBA CVs but when I probed further they wanted a SQL & PL/SQL developer with some DBA knowledge. None of them applied because the specification was wrong.

When I left that company I applied for projects a lot smaller than what I'd worked on but people wanted the exact fit in a massive technology space and wouldn't interview people with the proven years of experience because the agency was filtering on buzzwords. When I enquired of the agency, the person on the phone couldn't understand the basics of the technology area.

I think if companies aren't willing to train people up and many agencies aren't skilled enough to understand the area they're recruiting in then there's no wonder there's recruiting problems. It doesn't mean Ireland lacks developers but it does mean we have a serious recruitment problem.
 
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