Article: While chips down in many sectors, IT struggles to fill jobs

djpbarry

YES, THERE is high unemployment and our economy is taking a terrible battering (as are many others at the moment; this is not a unique problem). Yes, there is a huge increase in the number of people leaving the State, as opposed to the number coming in. But we have unfilled jobs in one of our most promising and critical sectors, technology.

And whatever the reasons for emigration – which are not as straightforward as political point-scorers would have it – we have a need for immigrants to fill those vacancies, and help create others.

The technology industry has, according to some of its leading figures and industry groups, several thousand of jobs lying open. The sector has also created about 1,250 jobs since the start of the year, according to IDA Ireland. These are “smart economy” jobs, available from the big multinationals, established indigenous technology companies and hot new tech start-ups.

Not all are pure technology jobs, either. Many do not need degrees in computer science or maths. They are jobs for people with multiple languages, with business skills, with management or sales qualifications or, you name it.

Others need IT graduates with specific skillsets or experience. And they are sitting open.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0527/1224297851553.html

This is something that myself and others on here have been alluding to for quite some time – Ireland currently has literally thousands of job vacancies in areas such as IT, software development and biotech. The country’s relatively new, super-restrictive immigration policies for non-EU nationals is essentially depriving companies of much-needed employees and there is a real danger that some of the employers in question will up and leave if they cannot recruit in Ireland. The article also underlines the fact that the reasons for immigration/emigration are many and varied; not nearly as straightforward as many a political commentator, both amateur and professional, would have us believe.

Unfortunately, the article is a little light on figures. However, a cursory glance at a job search shows that there would indeed appear to be a very large number of jobs in the aforementioned sectors:

http://jobsearch.monster.ie/jobs/Biotechnology-Pharmaceuticals+Computer-Hardware+Computer-IT-Services+Computer-Software_3333?sort=rv.di.dt&cy=ie

RedXIV

Tis a shame though, my dad's been looking for a basic IT job for the last 6 months since he retired from the guards. He has a degree in IT , has set up his own server at home, and he'd be happy doing IT support but can't get the work anywhere. He keeps getting overlooked for being 50

Cookie_Monster

They are jobs for people with multiple languages

IMO this represents a major problem for the majority of Irish people. Most of us can only speak English and a few words of French and Irish.

The Irish school system is just not setup right to provide large volumes of students capable of speaking a (real) European second language. Irish as a second language is absolutly useless to the majority of employers and so many schools are limited to only French as a language option that there is little choice when in school.

I wish I could speak another EU language but I could only do French in school, which I hated, no other option was provided.
Did a year of German in college but didn't have the time to do anything but the basics...

Companies like I work for consequently have to go abroad or hire foreign nationals to fill the vast majority of their non English speaking roles.

mickoneill30

While the article might be light I'm not sure your link to Monster is any kind of proof.

If you examine those numbers

234 of the jobs are in Computer Hardware
190 are in Biotech
769 are in computer software which is a very general term.
and
1000+ are in "computer and it services" which is also a bit general.

There are IT jobs out there but IT is a huge area. I work in it. I'm looking for a job, but for my skills and experience there might two applicable jobs a week, not 1000s.
If you narrow down your search (by typing in Java for example) you get something like 250 jobs which you'd hope the university system in Ireland could deal with.

It'd be kind of hard to get an immigration policy for that.
For the lower end there's loads of competition for jobs which I doubt we need more people immigrating for.

jester77

This is not just an Irish problem, there is also a shortage here in Germany and I would assume in other countries around the EU. What can Ireland offer a potential non-EU immigrant that Germany/UK/France/etc can't? That is where Ireland needs to work and make itself stand out.

BrianD3

I've been reading these type of articles for years. "Industry sources say desperate shortage of science and IT grads! Great opportunities! Science is fun!"

Ask science and IT graduates if this tallies with their experiences.

I have a good chemistry degree (one that I was led to believe is very respected by the pharma industry) a masters in chemistry and a postgrad/masters in IT. I found it very difficult to get a job as did most of my classmates. This was in the late 90s and early 00s when employers were crying out for graduates according to "career supplements" in the Irish Times. Funny how the people quoted in these supplements were often from IBEC or universities - so no bias or vested interest there in churning out graduates and flooding the jobs market :rolleyes:

As for recruitment agencies and sites such as monster.ie - an absolute joke and waste of time. All of them - in my experience.

wiseguy

Long time ago in a galaxy far far away

People were shunning the IT and Engineering courses at the local university, instead going direct into construction or yet another commerce drone or having a 4 year piss-up via Arts. The boasting that went on from the guys who went into construction was something else, apparently one was the bigger fool for going into engineering and science instead of picking up a wheelbarrow and shovel

Anyways, everyone who survived the IT/eng degree [2/3rds dropped out] all now have jobs, some did leave the country and have jobs, some went onto 4th level and have jobs, few went into business themselves.
All of my friends who did IT are now in hindsight happy as to their decision which at the time of the dot com bubble bursting seemed daft [yes daft the parent company for this site are hiring too].

dan_d

The thing is though, that I've noticed in my job hunt a serious trend in what's out there.

Finance - anything. Accounting, huge requirement for business analysts, administrators (the financial ones) and compliance being the big ones.

Retail - managers and deputy managers. Oddly enough.

Quality - jobs in pharma and bioprocesing plants. Mainly in quality, but also in others.

IT - anything. I don't know enough about IT to know what exactly, but everything seems to be covered out there. There appears to be a lot of jobs that are IT based, everywhere.

Languages - mainly telesales and IT support, but there is large requirement for those with fluency in another language. Lately, it seems to be mainly German and French across several employment areas. Irish people are pretty deficient when it comes to language skills - so.....why aren't FAS running language classes???? (Because they're still stuck back on the 90's jobs programmes and teaching the use of basic excel and how to weld).

Seriously. We can look out there and see a trend in jobs requirements. Why can't FAS? Private language classes are expensive (I took some before Christmas). Those who are unemployed do not have the money to spend 30-50eur a week for a private language class - or even 300eur for 8 - 10 weeks of classes (the Alliance Francaise is my example here). Since we all have to be channelled through FAS, why can't they offer language classes??? I'd be thrilled to take them.They've nothing else of use to me in there.

Amhran Nua

I'll join the other dissenting voices in the thread, something is very off colour about this announcement. My brother was looking for six months for work in this country, before he finally landed a position paying €45,000 a year and his accommodation paid for... in Australia.

Typically when industry sources are talking like this it means they are fishing for lower paid employees from immigrant sources, see the H1B shenanigans in the US for example.

TheWarrior

These articles are nonsense - I know at least 15 people with Software Engineering & testing experience who are out of work for over 12 months(last company I worked in which outsourced to India).
This bullsh*t is trotted out every year by vested interest groups.

There is a real sheep mentality in this country when it comes to choosing careers- The multitudes who left school early to work on construction sites, that went bust & so then thousands decided they would drive taxis instead.
Educated? We need loads of teachers maybe you should be a teacher-> result more teachers than positions. That isn't having an effect on the numbers doing Teaching degrees every year though- lord know the colleges need to get paid!
What about IT we cant get enough IT & Engineering people why doesn't everyone get into IT? Ya that sounds good!

djpbarry

mickoneill30 wrote: »

While the article might be light I'm not sure your link to Monster is any kind of proof.

I know. I’m certainly not suggesting it’s gospel – I wouldn’t rely too much on monster myself. However, I was looking for a job in the UK/Ireland last summer and there were plenty of companies advertising companies directly on their websites. I remember having another look a few months ago and posting a list of ‘tech’ companies that were hiring at the time – I’ll try and dig up the post in question. But, a quick look at google’s site (for example) shows that there are indeed quite a large number of vacancies at present, in a variety of different disciplines:
http://www.google.ie/intl/en/jobs/dublin

mickoneill30 wrote: »

There are IT jobs out there but IT is a huge area. I work in it. I'm looking for a job, but for my skills and experience there might two applicable jobs a week, not 1000s.

There is obviously not going to be 1000's of jobs open to any one individual. But you're are sort of highlighting the problem - there are jobs, but not a sufficient number of candidates among the unemployed (for whatever reason) to fill them.

mickoneill30 wrote: »

For the lower end there's loads of competition for jobs which I doubt we need more people immigrating for.

But there quite clearly is a problem – despite high unemployment, Ireland has a lot of jobs that are not being filled. If this issue is not resolved, economic stagnation is going to be an issue. Ireland is currently experiencing strong export growth – this needs to be capitalised on.

djpbarry

BrianD3 wrote: »

I've been reading these type of articles for years. "Industry sources say desperate shortage of science and IT grads! Great opportunities! Science is fun!"

Ask science and IT graduates if this tallies with their experiences. I have a good chemistry degree (one that I was led to believe is very respected by the pharma industry) a masters in chemistry and a postgrad/masters in IT. I found it very difficult to get a job as did most of my classmates. This was in the late 90s and early 00s when employers were crying out for graduates according to "career supplements" in the Irish Times.

I graduated with an honours degree in electronic engineering at the beginning of last decade and I too found it extremely difficult to find a job in a field relevant to my studies, largely because I was competing against other very experienced candidates – experience trumps qualifications every time and I think this is something that many graduates simply don’t realise. I ended up in finance for a couple of years.

mickoneill30

djpbarry wrote: »

There is obviously not going to be 1000's of jobs open to any one individual. But you're are sort of highlighting the problem - there are jobs, but not a sufficient number of candidates among the unemployed (for whatever reason) to fill them.
But there quite clearly is a problem – despite high unemployment, Ireland has a lot of jobs that are not being filled. If this issue is not resolved, economic stagnation is going to be an issue. Ireland is currently experiencing strong export growth – this needs to be capitalised on.

How though? From my experience (I'm not an expert) there may be 1000s of jobs but if I can only apply for 2 per week how would you use immigration to help fill the roles. Most people in IT would be in the same boat. We'd have generalised or specialised experience and would be looking for a specific type of job. I don't think (or know) that the lower end IT jobs are being left vacant. There should be loads of applicants for those. I'm guessing that opening up immigration would get loads more immigrants applying for those jobs, which isn't going to help anybody here. Well it'd help the business because they could offer lower wages if demand for the jobs goes up.

There might be lots of jobs advertised but are the companies not getting the applications? A lot of those jobs are looking for the IT superman (needs 10 years experience in every major technology but I want to pay peanuts) or fishing (I don't actually have a job but I want your CV on my books). For the jobs I do actually go for there it seems like there is plenty of competition.

IT is a generic term, it can be broken down to 100's of skillsets. Saying there are 1000s of IT jobs available is like saying there's 1000s of Medical jobs available, nurses, doctors, specialists, porters, admin staff etc. etc. etc.
There might be 10 of each but all the disciplines adds up to 100's or 1000's. You wouldn't say we should open up immigration to get more medical staff in the country.

doc_17

Computer programming should be taught in Irish second level schools...

Manach

My experience is similar to other posters, in knowing qualified experienced friends unable to get full time IT jobs. It is a case of the IT jobs being mostly concentrated in the Dublin area with few enough in the provences.

MisterAnarchy

These articles are becoming old hat these days.
As people have stated alot of the articles are published by bodies with vested interests most notably colleges who want to drive up enrollment in specific faculties.
There are IT jobs out there ,but alot of the jobs require an extremely specific skillset ,5-10 years experience in a specific area ,some of these job descriptions are either unfillable or not sufficiently remunerated to be filled.
IT is a fast moving area ,you could spend 5-10 years in a specific area only to find it out of vogue overnight.

dan_d

That's a bit bewildering.

I understand why there are no jobs in my sector (construction!) but the IT sector does seem to be thriving. There's definitely a sheep mentality when it comes to doing courses. Since I've been unemployed even, the number of people who have said to me "why don't you do teaching" has been ridiculous. I keep trying to explain to them that not everyone in the country can be a teacher, but......

Sometimes there's something to be said for the French school system where they channel you around the age of 14 into subjects that you're good at, based on your school results. And following that you go on into college to a course using those subjects. I'm not really in favour of the system, but it has it's merits....

krissovo

A lot of these jobs will be call center based taking advantage of cheap corporate tax (IBM, HP, Amazon, Apple, Goggle etc etc). Also a lot of them have a language requirement, trust me not many Irish are doing these roles as many of these companies sell "Native" languages to their customers.

On the plus side there will be a lot of senior support roles to these positions and they will contain a lot of Irish.

Sleepy

Manach wrote: »

My experience is similar to other posters, in knowing qualified experienced friends unable to get full time IT jobs. It is a case of the IT jobs being mostly concentrated in the Dublin area with few enough in the provences.

Of course there's few enough in "the provinces". The infrastructure isn't there to support the industry and, frankly, most of the industry don't want their head office to be more than an hour away from a decent airport. That's not to say we should be building the infrastructure by the way, it's almost certainly not economically viable to do so. It means that people need to realise that if they want a job they need to be flexible and the government need to realise that our welfare system makes it far too easy for the workforce to be inflexible.

The countries inability to provide a workforce with sufficient language skills to take advantage of these jobs is a damning indictment of the continued misallocation of resources in education imho. Would we have this problem if the 13/14 years of education wasted learning Irish was dedicated to modern European languages?

GreenHell

Seems to be good chunk of tech support jobs there, going from helpdesk to sys admin, networking and NOC.

A lot of the jobs spec out there don't really seem to know what they are looking for though, they read more like "please be a jack of all trades" with years of industry experience.

RichardAnd

GreenHell wrote: »

Seems to be good chunk of tech support jobs there, going from helpdesk to sys admin, networking and NOC.

A lot of the jobs spec out there don't really seem to know what they are looking for though, they read more like "please be a jack of all trades" with years of industry experience.

That's a common problem with IT jobs. HR managers write up requirments for things they don't understand and often, they totally over shoot. I once seen a graduate position that required 3+ years of C++ programing experience in addition to experience in very specialised areas. In short, the company in question were looking to hire an experienced developer on a graduate wage.

ucdperson

As people have stated alot of the articles are published by bodies with vested interests most notably colleges who want to drive up enrollment in specific faculties.

Can you blame us for wanting to drive up enrolment when on the one hand employers are contacting us about jobs for which there are no graduates and people are showing little interest in programmes that will get them a job, while everyone is whining about recession?

For instance
http://www.analyticsinstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=219%3A400-jobs-go-unfilled-due-to-skills-gap-&catid=72%3Apress-releases&Itemid=175

Stheno

BrianD3 wrote: »

I've been reading these type of articles for years. "Industry sources say desperate shortage of science and IT grads! Great opportunities! Science is fun!"

Ask science and IT graduates if this tallies with their experiences.

I have a good chemistry degree (one that I was led to believe is very respected by the pharma industry) a masters in chemistry and a postgrad/masters in IT. I found it very difficult to get a job as did most of my classmates. This was in the late 90s and early 00s when employers were crying out for graduates according to "career supplements" in the Irish Times. Funny how the people quoted in these supplements were often from IBEC or universities - so no bias or vested interest there in churning out graduates and flooding the jobs market :rolleyes:

As for recruitment agencies and sites such as monster.ie - an absolute joke and waste of time. All of them - in my experience.

At the graduate/entry level, there is huge competition, at a more experienced level it can be difficult to fill roles. I work in a very specialised area of IT and lost my job in mid Nov last year. I'd an interview the following week, and three more by the 14th Dec. (so four in a month) and another two I was unable to attend for various reasons. I then got offered one of the jobs from the interviews. The week I started in the role, I'd a call from someone I know wanting to see if I was interested in a role, and when I told them I'd found a role, asked if I knew anyone who was available (I didn't everyone had jobs)

The company I work for is now looking to potentially hire another person with a similiar skillset, yet
there are no available candidates in the market at all.

Amhran Nua wrote: »

I'll join the other dissenting voices in the thread, something is very off colour about this announcement. My brother was looking for six months for work in this country, before he finally landed a position paying €45,000 a year and his accommodation paid for... in Australia.

Typically when industry sources are talking like this it means they are fishing for lower paid employees from immigrant sources, see the H1B shenanigans in the US for example.

Again I disagree, it's high skill, specialised areas which are looking for experienced people who cannot fill roles.

mickoneill30 wrote: »

There might be lots of jobs advertised but are the companies not getting the applications? A lot of those jobs are looking for the IT superman (needs 10 years experience in every major technology but I want to pay peanuts) or fishing (I don't actually have a job but I want your CV on my books). For the jobs I do actually go for there it seems like there is plenty of competition.

In my companies case they are not getting the applicants with the specific skillsets and they are very specific skillsets with people who have the qualifications and experience to fill the roles that are vacant.

MisterAnarchy wrote: »

These articles are becoming old hat these days.
As people have stated alot of the articles are published by bodies with vested interests most notably colleges who want to drive up enrollment in specific faculties.
There are IT jobs out there ,but alot of the jobs require an extremely specific skillset ,5-10 years experience in a specific area ,some of these job descriptions are either unfillable or not sufficiently remunerated to be filled.
IT is a fast moving area ,you could spend 5-10 years in a specific area only to find it out of vogue overnight.

Another issue is that candidates who are potentially experienced in an area have not kept up with certifications, which in this day and age are a differentiator in the market.

Now my particular area is one where there is a shortage in the UK as well, I'd regularly get emails (3-5 a week) from both Irish and UK recruiters and companies asking if I am interested in a role as they've found my c.v. online. Given that I got my current role through the various websites/linkedin I'd not say they are useless.

Highly Salami

Stheno wrote: »

In my companies case they are not getting the applicants with the specific skillsets and they are very specific skillsets with people who have the qualifications and experience to fill the roles that are vacant.

What are the specific skillsets?

Stheno

Highly Salami wrote: »

What are the specific skillsets?

Virtualisation, ITIL, SAN would be three that I'm aware of.

robd

No problems finding roles in software dev area (specifically Java/J2EE middleware). Was able to pick contract role up last Sep within a couple of weeks. Rates moderately up. Confident enough in industry to take the rest of the year off now and spend time researching into startup company ideas.

It's a long time since I was a graduate. My in at the time was the work placement. Was offered a permanent role for when I graduated but took role with a startup that was spun out of that company.

Amhran Nua

Stheno wrote: »

Again I disagree, it's high skill, specialised areas which are looking for experienced people who cannot fill roles.

Maybe they should consider paying an appropriate wage rather than sending out press releases complaining, so.

Stheno

Amhran Nua wrote: »

Maybe they should consider paying an appropriate wage rather than sending out press releases complaining, so.

Are you talking about the article above? Or a particular company?

thebman

As some others have suggested, the real shortage in IT is in HR in IT companies having a clue what they are talking about when writing a job description.

But in many cases, it is worse. It is the head of IT writing a job description who doesn't have a budget so gives the clueless HR person a list of requirements that can't be met. He saves the money (in some cases to buy hardware, much needed hardware or to look good to his boss) but looks to his staff like he is trying to find someone but HR aren't doing their job and get find applicants.

When people are brought in for interview, the manager will talk them down afterwards even if another technical person interviewing them is saying they are great. This eventually leads to the IT team being over worked and looking for work elsewhere thus leaving actual jobs that need to be filled. Looks like loads on the website from companies like this but in two years they will still be in this boat looking for more workers that don't know what employers like them are up to.

Of course since many IT companies are like this, the people that leave usually end up in a similar company and in two or so years end up looking for work again somewhere else and the cycle of loads of IT jobs continues and they keep saying just look at the job sites.

Meanwhile anyone working for a decent IT company with a decent job in one is not going to leave that position now are they?

IT is generally hire young person, over work until they burn out and quit and repeat. If they are over 35 and still programming they know the industry too well so if they aren't looking for the next manager to do this to the people in their 20's, they don't get hired by these companies. IT companies are mostly looking for a very specific candidate. A person with a degree in computer science or software development of some kind and 2-3 years experience from another company so they don't have to train them but they aren't looking for really high wages yet. Everyone wants that guy/girl and that is what the shortage is of.

Not saying there aren't any good IT jobs out there, just saying it is rare and the only people I know not overworked in IT are working in public sector jobs and are getting paid more than most private sector workers too (just saying not trying to start a war).

In short if you aren't tearing your hair out at your job in IT, stay put. If your thinking of going into it, you also need to realise that most people are incapable of doing it properly and employers are very selective due to high number of incompetent applicants for some of these jobs. Usually employers give exams during interviewing to make some attempt to weed out the incompetent people.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't work in another industry because I live computers but I know the score. If you don't live technology, your probably going to end up being crap at it or hating your job, if you do then your probably already studying it or working in the area.

I'd warn anybody to try to do some sort of beginners tutorials if you think you want to get into it. If you think it is just hard then you can probably get good at it if you spend enough time at it. If your wondering what the command line is then you probably should forget it. The mountain of information to learn to get competent will most likely be too high unless your ridiculous determined and even then you will probably burn out.

Just my two cents on the subject. There are lower skilled jobs but most require a third language these days and those kind of jobs also seem to have high staff turnover so I can only assume they don't really worry about holding onto staff too much either.

Makes you wonder why if there is a shortage? A shortage of people lining up maybe but not actually a shortage of workers. Just workers moving around between companies usually around this time of year as well. It will die down in the later part of the year when the graduates come out of college and are looking to get some experience because most companies don't want graduates to train up and have them move on to some other company after they get their 2-3 years experience.

There are some good companies out there. More bad ones from talking to friends from college who are mostly in jobs.

dvpower

RichardAnd wrote: »

That's a common problem with IT jobs. HR managers write up requirments for things they don't understand and often, they totally over shoot. I once seen a graduate position that required 3+ years of C++ programing experience in addition to experience in very specialised areas. In short, the company in question were looking to hire an experienced developer on a graduate wage.

+1 on that.
I remember shortly after Microsoft released the first version of the .NET framework , companies advertising jobs looking for people with 3 years experience in it, which basically limited them to engineers who worked on developing the framework itself and a handfull of early beta testers.
Trying to parse IT job specs is a skill in itself.

monkeybutter

The reason for the shortage is simple, IT had a massive bubble and it burst 8-9 years ago, so no one could gets jobs coming out of college and thus no one did the degrees in it (IT).

Now that it has recovered somewhat, it will take 4 years to turn around students and numbers in the degrees will probaby rise and these people will emerge just in time for the next dip, sweet.

4 year degrees take too long and are a waste of time, and an IT degree should take 1 full year and that's it, it's not that complex.

And yes, IT jobs specs are stupidly complex and typically require some mad skillset that no one will have. Thats what incompany training is for. And of course they are all located in Dublin, why would you setup in Clare for instance?

The agesism thing should be a concern for anyone in IT, post 50 is not going to be easy.

kippy

djpbarry wrote: »

But there quite clearly is a problem – despite high unemployment, Ireland has a lot of jobs that are not being filled. If this issue is not resolved, economic stagnation is going to be an issue. Ireland is currently experiencing strong export growth – this needs to be capitalised on.

One would suggest that the very reason for this is that the majority of those unemployed do not have the skill set to fill these jobs.
They would have worked in construction or in retail for the most part or some career spinning off from those.
You dont get these kind of skills off of a quick course in general and not everyone is going to be able to have the aptitude to gain these skills.

robd

monkeybutter wrote: »

4 year degrees take too long and are a waste of time, and an IT degree should take 1 full year and that's it, it's not that complex.

Dear god no. A computer science (or related technical/engineering) degree gives a fundamental understanding of the field and more importantly how to think/problem solve. Part of the problem around 2000 was the crap being produced due to the lack of them.

NOTE: I'm an engineer not computer science graduate and I've never got even 1 paid course since the day I graduated. Everything is self thought based on the fundamentals I learned in college.

Training in something specific to the job is an additional requirement not and alternative. However, employers in my experience simply do not pay for training so you need to be able to self learn/teach.

RichardAnd

monkeybutter wrote: »

The reason for the shortage is simple, IT had a massive bubble and it burst 8-9 years ago, so no one could gets jobs coming out of college and thus no one did the degrees in it (IT).

Now that it has recovered somewhat, it will take 4 years to turn around students and numbers in the degrees will probaby rise and these people will emerge just in time for the next dip, sweet.

4 year degrees take too long and are a waste of time, and an IT degree should take 1 full year and that's it, it's not that complex.

And yes, IT jobs specs are stupidly complex and typically require some mad skillset that no one will have. Thats what incompany training is for. And of course they are all located in Dublin, why would you setup in Clare for instance?

The agesism thing should be a concern for anyone in IT, post 50 is not going to be easy.

Alot of good points here. For one, I've always thought that 4 years in college is crazy. A two year course free from nonsense would be far more efficient and healthier for the student.

I also have to agree 100% that people should be be choosing IT because the government tells them there are jobs there. For starters, the government and most of their civil service advisors likely can't tell C++ from HTML and probably think Java has something to do with coffee. Further, one of the the reasons we have armies of unemployable graduates is because the hapless souls heeded the advice that construction would provide them with a highly paid job.

The moral in all this is simple. When choosing a course, one should try to do something they enjoy. Granted, our dreadful CAO system makes this difficult but there are always ways around it. So to the prospective college student, think about your future and ask youself what you'd like to do, not what might get you a job.

Tim Robbins

There's a lot of shabby analysis about the IT sector coming from the media because none of them have ever worked in it or understand it.

Basically, IT is a very broad term; you can have a very wide range of skills and levels within the sector. People puts all sorts of bull sh8t on their CV; every buzzword they can think off but the problem is getting good people.
These are people who have the aptitude, the drive to keep learning and the ability to work with others. These are rare. And one good person is worth way more than 10 not so good people.

It doesn't matter how good at Java you are; if you worked for one company that uses it one way, you may not be a good fit for another company that uses it another way.

It's also very easy to be overqualified. If you have ten years good experience, you're probably over qualified for 90% of the jobs out there.

Unlike other professions IT involves constant learning. Right now its all about things like Cloud, Spring. This means go out and learn it in your freetime if you are not at work otherwise some whipper snapper will pass you out and you'll be unemployable.

IT is the most cut throat of the professions. Things are good now by IT standards but that means people aren't being sent emails telling them they don't have a job anymore.

You won't ever get a super good wage in IT; you cost too much the company goes to Poland or India. Other industries are not as competitive.

careca11

djpbarry wrote: »

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0527/1224297851553.html

This is something that myself and others on here have been alluding to for quite some time – Ireland currently has literally thousands of job vacancies in areas such as IT, software development and biotech. The country’s relatively new, super-restrictive immigration policies for non-EU nationals is essentially depriving companies of much-needed employees and there is a real danger that some of the employers in question will up and leave if they cannot recruit in Ireland. The article also underlines the fact that the reasons for immigration/emigration are many and varied; not nearly as straightforward as many a political commentator, both amateur and professional, would have us believe.

Unfortunately, the article is a little light on figures. However, a cursory glance at a job search shows that there would indeed appear to be a very large number of jobs in the aforementioned sectors:

http://jobsearch.monster.ie/jobs/Biotechnology-Pharmaceuticals+Computer-Hardware+Computer-IT-Services+Computer-Software_3333?sort=rv.di.dt&cy=ie

this is another problem with our educational system
they are in some way at fault for coaxing people away from IT and into construction/tradesmen ,
so a lot of these tradesmen (my brother included) are now on the dole and 0 IT skill's ,
yet you can go into FAS and still sign up to do construction Subjects and training
my brother went into FAS looking for advice ,
they said , sure your good with your hands ..........bricklaying or perhaps Welding would be a great skill to have (my bro thought your man was taking the piss , but no he was deadly serious), with these people offering that sort of advice , its no fechin wonder IT positions are widely available

_Kaiser_

thebman wrote: »

Not saying there aren't any good IT jobs out there, just saying it is rare and the only people I know not overworked in IT are working in public sector jobs and are getting paid more than most private sector workers too (just saying not trying to start a war).

Well now speaking for myself as the former IT Admin/Manager fior a large multi-site, 5000 user, public sector organisation, I have to take issue with that as one thing I NEVER was was bored or "underworked"

I looked after everything from purchasing/tendering to installation to support and training on everything from PCs, laptops, servers, software on a day to day basis as well as larger scale infrastructure projects.

To do this job there was me, a contractor in one of the sites that was really more a Sharepoint developer than support and who only looked after that one site, and one other guy (that they finally hired in year 3 to help me with the day-to-day stuff).

We went from an organisation that had a few PCs per site and maybe one eircom email address for the secretary, to one where every room was kitted out with a LAN/internet connection, PC/Laptop, digital projector, and where every user had a Domain account, share drive access, profile/data back ups and access to an Exchange account - the work we did led other similar organisations to take an interest and that in turn drove investment and partnerships from some of the big multinationals (like DELL and Microsoft)

Of course because of the short-sightedness of the government's blanket recruitment embargo, I (and the other two guys that worked with/for me) were let go in 2009 despite 2 appeals to retain our positions

Oh and I wasn't on MASSIVE money either - mid 40k and for that I also had to provide and maintain a car (no car allowance/company car for me - and the mileage rate was 19c per km which barely covered the diesel).

So I'm sorry but your "lazy overpaid PS worker" impression isn't as accurate as you may think - yes there are a LOT of PS workers that have been there too long, that are institutionalised by the work practises etc they've become so accustomed to - but most of these are in the older side of the workforce - anyone that was taken on with me certainly didn't get the "job for life", "massive wages" or "gold plated pension" - like everywhere else I've worked (and I worked/work in the private sector too), I had to contribute a percentage every month too (including for "widows and orphans" - neither of which I have either!)

For comparison, I now work for another multinational where despite having more staff in the IT department than I had, from an IT standpoint the place is a lot less developed than where I had my last organisation and there's no real will to change that despite the obvious benefits and cost savings - only real reason I can think for that is it's keeping people in jobs. To be honest it's driving me crazy!

Anyway, I was out of work for a year and my experience of the IT market is that if the job exists at all (ie: it's not an agency fishing expedition) you're doing well, if you get a reply (even if you fit the role perfectly) you're doing even better and employers now want someone who can do what used to be 3 seperate roles, AND have qualifications and years of experience to match!

Now again speaking for myself, I have NEVER gotten one IT course from an employer. The multinationals I've worked for promote this as a benefit in the recruitment process but then only train you on company-specific products or tools, or just train you to do the one specific task they hired you for - but if you approach them with an idea to do something outside that then even getting partial funding is a challenge (and then usually with strings like agreeing to stay x amount of time after the course is complete).

My problem therefore is that I've been so busy DOING the job that I have all this experience in Windows server/client, Hyper-V, Active Directory, Backup Exec, Project Management and so on, but I've never had the time to go and get all the qualifications (which expire shortly thereafter anyway and I certainly don't have the money to keep paying for it, what with being in my 30s and having other responsibilities too) so now I'm finding myself somewhat stuck as I'm "too qualified" for some jobs, and not "specific enough" for others.

Even though I'm working I still get the job alerts every day and there's maybe half a dozen a week that I think I might be suitable for/interested in, and 99% of those are in Dublin - I myself am commuting 200km a day at the moment and why? Because I WANT to work and it's better than the alternative!

Yahew

Well, London is booming, particularly for mobile. Learn Objective C and get an app out there.

ei.sdraob

RichardAnd wrote: »

So to the prospective college student, think about your future and ask youself what you'd like to do, not what might get you a job.

If anyone is thinking of going into IT and not actually like it will find themselves very miserable and most likely dropout.
So please do not do IT or any part of "just for money", if you have no interest in solving problems or learning new stuff all the time then IT is not for you.
As for college courses, my undergrad and postgrad were very interesting and I loved my time doing it (minus the math and commerce modules!), but the main thing I learned was not technology X,Y,Z, but learning to learn on my own!

And yes there are job adverts out there with Experience of X years in technology ABC which has only been around for X-4 years :P I chuckle at those adverts since they show that its one place you need to avoid.
One thing other employers need to learn is that if someone is actually very good in the area of IT you want them to be (experienced in tech X,Y,Z) then more often than not they would be working for themselves and be kept quite busy, not be out looking for a job.

thebman

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

So I'm sorry but your "lazy overpaid PS worker" impression isn't as accurate as you may think - yes there are a LOT of PS workers that have been there too long, that are institutionalised by the work practises etc they've become so accustomed to - but most of these are in the older side of the workforce - anyone that was taken on with me certainly didn't get the "job for life", "massive wages" or "gold plated pension" - like everywhere else I've worked (and I worked/work in the private sector too), I had to contribute a percentage every month too (including for "widows and orphans" - neither of which I have either!)

I never said lazy overpaid PS worker :rolleyes:

srsly78

Tim Robbins wrote: »

You won't ever get a super good wage in IT; you cost too much the company goes to Poland or India. Other industries are not as competitive.

Does Bill Gates still work in IT or does he not count? What about people working in IT in finance, or does that not count either?

Your post should read "you won't ever get a super good wage doing IT support". Although even that isn't true, basic IT support guy in London bank earns about £60k. Then again that isn't amazing by London standards, expensive city.

the_syco

Using excel = IT
Using SQL, Oracle, and Unix = IT
Using *insert random pay related software* = IT

Needing over 2 years for each job = all graduates instantly disqualified.

The remainder that have jobs will most likely hold onto them in the current climate, especially if as stated the new employer wants to pay peanuts.

=-=

In my beloved company, I see a batch of new people every few weeks. Most of them will be foreign, as the job wants the people to speak very good Italian, Norwegian, etc. Are they depriving Irish of jobs? No. Unless the Irish person can speak said languages fluently, and those that I have met, I've met in here already doing the job It does, however make the company bigger, and thus have more of a chance of getting english speaking jobs.

If you speak fluent Dutch, French, German, Italian or Spanish and speak english, there is a job for you in my beloved company...

GreenHell wrote: »

A lot of the jobs spec out there don't really seem to know what they are looking for though, they read more like "please be a jack of all trades" with years of industry experience.

I remember 2 weeks after Vista came out, on a certain site "Big scary thing".ie was looking for "5 years Vista" experience...

ucdperson wrote: »

For instance
http://www.analyticsinstitute.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=219%3A400-jobs-go-unfilled-due-to-skills-gap-&catid=72%3Apress-releases&Itemid=175

Did a search in Monster.ie for "analytics" in Ireland. 1 position out of 15 didn't need over 2 years experience or mention "senior" in the title, so although they may need 400 analytics in Ireland, how many of them are not looking for specific analytic stuff is quite a different story.

srsly78 wrote: »

Does Bill Gates still work in IT or does he not count? What about people working in IT in finance, or does that not count either?

Since he owns the company, he doesn't count. If MS outsourced all of it's jobs to cheap countries, they'd probably loose a lot of contracts with any government related companies.

Zulu

It appears to me that on the big employment websites, you get three things:

1) False ads by recruitment companies looking to get CV's in
2) Ad's looking for experienced people on junior pay rates
3) Legitimate jobs advertised incoherently

As usual, your CV does the talking.

The IT sector went through a series of busts in recent times (dot com & telecoms) and has been kept somewhat lean as a result. It's because of this it's going to be the first to recover & it's recovering now.

WebGeek

I see a lot of IT hiring in the west, Galway/Limerick. Some quite well paid jobs at that.

omahaid

WebGeek wrote: »

I see a lot of IT hiring in the west, Galway/Limerick. Some quite well paid jobs at that.

Ya, there is a bit in Shannon too. Intel have several hundred people there in research and design.

jmayo

monkeybutter wrote: »

The reason for the shortage is simple, IT had a massive bubble and it burst 8-9 years ago, so no one could gets jobs coming out of college and thus no one did the degrees in it (IT).

Ehh we did have people doing the degrees. We just didn't have every tom dick and mary doing conversion courses into "IT".

monkeybutter wrote: »

4 year degrees take too long and are a waste of time, and an IT degree should take 1 full year and that's it, it's not that complex.

Linus Torvalds is that you ?

Has it ever crossed your mind (probably not I would guess from this post) that we have a bad enough reputation for quality of graduates without trying to knock out computer related graduates in a year ? :rolleyes:

monkeybutter wrote: »

And yes, IT jobs specs are stupidly complex and typically require some mad skillset that no one will have. Thats what incompany training is for.

Can I ask how many computer companies you have worked in ?
I would guess shag all. :rolleyes:

monkeybutter wrote: »

And of course they are all located in Dublin, why would you setup in Clare for instance?

Maybe our telecomms infrastructure has a bearing on that.
And no I am not forgetting Shannon.

the_syco wrote: »

Using excel = IT
Using SQL, Oracle, and Unix = IT
Using *insert random pay related software* = IT

Needing over 2 years for each job = all graduates instantly disqualified.

The remainder that have jobs will most likely hold onto them in the current climate, especially if as stated the new employer wants to pay peanuts.

In my beloved company, I see a batch of new people every few weeks. Most of them will be foreign, as the job wants the people to speak very good Italian, Norwegian, etc. Are they depriving Irish of jobs? No. Unless the Irish person can speak said languages fluently, and those that I have met, I've met in here already doing the job It does, however make the company bigger, and thus have more of a chance of getting english speaking jobs.

If you speak fluent Dutch, French, German, Italian or Spanish and speak english, there is a job for you in my beloved company...

I remember 2 weeks after Vista came out, on a certain site "Big scary thing".ie was looking for "5 years Vista" experience...

Did a search in Monster.ie for "analytics" in Ireland. 1 position out of 15 didn't need over 2 years experience or mention "senior" in the title, so although they may need 400 analytics in Ireland, how many of them are not looking for specific analytic stuff is quite a different story.

Since he owns the company, he doesn't count. If MS outsourced all of it's jobs to cheap countries, they'd probably loose a lot of contracts with any government related companies.

Very much on the money in lots of respects.

graduate

Did a search in Monster.ie for "analytics" in Ireland. 1 position out of 15 didn't need over 2 years experience or mention "senior" in the title, so although they may need 400 analytics in Ireland, how many of them are not looking for specific analytic stuff is quite a different story.

What's your point here? Many graduate jobs are advertised directly to universities and the like, there being a very limited number of programmes that direct people towards analytics. Indeed UCDPerson implied that companies were approaching the university directly. All your quote above shows is that there are jobs beyond the graduate stage as well.

There are and always will be, jobs for people that can combine business and IT in areas like analytics. There is an ample supply of business graduates for softer disciplines and some of the anorak work can be outsourced, but the combination requires somebody with a bit of both and these people are in demand.

Yahew

Yah, the problem with the term IT is it can mean anything. I use to mean software dev, mainly. Thats in demand with any kind of experience, the reluctance of graduates to do it in the last few years, the less accomplished those graduates seem to be, and the failure of a lot of outsourcing, means it is a good market for those of us with experience. I know that doesnt help grads, much.

the_syco

graduate wrote: »

What's your point here?

My point was I hate the articles saying we need X amount of people in Y IT job. If 400 people of Y qualification got degrees, only a few would get a job, with the rest "needing more experience".

ardmacha

My point was I hate the articles saying we need X amount of people in Y IT job. If 400 people of Y qualification got degrees, only a few would get a job, with the rest "needing more experience".

Isn't this being a tad negative? OK some of the jobs require experience, but if the guy with 3 years experience takes up one of these jobs, then that will create a graduate vacancy to fill his job.

kippy

ardmacha wrote: »

Isn't this being a tad negative? OK some of the jobs require experience, but if the guy with 3 years experience takes up one of these jobs, then that will create a graduate vacancy to fill his job.

The thing is, it really depends.......
The company may want to replace him with someone similiar to him - ie - a person with three years experience and NOT a graduate........