Saturday, 27 September 2008

Greying of Technology

Have you noticed how the average age of the technology department is rising? I am witnessing the greying of Technology. This should concern every one of us. The new generation of precocious talent like graduates or guru trainees is no longer a common sight in the technology function and I feel sure that we, i.e. senior IT leadership are the cause. The jobs that those graduates or trainees would previously have had are now often being poached by India or Poland or South America. Our talent nurseries and kindergartens are dwindling because the jobs are now seen as low-value, blue-collar and exploitable. That’s not to say the talent isn’t there, it’s just we’re not fishing in the pool of plenty as often as we used to, I’ll give you an example:

I’m recruiting for application support professionals with 3-5 years of experience. Almost every CV comes from someone with a visa that says Highly Skilled Migrant, very few are local talent. I’m also recruiting junior positions where we want recent graduates. My HR department have been inundated and as a consequence the short-listing process is taking much longer because of the sheer number of CVs we’ve received.


So, it’s not that there is no-one wanting those graduate or trainee positions, we have just blocked off the well and believe we’ve found Evian instead. Very soon we're going to have to restart this process, possibly through more formal methods otherwise by the time you and I are looking to retire, there'll be no-one to replace us!

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