This guest editorial was written by Chris Gonsalves, VP of editorial at Channelnomics.
Ask any group of solution providers about their top three obstacles to continued growth, and they’ll be quick to tell you: IT staffing, IT staffing and IT staffing.
Partners, particularly those regional IT service providers focused on SMB clients, tell Channelnomics with some regularity that recruiting and retaining top IT talent is top of mind. They just can’t get enough good people, and when they do, the staffers often jump ship within two years to take advantage of the increasingly competitive market for technology workers.
It’s paradoxical, but in a nation bemoaning a sluggish economy and persistently high unemployment, IT employees are still at a premium and are naming their own prices in the job market. That’s hurting partners that consistently see their ability to expand operations and take on new clients stifled by their inability to retain sufficient IT staffing.
The 2112 Group’s State of Business Acumen study found that the majority of solution providers struggle to meet their growth expectations. Two-thirds say they want to grow organically through expanded sales in their current market while 25 percent are looking to expand into broader markets and sales territories. Those efforts, however, are complicated by difficulties finding and retaining skilled staff.
The problem is particularly acute in cloud services. A recent IDC report sponsored by Microsoft Corp. showed 1.7 million cloud-related IT jobs went unfilled last year and the number of available cloud positions will swell 26 percent per year to about seven million by 2015.
The “get them wherever you can” mentality is having a pronounced effect at IT staffing firms, where year-over-year aggregate revenue growth was up 15 percent in May, according to the latest Pulse Survey by Staffing Industry Analysts.
“After an anomalously poor showing in April, estimated year-over-year aggregate growth rebounded to 15 percent in May,” said Robert Balicki, research analyst at the firm. “Over the last 12 months, aggregate revenue growth readings — representing the sum of all firms reported — have slowly decelerated from a high of about 26 percent to 15 percent in May. Nonetheless, IT remains the strongest performing segment of temporary staffing.”
Partners are forced to compete for IT talent not only with other solution providers, but also with well-funded internal enterprise IT departments, and the news isn’t getting much better. A new study by IT staffing firm Robert Half Technology shows a continued enterprise hiring spree with more than one in three CIOs (35 percent) planning to hire new IT graduates this year. It’s interesting to note the IT staffing experiences of the 2,300 CIOs polled, representing firms in 23 major U.S. metro areas with 100 or more employees, don’t differ much from hiring managers in the channel. Good IT help is hard to come by for a variety of reasons. About 70 percent of CIOs say new IT graduates are basically prepared for the workforce. But more than one-quarter (26 percent) said the same new IT staffers are ill-prepared to contribute to their organizations right away.
It won’t come as news to solution providers that pour through IT staffing resumes and conduct interviews as a core part of their existence these days, but the chief concerns with these new IT recruits include a lack of skills in areas such as communication and leadership. Asked which single skill or attribute they felt new IT graduates most lack, less than a third of the CIOs polled (29 percent) said technical skills and just 17 percent bemoaned the recruits’ business skills like job experience and teamwork — but a whopping 55 percent said their IT staffing efforts were made more challenging by the cadre of young IT workers who lack personal skills like the ability communicate effectively or lead others.
“IT hiring managers are seeking candidates who not only possess technical abilities, but can also meet deadlines and work well with customers and colleagues,” said John Reed, senior executive director at Robert Half. “New IT graduates can distinguish themselves in the job market by demonstrating business acumen and solid interpersonal skills.”
Reed went on to outline some suggestions for technology graduates that could improve the IT staffing environment for all involved. For partners looking to fill out employee rolls, Reeds suggestions make a good primer for what hiring managers should be looking for in their IT applicants and how to optimize their recruiting and retention efforts in a shrinking and highly competitive talent pool.
The list of important soft skills of IT staffers includes the following:
Communication. IT workers need to be able to speak and write clearly. Look for recruits with an ability to avoid jargon when dealing with technical concepts that might be unclear or unfamiliar to others.
Conflict resolution. Disagreements will occur in every organization. The ability to calmly sort out issues and find acceptable compromises is as vital as technical chops in today’s IT channel environment.
Teamwork. Few IT projects are completed in isolation these days. Will this employee jump in and help out when needed? Those with an ability to choose team success over personal accomplishment and recognition make the best staffers in the long run.
Diplomacy. Maintaining a professional tone when communicating with others is crucial in the crucible of stress most solution providers live in every day.
The Robert Half report offers valuable insight into the dynamics of the staffing conundrum weighing on the channel. It’s instructive for solution providers to see how the CIOs they compete with for talent are dealing with IT staffing issues of their own.
