On Australia’s ICT Workforce Study (AWPA, 2013)

In July 2013, the Commonwealth Government’s Australian Workplace and Productivity Agency (AWPA) released the ICT Workforce Study – a 169 page review of Australia’s tech workforce, where its headed and the challenges it faces.

Here’s an extracted summary of chapter two regarding challenges Australia needs to address to meet future ICT skills demands:

• The ICT workforce is predominantly young and male. Participation rates of women and mature-aged workers are low. The potential to engage Indigenous Australians and people with disability also remains untapped.
• High drop-out rates from tertiary courses, and graduates reporting difficulty finding employment, are causes of concern. Skilled and temporary (subclass 457 visa) migration programs are a key source of supply for the ICT sector since the mid-1990s and continue to play a significant role in addressing the demand for specialist skills not available in Australia.
• Third, employers find it hard to quickly recruit suitable candidates for job openings. Employers increasingly demand professionals with both broad knowledge and deep expertise, including technical skills, domain knowledge and soft skills which include communication and business skills. Employer demand for experienced workers means that there are fewer entry-level positions available for new graduates.

This gives a fairly accurate state of play of skills and employment at the upper tertiary/people- with-jobs level. What I like about this report is that it recognises the difficulties in capturing ICT workforce data – that old chestnut: is an accountant working for a tech firm considered part of the sector? What about a tech IP lawyer? What about a tech entrepreneur that outsources development?

Some other interesting insights:

Recent recruitment data for key ICT occupations indicates that while there are often adequate numbers of applicants for advertised vacancies, employers often considered many applicants unsuitable for the positions. For instance, data from DEEWR’s Survey of Employers Who Have Recently Advertised indicates about 10% of applicants in three ICT occupations—ICT Business Analyst, Systems Analyst and Analyst Programmer—were suitable for the positions advertised, and for Developer Programmer and Software Engineer positions only 5% of applicants were suitable. …(edited) reasons given: a) new entrants don’t have enough experience (in years) and b) applicants often lack soft skills. In some occupations, such as Software Engineer and Developer Programmer, client liaison and ‘cultural fit’ with the enterprise are considered critical when assessing applicants for positions.

This is a tough one – recruitment data indicates that Australia has enough ICT workers – its just that they are not the right type nor have diverse enough life experiences/soft skills. There are a couple of suggestions in the wind as to where the solution lies – the most common one is to increase total volume of tech educated workers. This sets off a discussion on the reasons why the volume of Australian’s enrolling in tertiary computer science degrees has declined (and it has, a drop of 36% since 2001 – but a slight improvement on 2008 when it was down to 50%). This winds its way back to primary school experiences – the idea that students have roughly formed their career ‘personalities’ by about the age of 8.

I’m sure I’ll post more on this.