[CutePuppy]

           

           

           

           

A significant number of companies are losing revenue due to a lack of available skilled candidates for open job positions, according to a recent survey from CareerBuilder. Computer programmers and employees in other science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions are particularly in great demand. Due to increasing urgency over the job vacancies, some of the survey respondents support lifting the cap on H-1B visas. (These visas allow businesses to employ foreign workers who are highly skilled in specialized occupations, including computer programming and other high-tech jobs.) There is controversy over such a proposal, however, as far more employers oppose expanding these opportunities for foreign professionals, survey findings reveal. "There's continued debate around whether we should be importing workers to fill high-skill jobs or investing in educating the labor pool that already exists on our shores," said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder and co-author of The Talent Equation. "The answer is both. We need to close the information gap in the U.S. and educate workers on which skill sets are in high demand, so they can pursue those career paths. ... At the same time, we need to make sure we're bringing in experts from other countries to work side by side with our experts in the U.S., so we can continue to innovate and grow the U.S. economy." More than 2,320 hiring managers and HR professionals took part in the research.

Dennis McCafferty is a freelance writer for Baseline Magazine. (Baseline, 2015-09-09)

[rarestia]

This goes to my point that American youth are not being sufficiently educated to compete with the capabilities of foreign STEM workers. I’m an engineer and can tell you that the last 3 domestic workers I had to train were sorely lacking even basic mathematical knowledge while trying to perform job duties that require an understanding of math and computer sciences.

Having to explain how a function works in a script is not what I would consider acceptable for a candidate trying to work in a higher tier IT shop. But then on the other side of the coin, the work I get out of many offshore resources is lackluster in quality and oftentimes late. It’s a difficult situation to overcome, and I don’t see an easy solution short of scrapping America’s BS education system and starting from scratch.

[DoodleDawg]

Due to increasing urgency over the job vacancies, some of the survey respondents support lifting the cap on H-1B visas.

It used to be that if supply was not meeting demand then you raised the price you were willing to pay and the supply would increase. Now if supply is not meeting demand you claim the sky is falling and force Congress to increase the cheap supply.

[CutePuppy]

Work visas are not limited to IT only, but speaking of IT, consider larger implications of offshoring/inshoring/re-shoring: the "cloud" and SaaS/PaaS make a lot of these issues even more difficult for in-house personnel:

           

           

           

A significant number of CIOs and IT directors believe that the phrase "IT department" will eventually cease to exist, according to a recent survey from Logicalis. There's no need to panic, however, because there will always be a huge demand — in fact, there will be a rapidly increasing demand — for tech professionals, especially those who combine IT skills with business-focused savvy. The accompanying survey report, "Establishing the Internal Service Provider: A Global Study of CIO Pressures and Priorities," depicts a dramatically evolving landscape in which technology leaders, managers and staff are getting more involved with ROI-impacting initiatives, while business units are making their own decisions about technology acquisitions. In the past, organizational leadership often took issue with internal users who circumvented IT to get the tech they wanted: a practice referred to as "shadow IT." Now, however, shadow IT is increasingly perceived as a logical means to an end in terms of addressing unfulfilled needs to support objectives. "It is clear that businesses don't want a technology solution," says Mike Martin, senior vice president of solutions and services for Logicalis US. "They want their business needs to be met. That means the CIO's role must change from that of a technology provider to one that is laser-focused on delivering IT services that meet line-of-business users' needs." More than 177 global CIOs and IT directors took part in the research.

Dennis McCafferty is a freelance writer for Baseline Magazine. (Baseline, 2014-12-19)