Our company, ASI System Integration, recently landed a huge contract for technology migration; a year-long project requiring more than 100 technicians working at multiple locations across the country.
If the project was centered in the New York metro areas, our home base, it would be a piece of cake for us. But it’s not. It’s in multiple locations across the United States, many of which do not have access to the workforce development and IT training resources we typically tap to fine new technicians.
More and more we’re finding it to be a challenge to find the resources to help us with this particular project. I’d wager that many of your businesses are facing this same issue.
We’ve been in business for 20-plus years, serving the enterprise market. Our average customer has 5,000 or more users. Over the last few years, with the emergence of cloud computing, we’ve also become more engaged with small and medium-sized business customers. Yet even as our company grows, we are constantly challenged in finding enough workers with the right skill sets to keep pace with customer demand.
The majority of our employees are technicians and engineers, so the need for resources with education, industry experience and OEM certifications is a must.
On the professional services and consulting side of the house, we look for both experience as well as a secondary degree in the computer science or MIS fields. For technical and support service hires, we look for individuals that possess vendor-neutral industry certifications. CompTIA A+ and Network+ are baseline requirements for employment.
By making certifications a requirement, it reduces our time to have those people become productive. That’s a huge costs savings.
We work with two great programs, the Job Corps and Per Scholas to help meet our workforce needs. Yet as good as these programs are, they can only go so far,
ASI also utilizes an internal technical internship program to give new hires the experience they need. They’re teamed with an experienced engineer and technician and they will shadow this person for some time. All new hires go through the program.
Before the internship programs, it would typically take about six months of on-the-job learning and training before a new hire was ready to work in a billable situation, That time has been cut in half. If we knock 90 days out of the training program and you multiply that by the number of your staff, that’s a tremendous benefit. It’s a great success, but we’re just one company.
Many organizations offer book training, but what’s lacking is the real experience of doing a job. Employers are looking for experience, but how do you get that experience if you can’t get hired? With an internship, you get the hands-on experience.
We are strong proponents of the wider use of apprentice and intern programs in both the private and public sectors.
The Job Corps is one example. It’s a no-cost education and vocational training program with 125 locations across the country. Administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, the Job Corps helps young people ages 16 through 24 improve the quality of their lives through vocational and academic training.
Every Job Corps location has a data center, but a young person interested in an IT career can’t step into the center to get training from an experienced worker because the government can’t offer internships within their own organizations. We need help from the federal government to help these young people interested in technology careers to get that hands-on experience.
The longer terms solution to the shortage of IT workers is to bring technical education and experience to the public school system at an earlier age; maybe as early as elementary school and certainly high school. If we begin by educating the kids from elementary school, by high school they will be more aware of their career choices.
Technology is a career that’s very diverse, but the only way the next generation is going to truly be aware of technology as a career path is to add it to the curriculum. We are in a different era today, but education has not kept up with the changes. We need to wake up.
I also strongly encourage you to get involved with CompTIA and TechVoice as they advocate on behalf of the industry for policies and programs to address workforce issues and expand life-long education in the computer sciences and basic IT skills. These foundational skill sets are an imperative for the U.S. economy and its ability to spur job growth and innovation and to compete globally.
Angel L. Pineiro is senior vice president, services, for ASI System Integration, Inc., of New York, N.Y.
