Previous Page  42 / 60 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 42 / 60 Next Page
Page Background

Crossing

the Skills Gap

By

Matthew

DeMartino

T

he telecommunications industry is

a fascinating one. As it continues to

evolve, the requirement for skilled

and experienced technical employees

has grown exponentially.

International Agents

The demand for individuals with spe-

cialized certifications and advanced

degrees seems to have outgrown the

supply, and this leaves companies

struggling for answers.

For the better part of 10 years, I have

worked on the agency side of the re-

cruitment process with Competitive Tele-

coms Group focusing on the telecommu-

nications and data center space for both

national and international companies. I

have witnessed the ebbs and flows of

the industry. I have seen what appears

to be an almost weekly announcement

of new mergers and acquisitions.

With all this change, there is a con-

tinuous cycle of new and marketable

candidates flooding the market. Com-

panies, now more than ever, feel the fi-

nancial burden of having to meet man-

dated revenue numbers set by senior

officers and board members and need

to hire the best talent to achieve these

goals. The problem is, this is not such

an easy task. A number of factors dur-

ing the years have contributed to the

difficulty in finding top technical talent

in the market. In particular, the three

main trends we see are as follows:

education, unreasonable expectations

and salary requirements.

I grew up in the generation where

parents emphasized that you need

to go to college and earn a degree.

Degrees from vocational schools were

generally frowned upon in comparison

to the almighty four-year degree. It

did not matter what that degree was

because it was assumed your future

employers would teach you the skills

you would need to gain experience

and nurture your career.

Unfortunately, during the last

few years, technology has rapidly

advanced, and the need for “highly-

skilled” and specialized labor has

grown with it. Now more than ever,

companies expect recent college grad-

uates to hold a significant amount of

experience with a premium placed on

those who have some form of technical

certifications. To succeed in the future,

we need a well-educated workforce that

specializes in innovative thought. We

need students who possess the techni-

cal literacy to be contributing members

of an organization from day one.

The question is, how do we meet

the demand of these companies for

qualified employees? For starters,

directing students toward technical de-

grees is absolutely critical to the growth

of an advanced work force. We don’t

need to graduate more students with

degrees in liberal arts. Colleges and

universities need to work on offering

more certification programs. If a student

can go through a five-year teaching

program and come out with a master’s

degree, why can’t a school offer an ad-

ditional semester workload that grants a

CCNA or CCIE certification or Six Sigma?

On the other hand, companies need

to do a better job training and developing

the talent they already have. Headcount

reductions in the industry have led to a

significant reduction in training. Compa-

nies need to step up technical training to

help support their growth. The more you

work to improve your staff, the more pro-

ductive and contributing they will be to the

long-term development of an organization.

Why hire from the outside when the talent

is there but only needs to be cultivated

further? Building training and continuing

education platforms within corporations

would go a long way toward giving indi-

viduals the ability to succeed in their cur-

rent roles while developing them for future

advancements within the company. 

Another issue we face is unreasonable

expectations from hiring managers. Now

more than ever, companies have been

asked to produce more with less. With that

said, the requirement for candidates to

possess a multitude of certifications has

increased exponentially. Companies now

expect individuals to be cross-functional in

different business segments and be a “jack

of all trades.” In theory, that sounds great,

but finding those types of individuals plays

into the other big issue organizations face.

Salary requirements have been a

major stumbling block and have only got-

ten worse over time. The expectation for

Channel

Vision

|

July - August, 2017

42