Short For IT?
With more and more companies having their day-to-day business operations relying on computers and the internet (the Canadian health industry is excluded in this group), there is an obvious increase in the demand for IT specialists, or an individual within the company that can somewhat fill this role. An article I read off of the Sympatico/MSN homepage the other day went so far as to list IT jobs as one of the top-5 hottest jobs in Canada. One of the difficulties facing these employees are the constant changes to the landscape; a short absense, or significant upgrade can leave a savy technician completely obsolete. The Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) has teamed up with the Information and Communications Technology Council to help with recruiting individuals into the industry and keeping them on top of the changes. With an estimated shortage of almost 90,000 skilled workers, this is potentially crippling to the industry and the economy, and would potentially force companies to look at bringing in outside talent or outsourcing this kind of work to managed service providers (see disclaimer). Citing the technology downturn at the beginning of the millenium, enrollment in technology-related programs had been declining year-on-year, and the participation of women in the industry is lacking. These are two critical aspects that the partnership hopes to address.
Click here for the full article from ITBusiness.ca.
Disclaimer: I do work for a managed service provider, Dyrand Systems Inc., and although I fully support the company and the work we do, I am in no way suggesting or endorsing managed services for every company. This type of decision must be made by the company in question and must be based on their specific needs and the options available to them.