Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A + Q + A +
MOHAMMAD JAMAL TABBARA, SENIOR
SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT, INFOBLOX
EDITOR’S QUESTION
IT departments are suffering from
a chronic lack of cyberskills. The IT
industry is the fastest evolving industry
out there with a myriad of various different
technologies and solutions. A subject matter
expert today could be completely out of
the loop the next. It’s not enough to be a
technically well-rounded IT professional, but
must also understand the business needs
and objectives. It is very difficult to find
talent that can have all of those qualities.
If you do find any, make sure you do
everything you can to keep them.
There are currently limited skills in the market
which can be attributed to the actual lack of
manpower. A lot of companies have one or
two technical resources that are certified on
three or four different technologies. This puts
a strain on resources and compromises the
level of service.
Engineers are mostly motivated by
knowledge and technical development.
Hire a lesser number of people but
make sure you continuously develop
and do everything you can to retain
them. You will notice an immediate and
positive impact to your business. I think
it is important for companies to keep
abreast of which emerging technologies
are likely to necessitate a future skillset
need among their employees and then
facilitate training programmes to get their
employees the skills they will need down
the road. The biggest barrier to training is
time constraints as training programmes
tend to be quite time-consuming. A lot
of these training programmes also seem
to be extremely heavy on content which
can lead to information overload. Training
programmes need to be simplistic and to
the point.
It’s true, there isn’t a lot of talent if one
looks on the surface. Don’t just judge a
book by its cover – whether it’s a negative
or positive judgement for that matter. I
often get asked to provide feedback on
whether a candidate is ‘good enough’ to
hire. If that’s the approach, you should
stop hiring and change your approach
all together. Would you want a ‘good
enough’ boss or a ‘good enough’ engineer
implementing the solution you’ve just
spent several hundred thousand dollars on?
Chances are every one of you will say no to
all of the above.
Qualities such as teamwork, integrity and
emotional intelligence are absolutely key
when making a hire and they shouldn’t be
binary. But the one area I believe employers
should pay very close attention to is the
appetite of that individual to learn and to
be coached. Finally, when you get someone
good, hire them, take time to understand
them and invest in them.
Some organisations are mitigating talent
shortage by casting the net wider and
recruiting talent from markets outside the
region. However, there are a number of
highly experienced agencies that specialise
in IT recruitment that we would advise
CIOs to contact.
While offering an attractive compensation
package is important, it is equally
important to have a really strong culture –
one where employees are more than just a
number and there’s a strong emphasis on
having fun.
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