Jobs in tech go begging as companies miss on recruitment

Companies urged to think more broadly about hiring in the tech sector,

Technology Council CEO Kate Pounder her home in Canberra. Picture: Jamila Toderas/The Australian

Kate Pounder says jobs in tech are a no-brainer for people trying to shift careers.

The chief executive of the new Technology Council of Australia says the most common pathway into a tech sector that now is desperate to recruit is via an earlier career unrelated to technology.

As the council ramps up promotion of careers in tech, Pounder says: “It is not as if we are starting from zero, what we are saying is that we need to accelerate the proportion of people who come through this pathway.

“There are so many reasons why IT might be attractive. Jobs in tech are fast growing, they are highly paid, they are secure. It’s very egalitarian – a person coming from a public school is as likely to get ahead as someone from a private school, the gender pay gap is smaller than in other industries and the pay gap between someone with a VET (vocational education and training) qualification and someone with higher ed qualifications is pretty minimal.”

She argues it’s especially attractive for women who have often fallen behind in salaries because of parenting and part-time work so “joining a high-growth industry means you get a financial bump up”.

“It’s an industry that has a lot of skills and training so you get re-skilled really quickly,” Pounder says. “And it is one of the sectors that has the highest rates of remote and flexible working. So for parents it is a good option for those mid-careers years.”

She says the average age of women coming into tech is between 25 to 30 and they are less likely to enter the industry through a conventional tech training course than are men.

The TCA this week launched a campaign to hire an extra 60,000 local workers by 2025, with the focus on reskilling and upskilling people already in the workforce or who have been thrown out of work during the pandemic.

Pounder says recruiters and candidates have equal roles to play: “I think of it as a matching exercise, a bit like dating … people on both sides have to be looking for something.”

People often have 60 to 80 per cent of the skills needed but stand back from applying for work because they think they do not have the technical skills required, Pounder says.

Industry needs to hire from a broader pool of people with diverse degrees and in fact it is already happening because it is the only way to hire needed staff, she says.

Pounder says migration always will play a role in bringing in highly skilled people for tech jobs but the answer to labour shortages has to come from tapping into new groups of local workers.

“We as an industry have to start giving people better data on the shortages and the jobs where there are vacancies so the training sector can respond better,” she says. “There is often very limited data and the Australian Bureau of Statistics uses old-fashioned terms like software engineer, whereas we need jobs like product manager.”

There are gaps in specialist roles such as cyber security and software engineers and STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) roles, but “we also need people for roles in marketing and sales and hybrid roles like a product manager who is both commercial and technical”.

Pounder says the lack of precise data – something the new council is addressing – adds to the misconception that the sector is trying to fill (highly technical) roles when the range of vacancies is much larger. She says “we need to get better at deciding which skills can be accredited” so training providers can respond with confidence.

The sector has to be more open: “It feels like a really mysterious sector to a lot of people, they don’t really know the jobs or how to get in.”