Please check it out…..Would
someone tell them to and recruit in
Business Day (
21 June 2007
Posted to the web 21 June 2007
THE Standard Bank is expanding its recruitment campaigns to suck in
talent from
technology staff locally. It has up to 100 vacancies to fill
instantly and will need 300 recruits by the end of the year,
including programmers, project managers and business analysts. Last
year it hired 600 IT staff, and its total of 2500 means its in-house
IT department eclipses many of SA's specialist IT groups.
"The shortage isn't breaking us," says its chief information officer,
Jorg Fischer, but he is tired of postponing new IT projects because
of a staff shortage.
"We want to try to complement our IT shop with Indian resources. We
are always looking at the South African market, and we need to look
beyond our borders," he says.
"It will give me another option for how to solve IT or business
issues, instead of saying I don't have the people to do it. I want to
make us more flexible and nimble so IT doesn't become a bottleneck in
delivering."
As some technologies approach the end of their life, the bank will
request proposals from Indian companies to maintain and support those
applications. That will let the in-house technicians be reassigned to
develop new applications to take the bank forward.
It should also give them a better career path and more interesting
work, so they do not seek brighter prospects elsewhere.
The first tenders should be issued in the third or fourth quarter of
this year and will target companies including Tata Consulting and
Satyam, which already have operations in SA.
One example is the testing and integration of new software, which
demands a large staff complement. That could be outsourced to Indian
workers who could either be brought into SA or could conduct the
testing processes remotely.
If projects to develop new systems also run into local skills
shortages, technicians could be recruited from
job description they would be expected to train South Africans
working alongside them.
No-go areas for outsourcing will be designing the bank's IT
architecture, project management and business analysis.
The idea was inspired by what is becoming a common practice for
financial services organisations in the
mainly outsource to cut their costs, the Standard Bank will do
it "because we don't have the people and the skills available,"
Fischer says.
He expects many other local firms will follow suit to combat the
skills crunch. The number of students studying IT at universities in
SA, Europe and the
base is depleting. In comparison,
graduates a year.
The bank hires many temporary contractors from the personnel provider
Paracon, but Paracon has told Fischer it needs another 1000
technicians to fill all the vacancies facing its customers. Its chief
financial officer, Mireille Levenstein, says: "We have never been in
such a situation where there is so much demand for IT skills, and the
supply isn't there."
Paracon also looks to
after acquiring 34,6% of
Growth consultancy Frost & Sullivan analyst Lindsey McDonald says
SA's skills shortage is reaching chronic proportions and fuelling the
trend for outsourcing. Yet the third-party service providers are also
struggling to attract and retain skilled staff.
"In order to build a reserve of skilled personnel, service providers
should show higher levels of commitment to skills development," she
says.
A report by the Economic Intelligence Unit shows that
of service and low costs make it the destination of choice for
outsourcing application development and management.
Countries such as
capabilities to become more attractive to foreign customers, but
research by Accenture says the cost benefits and experience to be
found in
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Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?
.........Martin Luther King, Jr.
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