MyGlobalCity

You’re… Hired - Job Seeking In The Global Village March 28, 2006

The Associated Press reports today that technology firms in the United States are waiting for word from Congress in Washington regarding importing engineers and computer programmers on visa arrangements. They’d like immigration laws to change. This is no doubt due to the tech bubble that is once again forming, creating a void in the labour pool, even though there actually are skilled, out-of-work people available, but invisible.

Now, I don’t know what the unemployment figures are these days in North America. I gave up looking for full time programming work 2 years ago, after 2 unfruitful years of searching, up here in Canada. (A word to the young: keep your technology skills up.) I stopped keeping track of such things, except on a casual basis.

I’m guessing, however, that there are enough older programmers in the US (and Canada) to fill most of the available tech jobs in North America - since the complaint is that universities and colleges aren’t turning out enough graduates.

One of the problems, at least in Canada, is that employers want the most ridiculous combination of tech skills for the least amount of salary. In the early days of the public Internet, I saw computer programming job skills requirements advertised which could only have been fulfilled by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, credited with the invention of the Internet, cloned several times then merged into one mega-Tim.

I don’t know whether these job listings were due to HR staff or IT management staff who just didn’t know what skills they needed to hire, and simply decided to list every buzzword and technology they could think of. Many of the older out-of-work programmers I’ve spoken to said they simply gave up and changed careers (which is what I did). They couldn’t afford to upgrade their skills if they didn’t have a job to pay for it. If they had a job, they didn’t have the time to upgrade skills, as well as balance a family life.

What’s more, a lot of tech jobs stopped being advertised in newspapers and instead went to job websites. Older programmers were used to being able to open up the Saturday or Sunday edition of their nearest big-city newspaper. It was relatively easy at a glance to take a red pen and circle two dozen jobs, then filter the candidates down to a short-list of possible employers. Finding suitable jobs on the Internet, however, is nowhere nearly as easy as that, despite what it may seem like. You also have to spend several hours, even days, finding likely employers, especially if your skills aren’t up-to-date.

One possible solution, at least for retaining current employees, is telecommuting. It’s a win-win for both employers and employees, and for the government since they don’t have to shell out unemployment payments. Employers save office space (and the pro-rated amount of rent) and enjoy reduced equipment. Employees can bring in a company-supplied laptop during weekly, monthly or emergency meetings. The savings in travel time allows employees to enroll in self-paced, online skills upgrade courses.

Employers will often pay a stipend to cover some of the cost of phone or cable lines for Internet access, as well as electricity. And given that residential rates are often lower than commercial rates, employers are, at worst, breaking even in this regard.

Telecommuting seems to be favoured by many of many of the larger employers in Canada, especially in the telecom and government sectors. This is especially true around Ottawa and Toronto, the latter of which has horrible traffic problems.

The main problem, however, is one of perception and lack of planning. Those employers that do not allowing telecommuting don’t have the long-view. That is, assisting in the upgrade of tech skills for existing citizens is of more benefit in the long-term than hiring foreign workers.

In the meantime, while Congress mulls over the immigration issues, maybe employers and employees should use Jobby? Contractors and out-of-work veterans could use Ether or Jobby. Because if the workers can’t come to the employers, the employers can to the workers.

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