Bridging the gap
HP has unveiled plans to train 20,000 people in IT over the next four years to help ease partners' recruitment woes. Caroline Donnelly reports
The channel needs to stop standing on the sidelines, bemoaning the dearth of highly skilled IT workers being turned out by the UK education system, and start working with schools, colleges and universities to produce the calibre of staff it requires.
This was the view put forward by Nick Wilson, UK and Ireland managing director of hardware giant HP (pictured below), at the worldwide launch of the HP Institute in central London last month.
"If you look at the state of the education system at the moment, by the time kids reach 16 they have no desire to do STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] skills," he said.
"Look at the university [applications] data. The current statistic is that just four per cent do something IT-related at university, and that is simply not good enough. We [the IT industry] have to do something about it."
In his firm's case, this means working with education establishments across the UK, through its new HP Institute programme, to train up 20,000 people in IT over the next four years.
This is an area in which the vendor has some experience, having co-authored degrees at several UK universities in recent years. But it is keen to work with others, through the launch of the institute, as well as schools and colleges, too.
"We are looking to integrate the HP Institute so that [students] come out [of education] with [industry-wide] skills, so that - while it would be nice for them to come and work for us - they would be industry employable as well," said Wilson.
"Our channel partners would [also] be able to get access to some of these 20,000 folks because one of the biggest complaints of our channel partners is that they cannot access really highly qualified IT folk."
The scheme will provide students with a business-focused grounding in technology, claimed Brian Beneda, manager of HP academic programmes, global certification and learning.
"It is no longer good enough to hire people out of university or IT certification programmes who are geeks and bit-heads. They may know how to code,
but they do not understand how technology affects business," he told delegates.
"It is [also] not good enough just [to] have a degree, they [need] to have practical experience [because] they [employers] want people who have actually been able to take technology and meaningfully support business objectives and have that on their CV."
Students who participate in the HP Institute will be taught about industry-standard technology, as well as the vendor's own products, and will have access to hands-on training and work experience.
They will also receive an HP Accredited Technical Associate (ATA) qualification, which Beneda claims should speed up the time it takes tech graduates to settle into working life.
"Partners have told us they require six months to a year of training people on the job, after they come out of university before they are effective, and we wanted to build something that would make them productive from day one," he said.
Cross-channel challenge
Bucks-based HP Preferred Gold Partner CSA Waverley said the institute's launch should solve some of its staff recruitment challenges.
The firm's sales director, Steve Nicholls, said CSA Waverley has "quadrupled" in size over the past two years and has found it increasingly difficult to find highly skilled people to support its growth.
"There are a lot of mediocre people out there and, as a growing business, we really struggle to fill junior roles, technical posts, pre-, post- and general sales positions," Nicholls told ChannelWeb.
"We often end up taking on staff from other resellers or HP, but it is like robbing Peter to pay Paul because what we really need is to get more fresh blood into the industry."
He also backed HP's assertion that it can take time for graduates to find their feet in an IT environment, because so few leave university with vendor-specific certifications.
"There is pressure from manufacturers to get people accredited [in vendor-specific certifications] in a short amount of time," he explained. "For smaller businesses that do not have the time or resources to nurture that, it is sometimes easier to target people who have already done it elsewhere."
His only reservation about the scheme is that it will be a while before it bears fruit. "The only negative point about this is that it will take a while for firms such as mine to see results and benefit. It is not going to happen overnight or even next month, but the pressure to find top-quality staff is still going to be there," added Nicholls.
To alleviate some of this pressure in the short term, channel firms should consider following HP's lead and forging their own ties with the academic community, offered Martin Porter, vice president of software development at 10GB Ethernet vendor Solarflare.
His company has done this by drawing on its location in the university town of Cambridge to fill many of its technology-focused vacancies.
"We have very strong ties to the university. We are friends with the people working in the computer labs and that way we find out about high-quality candidates before they leave the university," Porter told C hannelWeb.
"And when they join us, we put them through a rigorous training scheme."
However, given the high number of tech firms in Cambridge, including HP-owned software company Autonomy, competition for these graduates is fierce.
"I do not think we are unique in what we look for, because a lot of other Cambridge-based companies are equally as picky, but there are lots of businesses looking at these candidates," said Porter.
"In some cases, by the time you get to the interview stage, you know they are probably going to receive about 10 or more job offers."
Avisen-owned location-based information solutions vendor 1Spatial is also based in Cambridge and has faced similar difficulties.
Speaking to ChannelWeb, Marcus Hanke, chief executive of Avisen, said without the firm's proximity to the university town, its recruitment woes would be worse.
"We are fortunate that Cambridge generates such a high number of high-calibre physics and mathematics graduates who can do the level of development we need them to do," said Hanke.
"If we were not based in Cambridge, we would probably struggle to attract those kinds of people."
Echoing HP's words about producing business-focused technology graduates, Hanke said this is an area in which the Avisen group, which also owns data analytics software vendor Storage Fusion, has previously experienced trouble.
"In an ideal scenario, what we try to do is get very good, competent business people with an aptitude for technology and complex modelling and take it from there," he explained.
"We would much rather have a business graduate with an aptitude for mathematics than a pure techie and then push them to understand the business side of things."
Business-focused techies
Dale Kirk, principal consultant at Crawley-based IT skills academy Thales Training and Consultancy, said the industry has a history of throwing techies into business environments and expecting miracles.
"For decades organisations have focused on the benefits of hard skills, centred on an employee's technical expertise to carry out the job, [but] today they crave employees with critical soft skills because they influence how a task is completed and its overall success," he claimed.
"IT managers need to be able to relate or communicate with other employees and departments regarding challenges and how technology can help deal with issues and enable business growth."
Solarflare's Porter agreed that it is important for techies to have business nous, but claimed this is easier to pick up on the job than teach.
"It is not easy to train [tech-minded] people in business or commercial skills, but I would argue that it is also not always necessary either. Not for every role," he said.
Also, pushing techies to constantly think about how the work they are doing could be applied in a business context could end up hampering their innovation and creativity skills, he added.
While almost every person ChannelWeb spoke to about the HP Institute welcomed the programme, several also said they would like to see the firm work in collaboration with other vendors to help close the IT skills gap.
Andrew Henderson (pictured), managing director of HP Preferred Gold Partner Lanway, explained: "It is great to see engagement between vendors and the education sector because it will ensure that training has real-world relevance.
"However, the real value in a scheme of this sort will come from vendors collaborating [because] the channel does not operate in single-vendor silos, so neither should the training intended to bolster its workforce."
David Ellis, director of new technology and services at distributor Computerlinks, added: "HP has a wide spread of technologies in its portfolio, [but] it might make sense to develop a scheme alongside other vendors to give a broader view of the market.
"The reality is that the majority of companies will have a multi-vendor IT strategy and collaboration between vendors will give trainees the skills they need to cover them all."