Datacentre bootcamp aims to address skills shortage

First of a series of recruitment days held in London as datacentre employers struggle to fill gaps left by an ageing workforce

Graduates, school leavers and ex-armed forces personnel are being targeted for a series of specialist bootcamps centred on the job opportunities within the datacentre.

The first course, running today at the University of East London’s Docklands campus, has been devised by the Data Centre Alliance, and supported by two of the biggest datacentre employers Telecity and Telehouse.

Despite the constant coverage in the national press of job shortages, datacentre operators have been having serious difficulties recruiting the right calibre of people to work in what they are dubbing the "factories of the future", explained Simon Campbell-Whyte, executive director of the Data Centre Alliance. Skills needed range from electrical and mechanical engineering to IT and sales.

“The Data Centre Bootcamp is free to the attendees thanks to the sponsorship of training company C-Net and of two of London’s biggest datacentre employers: Telecity and Telehouse,” he said.

“Amazingly,” Campbell-Whyte added, “The average age of people in the datacentre industry is fifty-something and there is a major skills shortage coming in this vital industry. We have worked with our many Datacentre operator members to come up with Data Centre Bootcamp, which started today. We hope this bootcamp will give many unemployed graduates, and some of the highly able people now being forced out of our armed forces, the extra skills they need to become credible interview candidates for datacentre employers.

“Both Telecity and Telehouse run massive datacentre complexes in Docklands and are hoping that at the end of the bootcamp they will have some of their best interview candidates in years,” he added.