CompTIA CEO warns tech skills gap is growing

Speaking at annual ChannelCon event, Todd Thibodeaux predicts competition for talent will get even tougher

Tech sector skills gaps are being compounded by geography, employer expectations and retirements, Todd Thibodeaux, CEO at CompTIA told delegates at ChannelCon 2016 in Florida yesterday.

Thibodeaux pointed out that there are various factors at play that are contributing to the "gap" that is starting to grow in the tech sector between the number of job postings and the increasing number of unfilled jobs.

"A lot of the reasons we're not getting the right talent into the right jobs are [firstly] because there are geographic issues where we have a concentration of people in areas where there are no jobs and then we have jobs in places where there are no people," he explained.

"[Also], employer expectations are sometimes out of whack in terms of what they can get - especially for people trying to get into entry-level positions, where we have employers looking for three-to-five years' experience and are not willing to invest in new people."

He added that there are "millions" of IT workers set to retire in the next eight years, which CompTIA estimates will create a 15 per cent deficit that is only set to get bigger.

"We just aren't attracting enough [people] to account for retirements, let alone the growth in our industry when we think about the huge number of products we have coming down the pipeline," Thibodeaux warned. "Internet of Things, robotics, all these technologies that are going to be impacting our market, they're going to require skilled people on the ground, not just limited numbers of people in large cloud facilities, but actual devices out in the field that are going to need to be maintained by skilled technicians.

"But we just aren't attracting enough [people]. The bottom line is, young people are just not that interested in a career in IT."

Thibodeaux told delegates that one of the reasons is because the industry is competing with various other industries, such as healthcare and finance, which are drawing people away from tech.

"Before, we had this unlimited pipeline, we had lots of people flooding to our industry, but now lots of other industries - whether it be medicine, transportation, finance - are sucking those people up."

He noted that this issue is particularly true when the industry tries to emphasize diversity in the workplace.

"Other industries are doing a much better job of emphasising the diversity and being welcoming to diversity in their industry," he noted. "And although we're not being particularly anti-diversity in our industry, we're taking a lot of black eyes in the press about diversity."

Further, the CEO warned the channel partner audience that being in the tech sector is not "the same playing field" it once was.

"Tech has proliferated out into other industries," he noted. "Working for a tech company is [now] not the only place you can interact with tech. A tech-trained individual today is just as likely to work for your customer as for you."