The shortage would appear also to be confirmed by another recent action.  At the behest of corporations lobbying hard to increase quotas, the U.S. Government recently passed a bill raising the number of H-B1 visas for foreign technology workers to 195,000 annually for the next three years.

While The Industry Standard's "DotCom Layoff Tracker" reports nearly 20,000 fired or laid-off from struggling Internet Economy companies, most of these folks have scored new gigs within days.  Or hours, if you can believe the stories about Pink Slip parties attended by slavering recruiters waving job descriptions and attendant perks galore.  You can verify these numbers by looking at www.f**ckedcompany.com, a site that gleefully reports on the status of weltanschauung for all of us that didn't score big $ in the early boom.

So, by all indicators, it would seem that there is an IT shortage, right?  Not according to a lot of the people who write to me for advice.

Or Not?

Let's define a few more things.  Those of you who read this column for mid-career advice or specific hands-on job search help probably aren't experiencing much of a problem.  Most of you have in-demand skills based on years of experience in the field. I'd guess that the folks falling into this category would agree with the notion of an IT shortage.  If recruiters are calling you, or if you've got a couple of enticing offers to choose from - then, no problem.  It's all good for you.

But, if you've just completed a short course at a vocational school, or if you've been supporting a mainframe or coding in Cobol (now that Y2K is history), it's probably a different story.  From the letters I get and the postings in JobCircle's forums, most of you are struggling to leverage this so-called hot labor market. 

The real key to employability - for every IT worker - is demonstrable skills.  Emphasis on the demonstrable part.  What this means is the ability to prove hands-on competency in the area of your alleged expertise.  A course completion certificate isn't enough.  And for that matter, neither is a Microsoft certification.  According to most employers, all this proves is that you could pass a written test.  What they're looking for is something you've done in the real world.

Yes, I know this is a Catch-22 ... you can't get experience without a job and can't get a job without experience.  I agree that this isn't fair and that employers are hurting themselves by failing to give entry-level people a chance to learn and grow on the job.  But let's look at the situation from their perspective for a moment.

For most companies, profitability is based on a razor-thin margin. (Blame eBusiness which commoditizes everything.) Labor is a huge cost to most businesses and in order to produce a profit, employers need all of their workers to hit the ground running immediately.  Training costs - including the cost of on-the-job training (AKA "ramp-up time") reduce profitability.  New, untried IT workers require more than simple orientation before they reach even minimal productivity.  It's not fair, but it's a no-brainer for employers.

Experienced Workers Experiencing Difficulty

It's not just the newbies having trouble getting situated.  There's an abundance of IT workers who've had lengthy and respectable careers, and now can't seem to leverage this labor market.  Again, the interpretation is pretty simple. 

Many of the folks in this category have worked for years in IT support positions with mainframe systems and languages.  The specialized care and feeding of these big boxes was a protected safe haven for a very long time.  It wasn't until the advent of the client/server model and widespread adoption of this platform that things began to change. 

Productized software applications evolved and companies' confidence in these commercially available platforms grew.  Grew to the point where it became more cost-effective to replace antiquated mainframe systems with newer distributed systems for some companies.  Evolution to the web-enabled computing model has just about finished this transition - and finished off demand for most of the skills required to support mainframe systems.

I'm not saying that all of the big boxes are defunct.  In fact, it's quite the contrary.  Many of the Fortune 1000 companies are still utilizing big iron ... where they're often called "enterprise servers" now.  The difference is that they're used to store reams of legacy data - but real computing value is in middleware or other external applications.

The only reason this analysis matters here is that it explains the plummeting demand for workers with legacy computing skills.  If more extensive computations are performed by more powerful software on newer platforms, then delivered right to desktops for review and additional processing by end users, how many system operators are needed?  How many CICS maintenance programmers?  Just a few.  You do the math.

And So It Goes

If you regularly read this column, you won't be surprised by what I think IT workers, both new and experienced, need to do:

Get desirable skills and get them now.  Be prepared to have to do this again.  And again.

I know you've just spent money on a certificate program.  Or you've got a job to do and family responsibilities.  You still need to pay attention to trends in the industry and position yourself for the future.  Yes, I know nothing is for sure.  We all take risks in life.  Nothing is guaranteed, no matter what you've read or what an enrollment recruiter at a training school told you. 

This is certainly infuriating.  And depressing.  But there is some emotional compensation for you.  Every one else in IT who is presently flying high will have to do what I just told you to do.  Sooner rather than later.  All those Java programmers who are hotter than August after the drought will have to retrain at some point too.

Technology turns are happening at breakneck speed now and the best you can hope for is that the pace doesn't increase too much.  Changes and advances in IT are the great leveler among the labor force.  The temporary advantage held by those whose skills are in demand is only short-term.  The enduring benefit goes to those who understand and accept the need to keep current ... and then continuously devote themselves to the upgrade path.

Editorial Commentary

I think that big business's unwavering focus on the next quarter's numbers results in destructive short-term behavior.  Companies spend scarce dollars that could be invested in upgrade training on the cost of advertising and recruiting specifically skilled workers instead.  Given the shortage of these desirable employees, it's a losing proposition. The money is spent and you still don't have the workers you need.  You just get to throw more money at the problem.  I've often heard that the operational definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

We can only hope that, along with the return of sanity to the dot.com investment market (that is, judging a company's worth by its actual profitability rather than some mythical measure of future potential), there might soon be a similar recognition that longer-term investments in training and retention will have a better payoff.  But I'm not holding my breath.

More

Here's where I get to ask you for a favor.  Please don't write to me (jamie@jobcircle.com) asking me to identify employers who will hire entry-level employees. I don't know who they are, and if I did and directed readers to them, they wouldn't need any more pretty quickly.  Do, however, continue to write with your questions.  You all help keep me on my toes.  Next month Webmastery.  Happy Thanksgiving.

Enjoy this article?  Read more of JobCircle.com's Career Coach articles.

Jamie Fabian spent more than 15 years as a human resources executive before changing careers to become a senior project manager for a growing IT consulting company.  Now in management consulting for a large Pharma company, Jamie would like to be seen as a hybrid of Tom Peters, Tom Jackson, and Tom Wolfe, but spends too much time working, driving carpool and watching mindless TV to write more than this column.  You can contact Jamie with questions and comments at jamie@jobcircle.com.