Practice

While the IT worker shortage is well documented, traditional institutions of higher education, even operating at full capacity, will not fill this shortage in a timely manner [2, 3]. The enormous growth of industry certification programs has likewise not succeeded in closing this gap [1]. The U.S. Congress has been pressured to allow the importation of more international IT workers; but even with an increase in the H1-B visa allotment to 200,000 for 2002 and beyond, the shortage will not go away anytime soon [4]. No silver-bullet solution to the IT worker shortage exists; multiple and creative ways to attack this problem are needed. One source of IT labor that may not be fully utilized is the movement of non-IT workers to the IT profession. Traditionally, this involves returning to college for a second bachelor's or graduate degree in an IT-related field. Completing such a program while remaining employed typically takes from two to six years and a correspondingly high level of dedication and sacrifice. There are likely more workers who would make this move to IT if there were more reasonable and practical ways to accomplish it.

The view you get depends on where in the world you're standing, but the overall picture is clear: There are many practical, ethical, and cultural challenges the IT industry must overcome to create and maintain a strong, skilled, and loyal work force.

Long-term investment? Balanced professional? High-performance professional? Or short-term professional? There's an IT HR strategy for practically any corporate purpose. But before choosing one, be sure you know what that purpose is.

Competing for IT talent in a global labor market.

While advanced industrialized nations like the U.S. have been gradually developing information-sector employment along with the IT evolution, newly industrializing nations are leapfrogging directly from traditional agrarian to state-of-the-art information economies. Ireland is a prime example of such a nation. The rapid transformation of Ireland's work force during the closing decades of the 20th century was the object of an ethnographic investigation of the fit between aspects of Irish society and the emergence of its information economy [1].