Jim Cuddy Manager of Finance and Enterprise Software at Enterprise Ireland
How important are digital skills to the success of Enterprise Ireland client companies?
They’re critically important; we released a software strategy in 2009. One of the key enablers for software companies is the whole area of routes to market. Obviously the internet is a key route to market, the online market is central for our companies. It’s every bit important as geographical markets. For that obviously they need decent websites.
All the software companies would obviously have websites but they might not necessarily all be as good as everybody else’s. Without wishing to be critical of them there room for improvement particularly in terms of things like in inbound and outbound marketing.
For the inbound marketing they need their search engine optimisation sorted so people can find them.
What skills do your clients demand?
There are loads of vacancies in this area – there’s a huge shortage of IT skills. There’s a shortage globally but there’s a dramatic shortage certainly in Ireland. Currently we have at least 1,500 vacancies across our Irish-owned software companies; it’s not all in the internet skills area. We estimate that multinationals have at least double that. There’s a huge dearth of skills here. In the short term companies will probably find experienced people from overseas rather than from Ireland. In the medium to long term, hopefully the people will grow and be developed in Ireland.
The kind of skills our client companies are looking for are certainly programming skills in Java .net and C++, network engineers, business analysts, product managers, people with business intelligence/data analytics skills, digital media specialists, animators, Delphi programmers. They also need experienced sales and marketing people – somebody who has honed their skills over a number of years.
Localisation skills are needed too. In general our clients’ websites don’t seem to be very well localised for the markets they’re getting into. There’s a huge requirement for really effective localisation, not just in terms of the language but the look and feel with the site, does it fit with the culture of the people using it.
What actions are under way or need to be made to ensure we can supply this demand?
There’s a few things happening. There’s a brand we’ve set up here ‘IT’s happening here’ for Irish-owned software companies. In general the brands of individual Irish companies aren’t that well known. Everybody knows Google, Microsoft and IBM. Who knows Pacemetrics or System Dynamics?
We currently have a website Itshappeninghere.ie which features lots of the Irish companies and a page where companies can put in the links to the recruitment page of their website.
Phase 2 we will be pushing out the brand internationally and it will be accompanied by a searchable website. Companies will find the experienced people from abroad in the short term.
In parallel with all that there is a range of conversion courses under way: FÁS, Springboard and the HEA, and other bodies. Some of those courses are aimed at technical graduates who are unemployed. Others are aimed at anybody who’s unemployed to give them some introduction to the software industry and IT skills.
Those courses will start producing an output in 2012. In terms of the employability of them in the IT industry it will be a mixed bag. It will be an important stream of people that will become available next year.
