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January 3, 2000

Outlook 2000
Y2K Workers Fill Some Vacancies

Illustration by Dave Plunkett f there's a silver lining to the Y2K cloud everyone was under last year, it may be this: Freed-up people resources may fill other IT staff vacancies. While 33% of those surveyed by InformationWeek Research say the skills shortage remains serious, that's down from 37% last year. On a scale of 1 to 10, on which 10 is extremely serious, staff problems rated a moderate 6.4. Those companies more heavily involved with E-business see the shortage more than others.

The market seems to be cooling a bit based on the headhunter calls that Jim Griffith, IS director at Orrville, Ohio, steel-wire manufacturer Contours Ltd., gets. "This time last year I was getting headhunter calls asking me if I was interested in a new job," he says. "Now the calls are to ask if we're interested in hiring anyone." Griffith suspects the difference is that the completion of Y2K work has freed up people.

Peter Bergstrom, IS manager at Bloomington, Ill., mental-health services provider Chestnut Hill Systems, is also hopeful that the situation is changing. His department has tried to hire an AS/400 systems analyst for five months, but he says it will be easier to fill the position now that the Y2K crush is almost over. "A lot of people had preferred to work part time on Y2K projects because they paid so well," he says. "But now that that work is nearly done, I think a lot of people will be looking to go back to regular positions."

Not every need will be met, of course. "Many companies will still be cleaning up Y2K for another four to six months," says Scott Dinsdale, executive VP and chief technology officer for entertainment Web site Firstlook.com Inc. in Los Angeles. "But the demand curve for people will drop as more staff gets shifted to other work," he says. Still, that will require a great deal of retraining for workers who have been focused solely on remediation work the last couple of years. And even the retraining might not bring IT organizations up to full staffing levels because "the history of retraining Cobol programmers to Java isn't the best," Dinsdale says.

Besides Web skills, other hot talent areas include database administrators, which those surveyed rated as the most demanded talent. That was followed closely by network administrators and Web developers. "Data needs are growing along with E-business initiatives," Dinsdale says. "That creates a tremendous demand for database administrators and database managers."

For Visteon Automotive Systems, the $18 billion auto-parts business unit of Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich., the demand this year will be for business-savvy technology people overall, CIO David Bent says. Specific technology skills can be trained, but "a person who also has a solid understanding of the business" is very valuable and harder to find, he says.

Kalman Shor, director of IS at Michael Anthony Jewelers, a $150 million jewelry manufacturer in Mount Vernon, N.Y., just wants to remain on an even keel. "It took us about two years to find the people with the skills we need," he says. Now "we want to keep them." Those skills included AS/400 and RPG programmers. However, he says, during the next year some of those employees will be trained for Java programming as Michael Anthony automates its distribution centers so customers, including retailers, can track orders online.

Return to main story, Outlook 2000

Illustration by Dave Plunkett

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