Narrowing technology skills gap

(Corrected, Dec. 31, 1:21 p.m.)

The skills gap is an often-told Rhode Island story – jobs open and a shortage of trained workers to fill them, most glaringly in technology.
There are signs, however, that a new and more promising chapter is being written in the Ocean State with concentrated efforts by businesses, the Governor’s Workforce Board, educators and tech organizations to narrow the chasm between available jobs and trained workers.
It’s a challenging task, considering the breakneck pace of technology and the time required for training. Even experienced IT professionals can fall into the chasm, like lifelong Rhode Island resident Daniel Chaput of Tiverton, an IT instructor for 15 years who suddenly found himself unemployed and under-skilled in his own profession.
“I was an IT instructor, so I thought I was at the top of the food chain, but once I started looking for a job, I found out I wasn’t,” Chaput said from a training session at the Bryant University Executive Development Center, where he was finishing the second week of a 14-week program called IT on Demand, which began Sept. 16.
Chaput is one of 16 unemployed IT professionals chosen for the program launched with an Innovative Partnership Grant of $218,000 from the Governor’s Workforce Board and developed by the Tech Collective.
Chaput worked at the Braintree, Mass., campus of American Career Institute until January, when the school abruptly shut down its five locations in the Bay State.
He has been forced to face the latest realities of the tech world during his job search.
“I went to staffing agencies and everywhere I went they asked me, ‘Do you have virtualization?’ The tech world is changing to virtualization,” said Chaput, who doesn’t have that particular training in consolidating hardware and running multiple operating systems and applications on a single computer. “You can become a certified professional in VMware,” Chaput said about a proficiency standard for virtualization. That’s what he’s aiming for after the next phase of IT on Demand, which is two weeks at New Horizons in Providence. The training will give him a foundation in that specialty so he can work toward the national VMware certification.
“If you don’t specialize in something like VMware, you’re just another IT guy out there,” said the 51-year-old Chaput, who worked in business for many years, then in 1999 went for IT training at Computer-Ed Business Institute in North Providence, which has since closed.
The IT on Demand participants were chosen competitively, with employers making their hiring needs known to the Tech Collective, training developed based on those needs, employers involved in selecting participants and providing a 14-week work experience with the goal of hiring talented IT professionals who could rise to the next skill level by working in the company.
“I feel much more optimistic now than I did three weeks ago because I feel like I’m part of something,” said Chaput. “I’m not just sitting home sending resumes into a big black hole called the Internet.”
Companies taking part in IT on Demand include Atrion Networking Corp., Envision Technology Advisors, PC Troubleshooters and NetSense.
Businesses pay the participants $200 a week during the eight weeks of company training and upon participants’ successful completion of the program, they may be hired. Ninety days after the hire, the company will receive a $3,600 stipend from the Governor’s Workforce Board, said Tech Collective spokeswoman Giselle Mahoney.
The collaboration among the companies, the Tech Collective and Governor’s Workforce Board for IT on Demand is a unique and efficient way to develop desperately needed tech talent in Rhode Island, said Eric Shorr, president of PC Troubleshooters in Warwick. “IT on Demand is taking people who have the skill sets and starting them on a path toward higher skills,” he said. “We need more people to come in at the mid-level and higher. We need trained engineers in skills like VMware, advanced networking and network security.”
PC Troubleshooting has 16 employees and, like other tech companies in Rhode Island, is finding it difficult to find highly skilled employees.
“The biggest thing that keeps me from growing my business is not finding clients, but finding talented and trained engineers who are trained in the skill sets we need,” said Shorr.
The U.S. tech industry added 103,000 new jobs in the first half of 2013, according to a midyear analysis by the TechAmerica Foundation.
Overall employment in the tech industry grew by 1.7 percent from January 2013 to June 2013, according to the study.
In 2012, Rhode Island had more than 5 percent of the state workforce employed by tech firms, according to Matthew Kazmierczak, vice president of research and reports for TechAmerica. The average wage of an employee in the technology sector was about $75,000 in 2012, compared to an average of about $43,000 in private sector jobs.
Rhode Island educators and business leaders are working together to increase the number of skilled technology workers in the state, said Patricia Blakemore, New England Institute of Technology director of career services.
The shift in corporate perspective is helping to narrow the skills gap, she said.
“Companies used to be looking more for experienced, job-ready workers,” said Blakemore. “Now I think they’re getting smarter about hiring talented students and training them.” •

The original version of this story incorrectly gave the length of the IT On Demand program as 10 weeks. It was a 14-week program. Also, the original story stated that the participants interned at local IT employers for 10 weeks; the hands-on training component of the program lasted eight weeks.

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