Reach out to new Canadians to battle tech talent crunch

Sharif, our HR VP, is featured in this article in Itbusiness.ca.  He talks about ways to address the talent crunch in Canada.

 

Reach out to new Canadians to battle tech talent crunch, urges Microsoft exec. 9/25/2008 5:00:00 AM By: Kavita Gosyne

The tech talent crunch is very real but a Microsoft Canada executive offers a strategy to tackle it head on. It involves harnessing the potential of new Canadians, women and Gen Y.

Fact: Canadian graduates with computer science, math and engineering degrees are rapidly declining.

If this trend continues there will be more than 90,000 unfilled positions in the next three to five years, cautions Sharif Khan, vice-president, human resources at Mississauga, Ont.-based Microsoft Canada Co.

Our inability to fill these jobs will cost us around $125,000 per year, he says.

"I don't think this [talent shortage] was anticipated," said Khan in his keynote address at TorontoTech Week on Wednesday.

TechWeek is a multi-day conference that provides a forum for technology professionals in the Greater Toronto Area to share insights, challenges, and best practices.

Khan did all of these in his presentation.

He emphasized the importance of equipping the workforce – especially certain segments – with the skills they need to succeed.

This, he said, is a priority for Microsoft, which is proactively reaching out to three key groups: new Canadians, women, and Gen Y.  

"We need to go find them, we can't wait for people to come to us anymore."  

 

You can find the rest of the article here.