The Great IT Talent Shortage - Myth, Reality or Job Market Not Efficient

We all have been hearing about the "Great IT Talent Shortage" for some time now. Here is a recent one, a survey conducted by Deloitte of US HR Professionals, nearly three quarter of them stated talent shortage as their number one concern. The talent shortage drum roll has been going on for quite some time and the sad fact is - there may or may not be a shortage and we will never know for sure, because the job market is not that efficient.

Contrasting Efficiencies -
The Stock Market versus The Job Market

The stock market is efficient, the job market in general and the online job market in particular is not.
Stocks are traded in a few specific places (specific stock exchanges), the online job market aka job boards are everywhere.
In the stock market, supply and demand are matched automatically (with the advent of electronic trading). In the job market, the supply (you and me) and the demand (job openings) are to be found everywhere and there is no matching of them across all of the places they can be found. (This is the biggest reason for the existence of OdinJobs, which I will come to later)

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Answering the IT shortage questions emphatically one way or the other is near impossible because of the in-efficiencies of the online job market as listed above. Its like the blind men and the elephant, everybody is right (partially) and everybody maybe wrong. Sure there are long term macro trends like the number of US graduates with a engineering or computer science degree entering the workforce and the boomers starting to retire, but those trends do not explain why Acme, Inc is unable to find a mid-level SYS Admin today. One, there are no SYS Admins in the market, or they are looking in one place and the most qualified, well suited SYS Admin is in another place. What do you think is more likely..

Truthfully, we won't know for sure unless we have the information of all the available talent out there to come to the correct conclusion. The same holds good when you are looking for a job. The state of the current job market plays up the role of chance and luck, way beyond the role it should play in matching supply and demand.

Invite Your Comments

Comments:

I think is likely a combination of all three

Posted by Josh L. on June 23, 2008 at 12:06 PM CDT #