Five Questions With: Joe Devine

Joe Devine is a partner at Bridge Technical Talent, an IT staffing firm in North Kingstown.
Joe Devine is a partner at Bridge Technical Talent, an IT staffing firm in North Kingstown.

Joe Devine, a partner at Bridge Technical Talent, an IT staffing firm in North Kingstown, talked with Providence Business News about a new information technology industry survey for employers it recently released with Tech Collective, the state’s IT and bioscience industry association. The survey can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/EnterITRI. Deadline for submissions is Oct. 30.
PBN: Why did you want to do a survey?
DEVINE:
For several years we have been working closely with the R.I. Computer Science/Computer Information Systems department chairs and deans to help them increase their enrollment, particularly among women and minorities, which are grossly underrepresented in the IT workforce. These academic programs generally have an advisory board made up of a mix of industry and academic members. Meetings are typically held once a year for a couple of hours. Although the agenda is set by the school based on their needs, you can only accomplish so much in a couple of hours and the messaging is from only a few industry professionals. We thought a survey would increase the number of industry voices these college programs could hear in a comprehensive report.

PBN: What do you hope it accomplishes?
DEVINE:
Our original goal was to inform the schools about the current state of IT technology and build a technology roadmap to guide these programs as they made decisions for their curriculum three to five years out. These technology roadmaps are common in manufacturing and other industries to ensure companies make decisions that lead to their success and are not left behind in their industry.

As we developed the survey and tested it with industry leaders we were surprised that most were more concerned with workforce readiness (communication, organization, ability to work on a team…) skills their entry-level new hires were lacking rather than the specific technologies they were trained on. We heard over and over that businesses were willing to trade technical depth to get more “well-rounded” individuals who could integrate into their work teams quicker. So we modified the survey to include these workforce readiness skills.

Our primary goal for the survey is to get a comprehensive look at the entry-level hiring needs, both technical and workforce readiness, of Rhode Island businesses. Secondarily, we’re hoping to create an ongoing channel of communication between the IT businesses and college programs that support them in R.I.

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PBN: Do you often hear from R.I. IT employers that they can’t find workers with the skill sets that they need?
DEVINE:
Frequently, and all types of companies. Small startups and early-stage businesses as well as large, enterprise-level corporations. Both companies that are focused on creating technology and other companies that rely on technology to keep their business running. Many IT employers are searching for candidates with skill sets that are underrepresented in this market. IT employers constantly say there isn’t a wide enough pool of candidates with certain skills and experiences. Part of the issue is availability of talent across specific technologies, for instance the .net and PHP (programming language) spaces. The other is compensation. The rates in R.I. tend to be lower than those in Boston and the surrounding areas and with telecommuting, etc., becoming commonplace the war for talent will become harder to win for companies that are not willing to offer flexibility and re-examine their comp packages.

PBN: When will the final report be completed – will the results will be released publicly?
DEVINE:
We are planning to report the survey findings to the college CS/CIS department chairs and deans at an IT summit in January. After the presentation, we will have a panel discussion with both academic and IT business leaders to review the current situation and discuss ways to keep communication channels open in the future. This IT summit will be open to the public.

PBN: Is the IT field growing in RI?
DEVINE:
Yes, the market continues to grow across the region. Tech Collective’s “Why IT Works” Rhode Island Skills Gap Report cites 76 percent of respondents to its Employer Survey indicate they anticipate expanding their business over the next three to five years. Organizations that held off on developing new software and making infrastructure improvements during the economic downturn are making up for it now. We have definitely seen the job market turn to a very “candidate-centric” environment which has caused compensation levels to increase and companies to get creative with new benefit options to attract the talent they need to grow their organizations. We know the IT field is growing in R.I. and we hope that our survey and IT awareness programs will play a role in getting more students interested in the IT field and ultimately graduating more qualified IT candidates who can be a part of and benefit from the growth in this space.

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