Insights

Recently I had the pleasure of attending my first ever SHARE Conference, and not only attend but led a panel discussion on how companies can find the mainframe skills to keep your company running for the next several decades as baby-boomers that built the critical infrastructure and applications are retiring.  It turned out to be quite the hot topic, as there were several other sessions addressing the same mainframe skills gap, and how companies can get a leg up on attracting and retaining talent.  As many companies are still limiting travel to conferences, I thought I would try to summarize what I heard to share with companies that were not able to attend and share some of the programs that might help. 

What Education is necessary? 

One of the common discussion items was what are you looking for in a mainframe employee?  Is a four-year degree a requirement?  A four-year degree specifically in an IT major?  Do they need to have mainframe training as part of that four-year degree?  COBOL?  I’m a huge advocate for universities teaching mainframe, that’s still where most companies recruit, but not every company has a university in their backyard teaching mainframe, and not every person has the desire or opportunity to get a four-year degree.  Many companies now use online profiling tools that weed out candidates before even having a chance to talk with a human.  In the environment that we are in, that practice seems to really eliminate some great candidates.  I talk about some options below where you can look for candidates if you are open to considering non-traditional routes. 

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