There is a “serious lack” of project managers, system architects and seasoned people, industry leaders say.
By Carol Ko
04 Sep 2008
The three panel discussions of Hong Kong’s CIO Executive Summit on September 2 discussed issues surrounding CIO evolution, innovation and challenges across industries, and CIO challenges in 2009. Surprisingly, many CIOs in the panels had a common concern for the IT talent shortage in Hong Kong.
“We’re short of talent in Hong Kong”, said Sunny Lee, executive director – IT of The Hong Kong Jockey Club, who said there was a “serious lack” of project managers, system architects and “seasoned people”. System architects are the hardest to find, said Lee, as there was no formal training for this area of expertise, while system architects were precisely the masterminds to build the entire framework.
Thomas Ng, general manager of IT at Dah Sing Bank, said he consistently sought three skills in his IT candidates, technical skills, managerial skills, and an understanding of business. According to Ng, technical skills can become obsolete but business and managerial skills could be longer lasting.
Simon Tsui, director of international information technologies at Time Warner Hong Kong, lamented it was hard to find the tech people interested in business. He reiterated several times about the need for “Passion about business”, which is the key for IT people to succeed in enterprise.
Michael Leung, senior vice president and CIO of China Construction Bank (Asia) (CCB) said that the Chinese were good execution people. Talking about innovation? He said “That is a different story.”
Peter Smith, director of IT, Hong Kong CSL said that Hong Kong IT people in general are not willing to inquire and look for business opportunities.
Patrick Slesinger, director and CIO of the Wallem Group, said he understood the Chinese way of schooling, in general, did not encourage questions. Local IT people might not be as irreverent as Australians, for instance. CIOs should leverage the best out of each culture’s skill set, he said.
Talent retention
Leung said he had programmes in place to motivate his staff with incentives. Following the tradition of the Bank of America (Asia), he said he rewarded the top five per cent of his staff with “huge bonus”, but he “kicked out” the five per cent of them with the poorest performance.
There was a costly talent retention programme at CCB, which sends selected IT staff to the MIT, in the US, for a two-week training programme.
Smith said there was also a talent retention programme at CSL Hong Kong. He said that it usually takes 16 to 18 months to groom new staff, and said that it was the hardest to retain IT talents in the Business Intelligence area.
Perry Lai, vice president of IT at Langham Hotel International said there were management trainee programmes at his hotel. But what made his final decision in hiring new IT staff was that the candidate must have the “right attitude”. At Langham, Lai assigned responsibilities and consistently offered encouragement to his staff. He was envisioning to groom his “own talent pool” to expand the company.
Towards the end, Slesinger outlined what he believed determined the geographical spread of IT talent. “The economic development and mobility of a nation dictates the availability of talent to a great extent. Somewhere in the world there is talent, though they might be working for your competitors.”
Carol Ko is the Deputy Editor of MIS Asia and is chiefly responsible for covering stories of CIOs and senior IT managers in North Asia.
