In an industry affected by labour shortages and the rise of remote work — finding, hiring and retaining the right people with in-demand IT skills has become an extreme challenge that is stifling growth for MSPs.
This was the view of several MSP delegates attending a Leaders in a Discussion roundtable event hosted by IT Europa and ConnectWise yesterday, with guests stating it's becoming increasingly difficult to bridge the staffing gap.
“It's hard to get the right people. I think it is possible to get anyone, but it's about employing the right people. For our business, it's all about the person. We have got the seats; we just have to put the right person in the right seat,” one guest said.
Another attendee agreed by saying the number of vacancies in today’s MSP industry outweighs the number of people with the right credentials to fill the roles available in the market.
”In the AWS space, we are going through that whole thing that happened with Microsoft ten or fifteen years ago, where everyone was like let's go out and get some MCSE certifications. It has loads of people in the market that are highly certified but with no experience, so they have no idea how to do their job.
“It's like that in the AWS space at the moment because AWS has got so many programmes where they are bringing in Chefs, for instance, into cloud computing and putting them through courses and giving them certifications. However, if you sit them down and start asking them questions about Linux, which is what AWS is based on, they haven’t got a clue.”
Attendees fear the skills shortage, recruitment difficulties and skill gaps are likely to get worse over the next few years.
“If you think there is a problem now in recruiting, fast-forward five years; this is nothing. If you think about kids now and what they can do to earn a living, the idea of having a 9-5 job in an office and working in front of a screen is becoming less and less [desirable]. The options that are available to them are completely different to the options that were available a decade ago,” one attendee explained.
“Why would they want to get into the industry when most people who are already in the industry want to get out,” another guest said, citing that the amount of career options available to people is one of the biggest obstacles to securing high-quality talent.
When asked whether automation is key to tackling recruitment and the IT skill deficit, one of the delegates said: “We are service providers, customers want to talk to people. We are people and not a factory of robots. We are people that interact with other humans and we want to build a relationship and provide an experience. If we do that then we keep customers and we grow. Automating the process and using chatbots is not the way forward.”
Sam Callaghan, VP of Sales EMEA, ConnectWise said: “It was thoroughly interesting to hear everybody’s perspective on the topic and there are definitely common themes - themes that we can all unite around to help each other become better together.”
The session also discussed the issues of technical debt and the need for more unified operational tools – a strategy that that 3 out 4 of the guests stated they were moving towards.
The debate is part of a series of roundtables that IT Europa is conducting this year with top MSPs industry leaders to share their insights about the industry. The next edition of the Leaders in Discussion roundtable will be held next week on October 25th with sponsors eSentire.
