http://www.itwire.com/it-people-news/recruitment/50946-skills-shortage-drops-dead

It now seems safe to state categorically that courtesy of the economy and tumbling business confidence Australia’s IT skills shortage is well and truly over and will stay so for the remainder of 2011 and well into the first quarter of 2012.

So the skills shortage disappears in a couple of months but the 457 visa brings ring ins here for 4 yrs – a bit of a…

Candle, the IT recruitment arm of the Clarius group overnight released the findings of its September quarter Clarius Skills Index for Computing Professionals which shows that skills demand and supply is at the most balanced level it has been all year.

KPMG Econotech conducts the skills survey for Clarius using Australian Bureau of Statistics and Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations data. An index of 100 represents perfect skills-demand balance where figures above 101 are considered to indicate skills shortages.

For September the index stood at 100.4, marginally down from June when it stood at 100.5 and well down on the 101.1 index during the March quarter.

According to the Australian Information Industry Association there are about 426,000 ICT professionals employed nationwide. Clarius’ report found that there was a shortfall of just 900 people in the September quarter, compared to 1,100 three months earlier.

Linda Trevor, Candle’s executive general manager, said that while October and November were generally pretty good months for recruitment, the demand had been much slower this year than last. Generally demand dies almost completely in December and January, picking up again toward the end of February.

While demand seems in the doldrums at present, Ms Trevor was keen to talk up the prospects for early next year.

“This is a bit deceptive as there will always be a skills shortage with an ageing workforce,” she said. Ms Trevor added that she believed employers had been spooked by the uncertainty on the broader economy and restrained about hiring new permanent staff.

“It’s very very unpredictable at the moment…because people are being really reactive to what is happening in the market” However she said that in discussions she had held recently with companies they had all said that they planned to start hiring again in earnest during the first quarter of 2012.

Asked whether the changes foreshadowed last week and confirmed this week regarding the changes to the 457 visa accreditation process might further reduce the shortfall between supply and demand Ms Trevor said that while welcome, the changes would not necessarily overcome skills gaps.

Under the Government’s 457 sponsorship accreditation scheme companies with revenues of $4 million plus which have been involved as a 457 visa sponsor in the last three years, and with at least 75 per cent of their workforce being Australian workers, can apply for a six year long accredited status allowing the fast tracking of 457 visa applications.

Ms Trevor said that this was useful for employers, but that holders of 457 visas themselves would still only be able to come and work in Australia for a maximum of four years at a time.

There was speculation last night that other major banks could make similar moves because of lower credit growth expected over the next year.

The National Australia Bank was said to be contemplating setting up an offshore back-office processing facility, possibly in Manila.

Deutsche Bank analyst James Freeman said Westpac could cut up to 2000 jobs by increasing the outsourcing of information technology projects. The bank cut almost 600 IT jobs in the six months to March.

“(Westpac) management are acutely aware of the need to generate good underlying earnings growth and headcount reductions and offshoring should assist in achieving this,” Mr Freeman said.

“We are confident that there is significant fat within the overall Westpac cost base, and that the group is likely to remain on the cutting edge of the cost curve with respect to peers.”

The talk of job cuts came as a new report from Moody’s said that intense competition in the retail banking market would continue and could ultimately threaten ratings if margins were severely eroded.

The competition has been most intense in mortgage lending, with NAB conducting an aggressive campaign to grab market share from the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac.

Moody’s senior analyst Patrick Winsbury said while the two Sydney-based banks were the most active home lenders during the global crisis, the market dynamics had since changed.

“The NAB has more recently been working to gain residential mortgage market share in Australia where it is underweight, and has in the process sparked a round of price-led competition,” Mr Winsbury said.

“The outlook for credit growth and how the banks respond has the potential to be a key rating consideration for the coming years. If the slower credit growth continues to spur price-lending competition, negative ratings pressure could emerge unless funding costs fall or efficiency improves.

“For the moment, however, we view the banks to have adequate buffers in their profitability to withstand some increased asset-price competition.”

The Moody’s research found the banks were well capitalised in the lead-up to the introduction of the global Basel III regulatory changes.

It said ANZ had changed its funding composition the most, as part of its strategy to push heavily into the Asian regional banking market.

Actual Article

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/bank-on-more-job-cuts-after-westpac-swings-the-axe-say-analysts/story-fn91v9q3-1226117023996

The June quarter saw the number of candidates per advertised role drop from nine to seven and over the past twelve months the time it takes for roles to be successfully filled has increased from 20 days to 25.7 days.

In addition to the shortage of contractors, the data collected also showed an increasing discrepancy between skills employers requested, and those on offer from candidates.

ITCRA CEO Julie Mills says, “Only two of the top 10 skills in demand by employers are among the top 10 skills offered by candidates. Help desk and project management experience are the key skills employers are looking for, so candidates who want to be employable should focus on up-skilling in these areas.”

The top 10 skills in demand were:

Help desk;
Project management;
Java;
SQL;
Windows;
Windows XP;
Business Analyst;
Active directory; and
Windows 2000.

The top 10 skills available were:

COM;
Training;
Support;
Email;
Documentation;
ISO;
Project;
MS Office;
SQL; and
Windows.

Fraud experts have called on the finance industry to consider banning connections to online banking services from jailbroken devices, as the sector struggles to handle rising levels of electronic fraud.

While insecure transaction processes contributed significantly to electronic fraud, financial institutions were fearful of insecure mobile platforms.

They were most concerned about users who jailbroke their devices, a process which granted user access to the device’s root directory, allowing them to install applications and trigger settings not vetted by Apple.

Jailbreaking a device can turn on a string of services, such as remote access, not usually available on the mobile. This process made it easy prey for exploitation, particularly if users neglected to change the default root passwords made accessible when jailbroken.

Leanne Vale, a fraud and financial crimes manager with credit union industry body Abacus Australian Mutuals, said the sector would have to tighten control over consumers who accessed bank services from such devices.

“We are going to get to a recalcitrant point where [financial organisations] will say that if you have jailbroken your iPhone, we won’t offer you the service,” she said.

One major Australian bank reported that electronic fraud had doubled in the last nine months.

Fraud is estimated to cost Australians approximately $8.5 billion a year, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology. The divide between businesses and consumers on the figure remains unclear.

Vale said institutions could potentially even move to ban customers repeatedly deemed insecure from accessing services by mobile.

The concept would leave responsibility for client information security with customers themselves; a sea-change from the current situation in which banks soak up fraud costs.

However, Vale and her industry colleagues acknowledged the finance sector had failed to properly educate users.

“We have to rely on the AFP [Australian Federal Police], and the Today Tonight’s of the world to educate the public on mobile security”, she said.

“Banks need to own this.”

The Teachers Credit Union was currently best at informing customers about mobile security, she said.

Fraud investigators for other major banks told SC they agreed with Vale’s comments.

“The message is that, rather than convince financial organisations that a phone is computer, try a fresh approach,” Vale said. “Ensure they know what it is, know what it does, and understand the risk and [let them[ put in mitigation controls.”

The finance sector’s discussions come as the Federal Government prepares to release a community cyber awareness whitepaper designed to help educate the public on electronic fraud.

Posted By: Thomas Shaw,

CareerOne has finally launched a local version of the Monster Career Ad Network (CAN) called CareerOne Ad Network. This would have to be one of the products I am most excited about. I remember being blown away by the technology during a Monster CAN product demo in 2008.

For those of you who don’t understand, there is this patented tracking cookie that saves itself to your web browsing history while visiting partner sites.

An easier way of explaining CAN is to think of it as a targeted Google AdWords campaign. You may have seen a number of job ads that look like PPC ads across News Digital Media, Adconion and Post Click network sites. Each time you visit one of these sites, it will display targeted jobs matching your recent search behaviour (ie. by accessing the browsers cookie).

There has been much discussion of late on behavioral targeting. Proposed legislation in the USA has made a number of web browsers introduce “do not track” standards. It is too early to predict how this will affect the product going forward and I will try and cover this at a later stage.

The next phase being developed by Monster is what they describe as post-impression response tracking. This is a set of enhanced analytics that can tell you where a candidate saw your CAN ad, how they came to your career site, and what they did when they got there.

On the outset it looks very promising, but I am in two minds on actual implementation with existing recruitment websites and application tracking systems.

Post-impression action occurs when a user is served an ad but does not click on it; then, at a later time, visits a career site and completes an expression of interest, such as a job apply. In post-impression tracking, the impression can be credited for influencing that action even if it occurred at a later date.

The theory behind indirect response is that the seeker will remember a well-designed recruitment ad and may visit an employer’s career site at a later time. These indirect responses can represent a large portion of the ‘total response’ to a recruitment media impression. Measuring direct click-based response alone really only provides employers with the tip of the iceberg in recruitment effectiveness measurement.

http://www.recruitmentdirectory.com.au/Blog/careerone-and-the-cookie-monster-a430.html