WHERE THE GEEKS ARE

Training & Development, Nov 2006 by Holohan, Meghan

GLOBAL 360°

Online testing company, BrainBench, reports on global trends in technical certificaton.

Here's a problem many employers face. They need to hire large numbers of technical professionals for a special information technology (IT) project that the CEO wants done yesterday. But are the prospective employees' skills up to the job?

As a project manager during Y2K, Mark Russiello faced that problem. He founded BrainBench, an online assessment company, to help companies evaluate current and future IT employees.

BrainBench has tested more than 300,000 people using more than 600 types of assessment tests, giving the company insights into the skill needs and capabilities in several industries, including IT, management, customer support, healthcare, finance, and sales and marketing. Their findings are published in the BrainBench Global Skills Report 2006, which covers certification trends from 2001 to the present.

The United States currently leads the world in the number of people with professional certifications even though that number is down 18 percent from last year. Overall, however, certifications worldwide have increased, with IT certifications dominating.

Report co-author Mark Healy, an independent management consultant based in Oakland, California, says the report shows the presence of a virtual work world.

"Work is not dependent on geography any more. To do a job you don't have to be near the company you work for," he says.

The report suggests that there are not enough programmers in the United States, but other countries have high levels of certification in that profession. India's certification rate increased by 47 percent, making it second to the United States in IT certifications.

The United States and India aren't the only countries with large pools of IT employees. BrainBench reports certifications in Estonia, Nigeria, Thailand, countries from the former Soviet Union, and Latin America. No single country monopolizes the industry.

While outsourcing can mean that jobs are lost to countries with lower pay scales, Healy argues that businesses shouldn't use outsourcing as a way to cut costs. Smart companies should assess their strengths and then consider outsourcing as a way to bolster their performance.

A computer manufacturer, for example, might consider using programmers from other countries for routine tasks so that its domestic programmers and engineers could focus more on new product development.

Another company may realize that its quality assurance process is problematic and costs too much money. They might want to find a quality assurance company in China, for example, that can perform tests in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.

Some countries are developing new areas of expertise. It was once a safe assumption that China was good at quality assurance and India excelled at programming. "Now, the skill sets in all countries are continuously evolving," says Healy.

Even though both Healy and Russiello agree that outsourcing isn't all negative, Russiello notes that too much outsourcing can be a bad thing-especially when it comes to the IT industry. In the United States, the shortage of Java programmers doesn't affect companies. If a business doesn't have enough programmers, it just ships work to India or Latin America. But if there was a high-security situation that threatened the nation, the United States may not have enough domestic programmers to handle it.

According to Healy, people often blame the U.S. educational system for the shortage, saying students don't acquire strong science and math backgrounds. But he thinks that not enough college-age people know enough about the IT industry to pursue careers in it. Or if they do know about it, they are put off by the nerdy image of the computer programmer. He says it is up to the IT industry and colleges to educate high school students about the field.

The study also examined trends in certification content, not just where people were being certified. Researchers learned that increasing numbers of people throughout the world are getting certified in Microsoft programming languages such as C# and C-H- .

While Healy, Russiello, and a third author, Charles Handler (founder of Rocket-Hire, a San Francisco Bay Area company that helps companies assess assessment and certification tools) feel that online assessments are the best way to hire a skilled workforce, the study shows how important it is for businesses to know the workplace environment.

Top 10 Certifications Worldwide

1. C#

2. Software Testing

3. C

4. .NET Framework

5. Computer Technical Support

6. ASP.NET

7. RDBMS Concepts

8. Project Management (2005)

9. Java 2 Fundamentals

10. Linux Administration (General)

Source: BrainBench Global Skills Report 2006

Meghan Holohan is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh; meholohanboulden@gmail.com.