NZ Tech chief executive Graeme Muller has highlighted the disjoint between New Zealand’s aspirations to grow its tech industry, including agri-tech, and the lack of engagement of future job seekers with the sector. He was addressing delegates at this year’s Mobile Tech Ag conference in Rotorua.
Muller pointed to a Tertiary Education Commission survey done of 7200 primary school children that found their number one job preference was “professional sports person”, with 17.6% taking that option. That compared to 6.3% wanting to be a vet and 4.7% a social media influencer.
“IT and programmers were .5%, nearly on par with handbag designer and fast-food worker. They also put IT alongside beauty salon worker and truck driver. This is scary because IT is the industry growing the most jobs at the moment,” Muller said.
The survey found children were most influenced by what they see, and the sector which sits so widely behind so much of modern life needs to expose more children to what it does and is, to take them along, he says.
Perhaps even more concerning was a 2019 survey of secondary age students that emphasised the lack of engagement with IT opportunities.
Despite digital technology now being compulsory from year one to 10, only 30% of NCEA students were advancing to take a digital tech course, and over the last decade the number taking it has declined by 50%.
“And of the 40,000 kids taking the subjects that would qualify to take an IT degree, only 1850 move into IT degrees,” he said.
Muller says there is a focus now on developing a pathway to a more apprenticeship approach, getting students a job at the start of their qualification.
“And a whole bunch of work needs to be done to raise awareness at secondary level about what is out there,” he said.
The sector’s reliance upon cherry picking skilled migrant staff has also not helped build domestic worker capacity for future growth.
Of 4400 new IT jobs created, the sector imported 3680 staff to fill them.
“There is not a digital skill shortage, but rather a digital skill mismatch. Most of the new jobs being created are for advanced skills, hence immigrants,” he said.
Organisations that do have training budgets spent less than 10% of that on upskilling existing staff.
Estimates are that by 2023, 50% of planned automation and digitisation efforts will be delayed or fail due to underinvestment in IT and software development teams.
“Do not think of it as something you can just buy off the shelf, you need to think how to connect with tertiary providers,” he said.
