AWS job opportunities up 37%, outstripping supply of job seekers | Latest News.....
Auckland, NZ and Sydney, Australia – Wednesday 31 May 2017 -- According
to analysis by global job site Indeed, the number of AWS job postings in
Australia has increased by 153 per cent from March 2014 to March 2017,
and it is up 37 per cent year over year. Over the past year the number
of AWS job postings was consistently 6 to 12 times the supply of job
seekers looking at these roles. Yet often when AWS specialist recruiter
Carmen Parnos, Founder and Director of the Cloud Talent Group, meets
with AWS skilled IT professionals, she cannot place them because they do
not have AWS Associate level certification.
“There already was a shortage of right-skilled technology professionals
to fill the rising number of AWS roles available in the ANZ market,”
said Parnos, “and this has been compounded by employers increasingly
preferring or requiring a minimum of Associate-level AWS Certification.”
Trent Rosenthal is the CEO of Bespoke Training Services, the AWS authorised training partner for Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Rosenthal said, “The use of the AWS platform has matured over the past three to four years, and the presence of AWS in this region is growing and driving demand for skilled staff. Increasingly employers need and expect a certain level of AWS skills and experience, even basic certification, and the bar will only get higher as the market continues to mature and the technology continues to evolve.”
Employers Feel the AWS Skills Shortage
Sebastian Krueger, Director of Cloud Engineering and Co-Founder of NZ-based specialist Advanced Amazon Web Services consultancy API Talent said that associate-level certification should be considered an entry-level requirement but you need the skills and hands-on experience on the platform, in context, to back it up.
When API Talent opened its doors in 2014 it was the early days for AWS in this region. There were no experienced AWS consultants around so Krueger says he took a generic approach to hiring and looked for infrastructure automation skills sets like how well the applicant could write code. Three years later and, according to Krueger, “I put a huge emphasis on culture, making sure people that work here are all geared towards wanting to work with people who are all experts at AWS. We feed that passion for AWS, give them interesting work to do and an environment that encourages people to be the best in their technology and product space.”
“There are plenty of potential entry-level employees in the IT market,
but we do see a skills shortage in terms of experience,” Krueger said.
“We continue to optimise our hiring approach and we look for staff with
knowledge of particular patterns within AWS collateral, who can
demonstrate that they understand AWS principles.”
Professional Development Programs Help to Fill Skills Shortage Gap
Rees said that Xero does value AWS certification in its potential new hires and if they cannot find the skilled staff they need, they focus on staff training via AWS fundamentals workshops and courses as well as focused sessions at their annual Xero Product Team Unconference events. Xero’s professional development program extends to engaging “AWS Game Days” where staff are issued a series of challenges to test their skills and ingenuity with the platform.
API Talent also has a clear focus on professional development that encompasses AWS training and certification.
“We firmly believe that if you call yourself an AWS consultant then you ought to be certified,” said
Krueger. “As our company grows, when we cannot find a suitable applicant who is already certified, we will hire based on cultural fit and attitude more than anything. We will continue to require that all our staff become certified as part of their career progression with API Talent and we will celebrate them when they do.
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