Australia wants IT professionals

By Angelica Mari on Jul 7, 2009 6:24 AM
Filed under Training & Development

Priority visas for UK citizens.

Australia wants skilled IT professionals to move down under and promises to fast-track them through the immigration process as the country experiences high demand for technology staff.

Advisory service Australian Visa Bureau said that over the last year more than 23,000 British citizens have emigrated to Australia – which is expected to recover from the downturn faster than the UK, according to forecasts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

“As many IT professionals have critical skills needed throughout Australia, and/or are on specific state and territory sponsored lists, the government will fast-track them through the skilled migration process, and process their visas as a matter of priority,” said Australian Visa Bureau director Guy Bradley.

“Of course the lure of the glittering beaches, open spaces, and high quality of life down under will never be overlooked, but Australia is increasingly attractive to emigrants because it looks to be pulling out of the global recession sooner than Britain."

According to Bradley, IT professionals are at an advantage when it comes to the visa system, which is points-based and uses criteria including age, language, skill, occupation and experience.

Applicants whose skills are found on a list of occupations in demand are given additional points, while those with experience matching the requirements set on a critical skills list – or who receive sponsorship – are given fast-track visa processing.

IT occupations on the priority list include systems managers and designers, applications and analyst programmers, and programmers.

Particular areas of expertise required in Australia include data warehousing, C++, C and C#, risk management, e-commerce security, SAP, Siebel, .Net, Cobol, Unix, Java, SQL Server, networking LAN/WAN and IT project management.

2 comments in this discussion

"Soirtemed, your argument sounds a little confused. Surely for new graduates, government departments employing permanent staff and not contractors is good - giving them a chance to get their ..."

By AustralianITProfessional

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Comments: 2

Soirtemed

Jul 7, 2009 8:05 PM

You must be kidding! At the same time Government departments are culling Australian IT contractors and those lucky enough to stay in employment are forced to accept a non negotiable 10% rate reduction regardless of whether they are already offering good value for money and many others are already on the unemployment trail the very same Government wants to bring even more IT professionals to ensure the situation gets even worse. Really who is running this country? Perhaps an individual called Gershon that was paid big bucks by the Australian government to tell them that they need to get rid of all IT contractors and replace them with permanent employees. Bringing more overseas IT professionals is just another nail in the coffin of hard working Australia based IT professionals.There is a good reason why companies employ skilled IT professionals on a contract basis ... to get the job done quickly and reliably on time. What about all new IT graduates coming out of UNI and looking for a job? How can the Government explain to them that all the jobs are going to overseas imports. It's very sad times indeed. What's recession time for some is seen as an opportunity for others to make a bad situation even worse. The way to tackle shortage in IT skills is to offer practical courses at UNI teaching skills in demand in combination with credits earned for working and gaining experience as an apprentice while studying. Many companies will welcome the opportunity to participate in such a scheme.

AustralianITProfessional

Jul 14, 2009 10:07 AM

Soirtemed, your argument sounds a little confused.

Surely for new graduates, government departments employing permanent staff and not contractors is good - giving them a chance to get their career started in a stable environment.

Commercial companies should employ whichever suits them and their needs.

You sound like an government or government contractor who is ticked off at a pay cut. Well, that's life as a contractor - and I've been a contractor in the public and private sectors, as well as permanent in various industries. If you don't like the variability of the pay rate, look for a permanent job or consider something lower than what you usually get a reasonable pay rate (ie something equivalent to a permanent position) and consider anything you get paid above that as your "risk" money.

The issue of fast-tracking visas is a different issue. I was working a couple of years ago as a team lead in a group that employed local graduates and overseas trainees almost exclusively. We wanted a mix of graduates with seniors but couldn't get experienced locals who would work for what we could pay and work in our location, as we couldn't compete with the financial and telco industries. Maybe we don't need overseas staff now, but if things pick up then we probably will.

I emotionally feel the same way - protect the jobs for Australians but there is more to it than that. One of the problems is what students *want* to study. When I was at University, computing was the course that was difficult to get into. Same institution 15 odd years later and many students sign up for computing but want to transfer into business as that is seen as the way to make money. It appears IT isn't "fashionable" any more.