Potomac's Internship Program Attracts Rising Data Center Stars
AFCOM chapter aims to ward off 'silver tsunami' by offering internships to students looking to replace legacy data center workers.
August 22, 2018
A recent website search revealed 25,614 available data center internships on Glassdoor.com alone. Average salary: nearly $48,000.
That certainly illustrates companies’ concerns that an aging workforce and evolving data center landscape is putting them in jeopardy of filling key positions. While until recently, doubt surrounded whether a skilled worker shortage would come to fruition, statistics prove otherwise. In fact, they show the shortage is already here.
Dubbed the “silver tsunami” by the Alliance for Aging Research, the trend of 10,000 people a day applying for Social Security benefits clearly has ramifications across all industries but especially IT. An aging workforce plays a huge role in a skills shortage. Of AFCOM members surveyed recently, 73 percent were between 46 and 61with just 21 percent below age 45.
While the pool of qualified professionals for the data center is stretched thin, the roles themselves are also evolving—making it that much more difficult for IT. The transition from legacy systems to the cloud, convergence, the Internet of Things (IoT), virtualization and mobility are changing and adding job descriptions at an alarming rate.
Many AFCOM members who participated in our 2018 State of the Data Center Industry survey shared their recruiting difficulties. One in three reported problems finding data center facility technicians, engineers and operators, followed by cloud architect.
According to a study by TEKsystems, 81 percent of IT leaders say it’s difficult to find quality candidates, and almost half don’t expect to fill an IT position within the anticipated time frame. Meanwhile, only about one-third of data center managers and CIOs believe their organization have the skills in-house to address their needs.
So, what’s the answer? In-house training works if those being trained are willing and not nearing retirement age. You could send current employees back to school, but it doesn’t help with additional staff required for the longer haul.
The best answer, for now, seems to be acquiring new blood. As a result, the use of interns has grown extensively as the previous Glassdoor figure suggests. And, the 8.6 million data centers across the globe as of 2017 are all clamoring for the best and brightest. It’s best not to wait for them to come to you.
The Potomac Chapter is just one local AFCOM group proactively seeking interns. As Chapter President Dave Mulholland explained: “Back in 2016, the chapter embarked on a mission to deliver internships because it was always difficult to hire good people; and we felt that it was due to a lack of exposure to the data center industry.”
Finally, after some successful events to help with funding, the chapter had the cash to facilitate a program. In January of this year, “We put the stake in the ground, and we committed to doing it in 2018,” he said.
Then came the hard work. After contacting several schools that either had large dollar commitments for long-term scholarships or wanted to choose the student, not the chapter, Mulholland and the chapters’ efforts paid off.