Webinar: Bridging the IBM i Skills Gap
Experts highlight practical strategies for overcoming the talent shortage; featuring Steve Will and Linda Alkire of IBM, Brian Nordland of Fortra and Allen Pearson of Gateway Technical College
The shortage of skilled technical professionals is a challenge felt across the IT industry, and the IBM i community is no exception. As experienced professionals retire and businesses modernize, the need for fresh talent to maintain and innovate on the platform is critical.
TechChannel recently hosted a webinar in partnership with the IBM Power Skills Academy to address this pressing issue. The session, titled “The Journey from Classroom to Career,” brought together industry experts to discuss the realities of the skills gap and practical strategies for overcoming it.
Steve Will, CTO of IBM i at IBM, Brian Nordland, director of development for IBM Power Solutions at Fortra, and Alan Pearson, instructor at Gateway Technical College, joined Linda Alkire, who runs the IBM Power Skills Academy at IBM, to dive into the challenges and solutions to bridging the IBM i skills gap.
The Reality of the IBM i Talent Shortage
The skills gap is often perceived as a crisis, but the panelists suggested it might be more of an evolution in hiring practices. While finding a candidate with 30 years of specific RPG experience is difficult, the pool of potential talent is actually quite large, if organizations are willing to adapt.
“It is a fact in the industry, it is difficult to find programming and administrator skills, period,” says Will. However, he emphasized that narrowing the search too much exacerbates the problem. “If your concern is that you can’t find someone with exactly the skills of the people that you need to do the next project, if you expand that to, ‘Well, if I find a curious person who has experienced programming, they can probably learn this other stuff,’ then it gives you more opportunities.”
Nordland echoed this sentiment, noting that bringing in new talent often revitalizes a team. “Anytime you have someone new come in … I think it creates an opportunity for that new person to kind of see things and ask some of those questions of, ‘Hey, why has this been done that way?’”
Mentorship and Modernization as Solutions
A key theme of the discussion was the responsibility of organizations to train and mentor new hires. Expecting a recent graduate to know the specific intricacies of a company’s legacy code on day one is unrealistic.
“Companies just need to plan for this and recognize you’re going to have to mentor someone, you’re going to have to teach them your business and how you actually implement things, your coding standards,” Pearson explains.
The panelists highlighted internships as a particularly effective strategy. Pearson praised Fortra’s approach of hiring students as interns before graduation, allowing them to learn company processes in a low-risk environment.
Flexibility is important, according to Nordland. “I’ve always tried to be very flexible with when we’re looking to find people … find the right person and then adapt how we’re going to do that hiring based on the people who are out there.”
The technology itself is also evolving to become more accessible. Modern IBM i development supports languages like Java, Python and PHP, making the platform more approachable for students trained in general computer science curriculums.
The Role of AI and Community
The conversation also touched on the emerging role of AI in bridging the skills gap. Rather than replacing developers, AI tools are positioned to act as force multipliers, helping new and experienced professionals alike work more efficiently.
“The AI tools … are going to help developers … to accomplish what the programmer is intending to do in the first place,” Will says. “AI will take care of the drudgery … allowing them to be more creative and to accomplish tasks much more quickly.”
Ultimately, the strength of the IBM i ecosystem lies in its community. From user groups to academic partnerships, the network of support available to new professionals is vast. The openness of the community impacts Pearson’s students. “I guarantee you a couple of them will make connections that lead to jobs,” he says. “It’s amazing how the community connects.”
By embracing flexibility in hiring, investing in mentorship and leveraging the power of community resources, IBM i shops can successfully navigate the skills gap and ensure a robust future for the platform.