KEY POINTS:
As a fresh crop of school leavers consult careers advisers and parents about what to do next in life, information and communications technology is beckoning furiously - or should be.
New Zealand, like many other countries, is experiencing an information and communications technology (ICT) skills crisis. Realistically, though, sector leaders know their industry has an image problem that is keeping young people away.
Far from being a cool career choice, jobs in the computer industry are perceived as geeky, hard work and low-paid. With the Government having set the industry a target of contributing 10 per cent of GDP by 2012 - it manages about half that today - the perception problem is not just unkind to the men and women already beavering away in ICT roles, it is jeopardising the country's economic growth.
Hence the Telecommunications Users Association is staging a conference in Auckland this week at which speakers will try to solve the problem.
How serious is it? Department of Labour statistics show the number of ICT job vacancies rose by a quarter in the year to August to about 1600 - but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Compounding matters is that enrolments in tertiary-level ICT courses have been dropping, not rising, at the same time as the Government's HiGrowth strategy is pushing for industry expansion.
Simon McCallum, a former Otago University computer science lecturer, says the country is about 30,000 people short of the number needed if the ICT sector's growth ambitions are to be fulfilled. McCallum, in a paper published last year, says many reasons have been suggested to explain why students shun ICT, including lack of knowledge about career options among parents and advisers, the completely wrong notion that there are no jobs in ICT, the perception that it's a job for nerds and the (also wrong) belief that ICT jobs don't pay well.
By McCallum's reckoning, the 10 per cent GDP target will need 66,000 ICT workers. When he did the sums last year, the industry was employing 22,000 people and tertiary institutions were producing about 1200 ICT graduates a year.
Migration can't be counted on to fill the shortfall because the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and most European Union countries all report a decline in computer science course enrolments and growing demand for ICT staff.
Migration, in fact, could make matters worse - since writing his paper, McCallum has left the country for a job as a computer-game developer in Norway, where pay and conditions are better than here.
"My situation is an example of one of the problems that New Zealand universities, and the country as a whole, has in respect to gaming and ICT in general," McCallum says.
Garth Biggs, executive director of the HiGrowth Project, which is steering the Government's growth strategy, protests that ICT's geeky image is no longer accurate.
People skills and creativity are just as important to the role as technical prowess, says Biggs, the former head of IT at Air New Zealand and former boss of Gen-i, one of the biggest ICT employers in the country.
Rather than parents urging bright kids to study medicine or law, Biggs - perhaps optimistically - wants them to promote ICT career options.
If money is the motivator, it's wrong to think jobs in computing are poorly paid, he says.
With the skills shortage pushing entry-level pay for one category of job from $38,000 to $45,000 in the past year, he has a point.
And the number of ICT entrepreneurs flush with cash from the successful sale of their businesses - think Trade Me's Sam Morgan and Rod Drury, who made a packet selling his business AfterMail - show that it can be the path to fame and fortune.
Biggs will be telling Tuesday's conference how immigration can help relieve the skills shortage. He acknowledges there can be communication difficulties but says racist attitudes don't help.
However, imported skills will be essential since we're not churning out enough qualified young New Zealanders from tertiary institutions.
Combating the image problem with an advertising campaign is one of Biggs' plans, but it has been stalled as the sector works out a suitable "brand" beneath which to pitch it.
He doesn't think it should come under the HiGrowth Project, but nor is the sector's new umbrella group, ICT-NZ (also headed by Biggs), ready to front it.
As parents and teachers counsel the latest lot of school-leavers about where their best prospects lie, Biggs is disappointed they're not being bombarded with positive images of ICT.
But he says it's also important to make the message stick.
"I don't think we have too many shots at this so we've got to get it right."
* Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland-based technology journalist
Numbers game
* Government target for ICT sector's contribution to GDP: 10 per cent by 2012.
* Estimated number of workers needed to reach that goal: 66,000.
* Number of people working in the industry as of late last year: 22,000.
* Number of tertiary IT graduates: 1200 a year.
