1

Harold Mitchell

Chairman, Mitchell Group

The skills shortage we are suffering is quite consistent with other areas of our industry, but has been further aggravated by the exploding growth of the digital world.

Internet ad spend growth has been extraordinary. A year ago, most of the pundits were forecasting that internet ad spend would reach $1 billion by the end of 2007. We passed that milestone a year early, at the end of 2006.

Globally digital media is less than a decade old and even younger in Australia. With our poor broadband and digital television penetration you cannot push expertise beyond the maturity of the medium, which is currently, let’s say, still in nappies.

Pent-up demand for the medium has come on with a rush since broadband penetration took off and now we are faced with a serious skills shortage. Centres of learning are hard pressed to keep up and the industry specialists are underresourced.

Here is a major opportunity for Australia to end our digital malaise and become a world leader in digital knowledge. The Opposition Leader would do well to extend his new policy on broadband to embrace making Australia a world centre of digital knowledge excellence.

We urgently need a specialist digital learning centre in Melbourne or Sydney attached to one of our major centres of learning. It should have the full support of both industry and government and it should set benchmarks against the rest of the world. It should aim to make Australia a global centre of digital communications media excellence, with the KPI of achieving a standard within the top five percent of the world performers. As a matter of course it should have a program that invites the most knowledgeable specialists from anywhere in the world to use it as a forum to share their knowledge.

World digital leadership will be a critical success factor for our nation in the future. Both the main industry players and the Government should act now to seize the opportunity to take the lead.

2

Luke Henningsen

executive general manager, professional recruitment – Australia and New Zealand, Chandler Macleod

Certainly the feedback we are receiving from many of our clients would suggest that there is a shortage in the digital space. Most skills in the digital area are in high demand. It also seems that poaching of staff, on top of an already tight labour market, is an issue for smaller agencies, which makes it difficult for the smaller, boutique players to attract talent into this area.

Acknowledging that it may be difficult to find the ‘perfect’ candidate is probably the first hurdle to overcome. Employers should accept that it will be extremely hard to attract experienced candidates as every other business in town is fighting the same talent war for the prime candidates. Small to medium agencies in particular need to be open to the concept of hiring on raw talent and potential rather than hard and fast experience.

Recruiting younger, inexperienced individuals, based on personality fit to your company’s culture, aptitude, attitude and raw talent that can be developed and nurtured over a period of time, is one of the more attractive methods of combating the skills shortage. Candidates that match this profile, however, are far from abundant and, if you adopt this strategy, you will still need to work very hard to attract people to your business.

As well as the obvious attraction methods, such as offering higher salaries, the provision of an internal mentoring program, as well as high quality training, will be big drawcards, and you should ensure that you develop attraction strategies based around the provision of such benefits. Including these benefits in your recruitment advertising, and discussing them in detail at interview, will certainly help you to attract young talent.

Attracting talent, however, is only half the story. There is little use attracting people to your business if you can’t keep them. Your competitors will be trying to poach your staff and you must also focus on retention strategies to ensure that your competitors are not able to easily tempt your workforce away from your business. Generation Y candidates are typically expected to move every two years and smart companies are investing heavily in combating that trend.

3

Richard Webb

CEO, BlueFreeway

There is no doubt that Australia is suffering a skills shortage in digital media – recruitment is one of the most prominent business concerns across our group of digital marketing communications companies. Yet despite the skills shortage, there is a phenomenal depth of creative and technical expertise in Australia. I recently returned from a trip to the UK and US where I met with many companies specialising in digital media and it really emphasised to me the calibre of the work we produce here. We do, however, need to increase our resource pool urgently, so that we can gear up for the growth curve ahead of us.

Clearly the most critical thing we must do is boost our levels of education and training, both inside and outside of the industry. This will enable more rapid succession planning within the industry and enable recruitment outside of the industry – which is vital if the industry continues its current growth rate. Once leaders in marketing and communications are nurtured to increase their adoption of digital media, they will educate their teams and in doing so create a greater number of potential employees desirous of working in the digital industry. BlueFreeway is committed to creating education programs for the marketing industry at large, because we believe it is critical to sustainable growth, but its positive impact on skills availability will be welcome as well, I am sure!

I also believe the industry will do well by building companies with integrity that align their HR processes and people management with staff-elected values – this will increase retention within companies and the industry at large.

Finally, and probably most importantly, we need to collectively lobby the Government to champion greater adoption of broadband so as to create a more dynamic and creative industry on par with the EC and the US. I fear many young Australians who could be doing excellent work here feel compelled to explore their careers overseas because we have such a poor reputation for fostering an interactive industry.

4

Lisa Norris

Regional director – Australia and New Zealand, Aquent

Australia is suffering a skills shortage in many areas including digital marketing. The pressure of technological development is pushing marketing professionals to possess a combination of traditional and new media skills. This ‘converged’ skill set is increasingly hard to find as the pace of this development and need is outstripping people’s ability to learn these skills or gain considerable experience in digital marketing. To combat this, clients need to hire on potential. The days of hiring the perfect candidate – the one that ticks all the boxes – are limited and clients must be open to the potential a talent has to learn a skill rather than attempt to hire in the skill directly. The pressure hiring on potential puts on a client is they must be able to identify potential during the interview process and then deliver the training required.

Other ways to increase the talent pool available include sponsoring overseas talent – in the current market it is a good idea to have this capability. Some state capitals such as Brisbane and Perth are relocating ‘national’ talent very effectively and are finding the cost of relocation packages and support is minimal in comparison to not having the role filled. Recognising ‘like’ skills and cross-training a talent into the role available also expands the pool of talent available to a client. Often promoting or moving an individual from within is a good solution too, as it retains the talent and provides a career path and a new challenge, two of the three most sought after needs of what people want from their employer.

5

Fiona Cole

Human resources director, Yahoo!7

Unlike traditional media, digital media has only been around for a very short time and in this respect is relatively immature. As specialist skills are emerging there is a growing disconnect between technical and creative skills, and there are many discrepancies in determining what these skills really are.

My belief is the skills shortage can be attributed to three core areas:
1. An underdeveloped industry: the Australian digital media has been limited by poor broadband speeds and media licensing issues. This has caused a lack of talent entering the market and an increase in Australian resources exploring offshore opportunities.

2. Small Australian industry: compared with established global markets, the Australian digital media industry is very small. And the limited availability of home-grown talent has led to an incestuous ‘people swapping’ practice between the major players, resulting in a lack of exposure to different environments.

3. Lack of investment in training: Australia is slowly recognising the importance of investing in its people to invest in the company’s future; however, companies are still not allocating the required equity for people development in specialised fields, such as overseers and targeted hands-on training.

What can we do about it? The industry needs to change its approach and way of thinking. This can be achieved by:
1. Expanding the opportunities: companies should open their minds and accept that skills are transferable, therefore welcoming the introduction of talent from other industries. People learn quickly and cross-fertilisation of ideas from different backgrounds can create an exciting mix.

2. Given the size of the local market – thinking globally: partner with companies internationally to mix the talent pool. This might be through secondments and cross-company (non-competitive) projects that enhance skills and creativity in both arenas. This was a practice adopted by the engineering industry 10 years ago when faced with a similar talent shortage issue.

3. Increasing the focus on training: nurturing the talent we have locally is now more important than ever. Companies should review their training functions to reflect the style and attitudes of the next generation of talent. For example, adopting a ‘mentoring’ model will provide a direct impact on the skills gaps and emerging areas.