Telus Corp. said it will hire 800 permanent technicians within the next three years
amidst a shortage of skilled workers in the IT sector, as the company joins a growing
number of firms providing in-home technical support.
Telus aims to hire 100 technicians immediately by inviting applicants for interviews
today. Potential candidates can post resumes at careerday@telus.com for more interview
sessions to be held March 23 and March 25.
Those new hires will be added to Telus's new "Home Team," which makes house calls to
help customers set up new systems.
Unlike the company's traditional installation technicians, Telus's Home Team is also
involved in sales and customer service.
Telus is also anticipating that some of its employees are nearing retirement age, said
Joe Grech, executive vice-president of network operations at Telus. "We're hiring in
advance of our needs," he said.
Base wages at the company average $25 to $30 an hour.
Firms such as Geek Squad already provide in-home computer support, contributing to a
growing need for IT workers.
Internet giant Google Inc. also led a recruitment team to B.C. earlier this month,
aiming to hire from the province's pool of IT experts.
In B.C., the number of people employed in professional, scientific and technical
services jumped 6.8 per cent to 166,500 in January, compared with 155,900 in the same
month in 2005, according to Statistics Canada.
Microsoft Canada's president Phil Sorgen, whose company is looking to expand, is
concerned that there are not enough technology graduates in the country to fill jobs
available.
"There's no question that the number of graduates we have in North America graduating
from science and technology and even specifically in the area of computer science is
not sufficient to meet the demands and needs of the IT industry," Sorgen said in an
interview.
He added that it is imperative that Canada focus on and drive more students towards the
science and engineering professions.
In a speech Thursday to the Vancouver Board of Trade, Sorgen said that while people
tend to think of China and India as a source of cheap technical labour, the fact is
that almost two-thirds of the computer scientists in the world graduate in those two
countries and that is why companies in North America have been looking to Asia for
additions to their specialized workforce.
In the interview, Sorgen said that Microsoft Canada is now hiring and definitely
looking for strong talent as it grows its business across Canada.
"That being said, in any given market at any given time there's a sort of an ebb and
flow of people being available."
Canadian universities tend to focus on the academic side of the industry, so graduates
tend to be computer scientists, rather than IT professionals, said Jens Haeusser, chief
information security officer at the University of British Columbia.
At the same time, the concentration of computers in Canadian homes has risen to among
the highest in the world, fuelling the demand for in-home services.
"Just as you need a mechanic when car goes wrong, you need an IT mechanic when your
computer goes wrong," Haeusser said.
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