Many IT organizations deal with a serious skills shortage - the labor market is volatile, people come and go and valuable knowledge is lost as a result of retiring boomers.
Some of them also struggle with their image: they are not seen as companies that promise exciting career paths or steep promotion opportunities.
The IT shop of bank I used to consult for ran a survey on their image and attractiveness as a potential employer : the survey revealed that 70% did not even know that the bank had such a large IT organization (exceeding ten thousand IT workers). Second confronting point was that most respondents thought of an IT sweatshop in terms of bureaucratic, slow, risk averse, regulatory, no career opportunity. Image is everything... in your face right.
IT marketing - the mechanics for using marketing best practices in IT communication - will help in improving your image as an employer. If you succeed in understanding their values, what they stand for and care for, you can pimp your IT marketing with their language - using their vocabulary to become (emotionally) connected.
Connecting with Generation Y can create an enormous innovation potential for the firm: for these digital natives technology has become a second nature .
Unfortunately bureaucratic, process-oriented, regulatory and the like are not the most appealing set of values to catch the Gen Y's attention. These people are community beasts, love their bling bling tech gadgets, think in terms of global consciousness and connectedness and are in touch with mother nature. For them, job security reads job diversity, Long term career path is traded for short term flexibility and continued learning and job loyalty is being thought of in terms of months rather than years.
Creating a new habitat where these millenials feel comfy in will take time - it is matter of a culture change at all levels of the organization. Say bye to authority, rank or level and hi to community, power groups and work-life balance.
I am convinced that we can make IT a sexy career alternative, if we are prepared to rethink our organizational models and underlying philosophy. We will have to adapt our corporate ecosystem to cater for this new breed of knowledge workers - no more caging in cubicles but giving the possibility of creating, exploring new spaced and interconnected thinking (don't know what it means but it sounds nice, doesn't it). The next gen workforce will only feel happy @ work, if it is close to their personal habitat.
If you dare to rock and roll your culture, then you can start jamming with these new kids on the block... Combine it with a right-brain recruitment campaign and you have all the necessary ingredients for a Y fusion
