Salesforce, NZ agency collaborate to create skilled developers

With a vision to address the chronic talent shortage faced by the tech industry, New Zealand’s first tech career accelerator, Mission Ready has collaborated with Silicon Valley giant, Salesforce, to create 300 skilled entry-level developers over the next 12 months.

Mission Ready Co-founder, Diana Sharma told Indian Weekender that a significant skills shortage in the tech industry, globally and nationally is hampering NZ’s economic growth. She said, “Instead of developing strong local talent, we currently rely on immigration to bridge the digital skills gap. The tech industry has been soaring since Covid growing at 11.4 per cent. Each tech sector job creates five new jobs in other industries. But for it to continue soaring, we need the talent.”

According to this year’s NZ Tech Digital Skills Forum, the industry needs 4000 to 5000 new tech professionals each year. Salesforce and its ecosystem of partners anticipate creating 26,000 new jobs in New Zealand by 2026.

A number of reasons highlight this shortage of talent within the industry.

According to the latest Technology Investment Network (TIN) Report released this month, the TIN200 companies, which are the country’s top 200, revenue earning, high-tech companies, recorded $10B in export revenue from nearly $14B in combined revenue.

The report, which quantifies the economic significance of New Zealand’s globally focused technology industry showed that the tech sector is growing in maturity.

TIN founder and managing director Greg?Shanahan said that despite the challenges of COVID-19 over the past year, many TIN200 companies?have shown resilience, creativity and innovation to achieve unprecedented investment opportunities and record growth.

“This is hugely significant for our economy in terms of the increasing demand for skilled talent, growth in productivity and the major changes of capital flows into tech opportunities,” he said.

Data published in May this year in the ‘Investor’s Guide to the New Zealand Technology Sector’, echoed Greg’s comments, showcasing record amounts of capital being invested in tech companies in the past year. Investment in early stage start-ups has increased 48% in the past 12 months, with $160m invested in tech start-ups by angels and venture funds.

A direct result of this is observed in the hiring boom within the market. Technology companies are on a hiring spree, using benefits to lure skilled talent, as job seeker continue to jump ship and countries in search of better pay.

Intermediate and senior talent are currently the most highly sought after by countries all over the world, says Sharma.

“With borders closed it is far more important to develop local talent, especially diverse and indigenous talent to ensure we stay competitive,” Sharma said.

She adds that the lack of experience having worked on in-demand technical skills is one of the reasons for this skill shortage.

Diana along with her Co-founder, Alan Kan addresses this gap through their accelerator programmes that equip student to launch their tech careers in three to six months as opposed to an expensive three year degree.

“The tech industry offers diverse roles but not all require a university education, and ongoing industry-based learning is crucial. A number of NZ career-changers don’t want to do a three year degree to retrain and certainly don’t want to take on any more debt than required”, she adds.

“In the last three years, Mission Ready has trained over 300 candidates in fast growing roles such as software development, UX Design and Data Analysis”, Diana says. Following their 10 – 20 week accelerator courses, students are placed for up to 10 weeks with tech employers such as 2 Degrees, Kordia, Dacreed and more, where they work on actual projects as part of their training.

Sharma said by tailoring the use of its signature accelerator courses, they recognised that they could be a part of the solution to combat the tech skills shortage faced by organisations like Salesforce. “The collaboration represents a win for candidates looking for tech-industry employment, a win for employers looking for new talent and a win for Salesforce to scale a high growth organisation.”