ARMENIA’S IT SECTOR: MEETING THE DEMAND FOR SPECIALISTS
17:06 * 08.12.14
The sectors that are interested in skilled labor are implementing
higher-quality education programs, Armenia’s Minister of Education
and Science Armen Ashotyan told Tert.am as he commented on a statement
by Hovik Musalyan, Synopsys Armenia’s executive director.
“And the IT sector is one of the examples,” he said.
The ministry offered the private sector to forecast their workforce,
according to the education level.
“The 2,000 vacancies may be intended for specialists with both higher
education and specialized secondary education. We have also offered
to place additional government orders for IT experts with specialized
secondary education,” Mr Ashotyan said.
Year by year, the government is placing orders for more IT experts
with higher education.
“We should find the ways of stimulating young people’s interest in IT,”
he said.
Karen Vardanyan, Executive Director of the Union of Information
Technology Enterprises (UITE) accounts for the lack of specialists
by the IT sector’s growth.
“We have shortage against the backdrop of progress. The sector has seen
a 25% annual growth in the past 25 years,” he said, citing the labor
force and its higher level of productivity as contributory factors.
But the expert admitted that the Armenian universities fall short
of training a sufficiently killed human resources who could get an
employment opportunity upon graduation.
“There is a demand for two types of labor force: tactical, which is
the every-day demand to enable people to get hired, and strategic,
when trusting our companies and managers, big companies apply to
us saying that they want a subdivision of 500 in Armenia. But our
managers have to reject them, as they are not able to secure even
five jobs on the market,” he explained.
Vardanyan said he currently sees a shortage of 2,000 specialists in
the sector. “If there are 2,000 specialists, it will be possible to
hire them in just one year,” he said, noting that the shortage on
the international market amounts to 1.8 million.
Vardanyan shared the education minister’s concern that they need also
professionals with specialized secondary education. “We have elaborated
a project for training human resources in schools in an attempt to
raise the demand in that way. The universities are not able to secure
such a big demand, so we believe that it is necessary to start with
the school system,” he said, adding that they are planning to launch
a school laboratory program starting from next year.