The Star TechCentral reports on 16th January 2007 that according to PIKOM (Association of the Computer and Multimedia Industry of Malaysia), Malaysia is facing a shortage of networking specialists among its IT professionals:

• not in the network support area, but rather in the area of design and innovation, the area of designing an effective configuration to suit an enterprise’s needs, and troubleshoot problems.
• part of the problem is the lack of exposure among IT graduates to real-world business needs. Leaves IT graduates who only have a general IT education, with a mismatch between the skills they have and the skills wanted in the job market. 
• Malaysia is short of 4,200 networking specialists, according to statistics from a study by research firm IDC. The problem spans the Asia-Pacific region, which faced a shortage of 210,000 networking professionals last year.
• IT students may not be aware they need to specialise to succeed in the job market. Nowadays, to be a jack-of-all-trades in IT, and master of none, is like stepping into a river without knowing its depth.
• networking specialists need to keep up with their continuing professional education, must consistently seek to be reskilled and retrained. In addition, personal communication and leadership.
• region-wide shortage would double by 2009, leaving some 40% of networking positions unfilled, especially in the most critical areas of network security, wireless networking, and VOIP deployment. 

One solution:

Educational institutions need to start by teaching their students generic networking principles and knowledge. Then embed product training into the curriculum to equip graduates for the marketplace, because need to complement specialised knowledge of vendor-dictated networks. The Government’s graduate training scheme is a clear example. Some 70% to 74% of unemployed graduates who had attended the scheme in 2006 only got jobs after specialised training.

Tags: malaysia, networking, cisco, IT, ICT, networks, career, PIKOM, education