According to some of the leading recruiters in the IT Sector of Australia, some form of flexibility should be maintained for the professionals to come to Australia. With this, the current skill shortages in this industry segment could easily catered to.
These skill shortages might turn out to be the cause of delay for many projects in the pipeline. Some such projects include the National Broadband Network etc. More so, the number of foreign trained IT professionals being permitted to work in Australia should be evaluated again.
Peoplebank which is the biggest recruiter for IT and technology in Australia has signed a contract with the government. According to this agreement, around 150 to 200 professionals from abroad would be permitted a visa on a yearly basis. However, in the last six months, this number has been increased by almost twenty to thirty percent. To this, Peoplebank feels there should be a further raise on this. This is because the firm forecasts skill shortages in the middle of this year, especially in the regions of New South Wales, Victoria and Canberra.
In the previous year, there was an increase in demand by around thirty percent in Sydney which were mostly catered towards projects in the banking, finance and the utility sectors. The main reason behind this is the constantly increasing opportunities and so, the need for the skilled professionals rises with it.
The visa program that is usually applied for by the employers to sponsor foreign trained professionals is the Skilled Temporary Business (Long Stay) that is the Subclass 457. More so, the recruiters have been asked by the Australian Department of Immigration to reconsider its numbers for the 457 visas to be sponsored and keep it to the available numbers.
The data for Australian Immigration projects one thousand and five hundred professionals in the computing sector who were given the 457 visa. This is a reduction from two thousand eight hundred and ten in the previous year. Also, the computing professionals were rated as the second of the top fifteen professions for the visas to be granted.
