As demand for digital infrastructure increases, the data centre industry faces a growing challenge: a persistent shortage of skilled professionals.
Without a concerted effort to bridge the data centre skills gap, the industry may struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for digital services at the current rate of expansion.
In this blog post, Future-tech’s Head of Technical Due-Diligence, Mark Acton, considers the severity of the data centre skills shortage, which skills are currently most in demand, and what steps must be taken to address the lack of qualified professionals needed to build, operate and manage data centre facilities in the current era of unprecedented digital infrastructure growth driven by multiple factors including AI deployments.
Addressing the Data Centre Skills Gap
One of my biggest frustrations when it comes to the so-called skills gap within the data centre sector is not the lack of available talent for our sector, but the way that we insist on cutting ourselves off from it! There is certainly a shortage of qualified engineering professionals worldwide for all sectors, not just data centres.
Given that there is a shortage of qualified engineers out there, and that we are fishing in a relatively small pond, we should clearly be doing a far better job of highlighting the data sector as a career of choice rather than continuing to hide in the dark.
How Can we Solve the Data Centre Skills Gap?
The solution to the data centre skills gap is getting more young people into science and engineering at an early age. Ultimately, that is probably more about influencing parents rather than young people themselves. This is something that we can contribute to as a sector, but not fundamentally change operating alone.
HR departments also have a lot to answer for by screening out very capable candidates who do not match their corporate minimum requirements in terms of qualifications and experience.
Most of us who have been in the sector for any length of time came in through some form of back door route. We were allowed to develop in situ. Many of the more senior people currently in the sector would probably not make it through the selection process today if they were to present with the same level of skills and experience they had when they first joined the sector.
Ultimately, there is an immense amount of talent out there and, we just need to do a far better job of gaining access to it. Part of this is making our sector more attractive as a career option but also being more welcoming and more willing to ‘grow our own’.
Let’s be far more willing to hire on capability, culture and attitude rather than pieces of paper. Allowing people to develop in roles and putting HR departments back in their box when it comes to hiring the talent that we want, rather than what HR determines.
Careers at Future-tech
At Future-tech we pride ourselves on being a community of specialist data centre engineering consultants and supporting staff who all share the same goals, attitudes and ethics. Even as a multi-disciplined and diverse team we act as a cohesive whole, supporting each other in our specialist capacities. Learn more about careers at Future-tech.
All Future-tech content is produced by human writers based on their expertise, without the use of AI technology.