Major Australian employers are losing the battle for tech talent because they won’t consider applicants without a degree, a young business leader says

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• Australian employers focus too much on university degrees when hiring tech talent, one business leader says.
• Lambros Photios, of software developer Station Five, said major firms consider workers without degrees “risky”.
• But some university degrees don’t equip graduates with the skills they need in the real world, he claims.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

Australia’s business giants are missing out on top-tier tech talent because they’re too focused on hiring university graduates, an Australian software developer says, suggesting capable workers without tertiary qualifications are being overlooked in the ongoing skills shortage.

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Major companies like Telstra and Optus have revealed difficulties in attaining the right tech staffers, after Australia’s pandemic-era border closures limited their access to elite international talent.

At the same time, dynamic start-ups are also wooing domestic workers away from established industry players.

Dazzled by the promise of start-up equity and the salaries offered by cryptocurrency-focused endeavours, many skilled tech workers are also turning down once-prized positions at Australia’s biggest firms.

Lambros Photios, the Sydney-based founder of software developer Station Five, said many major firms are losing out because of their insistence on hiring university-trained workers.

While global powerhouses like Google are open to applicants without computer science degrees, “Australia’s big employers are not taking the seemingly ‘risky’ step forward to hire talent without a university degree,” Photios said.

Photios, who has a degree in civil engineering, said the knowledge imparted by a university degree may be essential for fields like medicine or law — but not for computer science, where workers can acquire programming skills outside of the traditional university environment.

Programs like Amazon’s re/Start initiative, designed to up-skill workers from non-traditional backgrounds, are “amazing” for workers and firms seeking future-proofed talent, Photios added.

But some major employers remain reticent to train their staff in appropriate skills themselves, he said.

That position is backed by a January survey from recruitment giant Robert Half, which found Australian business leaders consider re-skilling or up-skilling employees will be one of their biggest challenges in 2022.

The current skills shortages are only compounded by what the 29-year-old called sluggish updates to university curricula.

Not only are employers focusing on degree-holding talent, Photios said, those degrees are missing crucial skills for today’s tech environment.

“A university degree, while it confirms a student’s resilience and hard work, does not provide them with the technical understanding they require to complete the job,” he claimed.

Photios said the popularity of Amazon’s re/Start “should be a rude awakening to universities that if they don’t update their courses to stay relevant, big players will enter the market and make them irrelevant.”

Despite that proclamation, some education providers are stepping in with alternatives to their traditional computer science degrees, designed for workers without pre-existing tech training.

Victoria’s Monash University now offers a 24-week coding bootcamp, with a curriculum “subject to change due to market demand”.

Elsewhere, RMIT has introduced short courses focused on Apple’s Swift coding language — a skill Photios said is largely untaught in Australian universities — along with standalone certificates in data science and blockchain-enabled business.

As universities retool to compete with bootcamps and coding startups, Photios maintains they’ll still struggle to adapt their traditional degrees for the rapid pace of technological innovation.

“Universities cannot create courses fast enough given their current operating procedures, as the time required for them to create a course would already deem the technology outdated,” he said.

For at least one young tech leader, the answer to Australia’s dire shortage of university-trained applicants is simply to accept skilled tech workers exist outside of the traditional education pipeline.

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