Talent Won't Always Come Knocking 25th May 2023

The skills shortage across the datacenter space has long been considered one of the biggest challenges for the industry. Every single organization in the industry right now is trying to figure out how to invite, entice and embolden a new iteration of people to support digital infrastructure. And this task is almost always given to HR teams.

Decreasing the datacenter skills gap requires an expansive amount of outreach to universities, recruitment, mentorship, and continuing training once in the industry. The problem is that students and young employees in tangential fields cannot aspire to do something they do not know exists. Yet Digital Infrastructure is an exciting field that offers exceptional career opportunities to people from various backgrounds; traditional engineering (mechanical, electrical, civil), cyber-security, facility operations, networking, and software development - to name just a few!

We’ve assembled a group of people with real experience to share the problems and, hopefully have some answers.

Professor Rabih Bashroush

Professor Bashroush provides strategic advisory to public and private sector firms in IT Infrastructure, cloud adoption, resiliency and sustainability.  He advises various governments on the topic including the UK, Ireland, and the European Commission, and his work has influenced various policies and legislations in Europe. He’ll be presenting some very interesting statistics on datacenter job roles and the labour force in Europe.

Andrew Stevens

Andrew is the President and CEO of CNet, the largest education provider in the world dedicated to the digital infrastructure industry, including the datacenter and network infrastructure sectors. CNet is recognised throughout the world as being the global leader and the only dedicated education provider to award both internationally recognised qualifications and professional certifications starting at level 3 and culminating in level 7 Masters programs.

Steve Hayward

Steve is Vice-President of Euro Operations at CyrusOne and is responsible for delivering the highest service standards across CyrusOne’s entire European portfolio, gaining a wealth of experience across a diverse range of engineering disciplines including petrochemical, nuclear, aviation and data centres.

Adelle DeSouza

Is the founder of Hire Higher supporting young people to fulfil their professional potential from classroom to boardroom. Their Rising Star programme is committed to supporting those in their early careers across the datacenter industry. In a recent survey eighty-five percent of datacenter professionals commented that their workplace would be the perfect environment for young and fresh talent, but that there were a number of barriers to entry including employer brand, attraction strategies and retention of trained talent. 

Xavier Plowright

Discovered the sector while still at school and made it his goal to join. But getting in wasn’t easy. After 60 interviews he finally made it and is now a datacenter analyst at JLL. He’ll be telling you about his painful journey.

Dave Pye

Dave is a recognised business leader with a 25-year background in the professional services and recruitment sector. Dave has had a wide-ranging career leading one of the UK's largest staffing organisations which employed over 800 people, through rebranding, acquisition, and growth, and has also worked as CEO with a number of smaller boutique and niche businesses. Dave is Chair of Portman Partners and an Executive Committee Member of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation

We hope you can make it. If there are others in your organisation who you think may benefit kindly let us know and we’ll send them an invitation.

To book your place, please email Lizzie here. Limited places left, so secure your spot ASAP