Bernard Ginns: Skills shortage that could leave Yorkshire lagging behind

I was in Manchester, but that’s another story.

John McAndrew was working in Australia, running an information and risk business.

“I had a bright young person come and explain to me this www.yahoo dot thing and how to use the web,” he told me, sitting in his glass-panelled office overlooking Leeds.

“That was only 17 years ago. So where are we in another 10 to 15 years?”

Mr McAndrew is the chief executive of the Callcredit Information Group, the fast-growing information services provider and one of the leading lights in big data.

Even he admits to a feeling of intrepidation.

“It’s frightening where we are in terms of technology,” said the 61-year-old, who is a veteran in the consumer lending and consumer information industry.

Frightening for some, but not for others.

Callcredit is riding the wave of technology and last year saw revenues increase 25 per cent as lenders, insurers, retailers and media companies demanded ever more detailed information about their customers and the way that they behave.

What is truly frightening is not the technology, but our ability as a region to harness the new opportunities it presents.

Where are the skilled workforces to help our visionary entrepreneurs translate their dreams into commercial realities?

Not here, it seems.

Callcredit might be headquartered next to a big Leeds City College campus and sit within walking distance of two major universities, but the business finds it tough to recruit sufficient staff. It is particularly challenged in database analysts, programmers and quality assurance testers.

“We are recruiting in the UK, but we are also recruiting in Lithuania,” said Mr McAndrew, referring to the group’s operation in the former Soviet state.

I take that as an damning indictment of our education system. Yorkshire spends billions of pounds on schools, colleges and university education every year, but our region is failing to produce the employees that our companies need.

Callcredit opened a development and service operation in Lithuania last year.

The group has taken about 2,000 square metres of space on the fourth floor of an office in the Zalgiris Arena in Kaunas, the country’s second-largest city.

The arena is home to a 15,700-seat basketball arena and concert hall. Lucky staff will have a ringside seat at forthcoming concerts by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Eric Clapton.

Callcredit employs 80 people in Kaunas and plans to add another 120 over the coming months.

Mr McAndrew talks enthusiastically about the group’s presence in Lithuania.

“It’s only two hours on the plane. The language skills are very good. It’s a relatively small country which means that you can influence the education system,” he said.

Callcredit is working with Kaunas University, one of the best IT universities in the Baltics, to develop the right skills for its future workforce.

Adrian Mitri, chief operating officer at Callcredit, said last year: “We’ve got a business growing very quickly and we need to be able to support our customers.

“We are actively recruiting in the UK for IT capability. We are still getting people in the business, but it’s slow and hard work.”

The CEO is philosophical about the changes the UK needs to make to be competitive in new technology.

“It will take time,” he said. “It really does come down to convincing young people that they need to be working on degrees and education where they can see some concrete careers at the end of it.

“Look at the world we are in: the world is all about technology and information.”

He is not the only one to voice fears and it is not only Leeds which suffers from a skills shortage.

James Taylor, managing director of Roaring Mouse, a specialist technology PR agency based in Sheffield, said: “There are fantastic software developers in the region, but not enough.

“A number of my clients tell me that recruiting developers with the right skills locally is a challenge because they are in such short supply.

“Some have turned to outsourcing, not to reduce costs, but to get the fundamental skills their business need to support growth.”

Yorkshire’s loss will be Lithuania’s gain, until we get Raspberry Pi microcomputers into school classrooms to teach the next generation how to write programmes and applications.

Early adopters in Yorkshire say the Raspberry Pi creates a platform for innovation in education and industry and could be the catalyst to reinvigorate the region’s entrepreneurial spirit.