Spending on public and private IT cloud services will generate nearly 14-17 million core jobs worldwide from 2011 to 2015, according to a new study by the analyst firm IDC, commissioned by Microsoft.

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Interesting to me are the shifts in technology across the markets over the years and the effects on jobs and the people skills therein from the days of George II, COBOL CICS DB2 to VAX VMS and a little NT4 for good measure in the host of golden oldies. In relation to Cloud I have not seen any other technology shift that will have such a deep impact on all manner of things since the industrial revolution (and sliced bread of course!).

In fact, what makes this more interesting is a number of other events happening right now at precisely the same which are in effect a ‘perfect storm’. (Andy Headworth describes this perfectly here ‘Perfect Storm’).

These events consist of technology shifts at the same time as a generation shift and that generation indeed are of a different mind-set. On top of that we have the current economic climate of course further driving the needs of cloud as an attractive viability ahead of proof of concept.  Included in the technology mix is social networking, big data, search and mobile as well as ever increasing security demands of cloud ~ which will have to move from its weakness to its strength in a short time.

There are millions of people in legacy IT that move about all the time even – without and resulting net new job creation and that’s what we call normal churn and burn and the current recruitment solution models meet those needs just fine although for many candidates the experience is not great. This movement will increase exponentially with cloud of course,  but.. (and a BIG but) cloud will require evolved recruitment and resourcing and handling techniques and new approach for many recruiters including the hiring process for a better candidate experience, retention, development  and training.  There will be huge skills gaps and skills wars between the markets -  both public and private sectors, and this will on the one hand slow progress on many projects and on the other, an upward  hike of rates and salaries.

What I am getting at is that Recruiters, HR and resourcing departments / direct employers will need to work differently – not least because skill sets are shifting quickly and hence will need to learn their SaaS from their PasS and IaaS, but also because the very people they are looking for will not be in the usual places! I mean that the savvy cloud people are increasingly less likely to be looking on the static  Jobboards where most recruiting models rely in wait and pray in the hopes of talent stumbling into their inbox for that job on offer but more so, the new generation cloud experts and in fact all ilk of candidates external to cloud skills will be developing online profiles and inbound attracting the right employers of choice – the savvy niche recruiters and employers in those social spaces will be engaging directly with these networks.

After all, is Cloud not about online engagement, from collaboration to participation on internal organisation chatter, or online crowded sourcing of contract talent. The Cloud workforce of tomorrow will engage in all levels of active participation and collaboration hence the cloud workforce of tomorrow is obviously engaged in its community.

Recruiters,  Employers as well as outsourcing suppliers, (RPO), business process (BPS) and software & IT suppliers (SITS)  alike will need to learn how to better ‘engage’ with these talent pipelines and attract to brand hence the recruitment future is  longer a transactional process and nor will it be  ‘business as usual’ as in the past e.g. simply broadcasting to them by static means. NO! Recruiters and Employers that will do best  in resourcing in cloud  technologies in the future are the ones that learn to engage with the audience two-way >>before<< they are even looking for a job and the candidate is at a passive level, hence building a great talent pipeline already warmed to your brand for the future  but also, once engaged in employment more effort will be required in retention of the best through better rewards, training and development.

A quick count on current UK jobs advertised related to cloud skills but mostly broadcast in web 1.0 land – there are about 10,000.

Innovators moving forward now require skills eg:

Java .NET SaaS PaaS IaaS, Microsoft Dynamics, Azure

Strategy and Innovation, Change & Mobile Application Development.

Understand the possibilities in cloud computing and how this translates into the business strategy &the programme management to deliver.

Enterprise Architecture

Skills around the cloud such as built-in browsers and knowledge about the users. The architects do not need to build everything as before.

Management Capturing and prioritising demand, assigning resources based on business objectivesand doing projects that deliver business value.

Global Sourcing Negotiating skills. Insights into legal issues of privacy. Also Quality, Risk and Compliance Risk and compliance

Management Transportation and storage of data.

Project Delivery Skills regarding specification and deployment of ICT-solution. Knowledge about standards and webservice design.

IT Support and Execution –  Brokers and translaters between business and vendors.

Recruiters get busy and understand how to engage with your audience.!