As we celebrate Youth Day this month the spotlight has fallen on the extremely high unemployment figures amongst our youth and our economies pressing need for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills to create jobs and fight unemployment. A recent survey showed South Africa has one of the highest unemployment levels in the world, especially amongst our youth. The unemployment levels locally rival those of the USA during the Great Depression.

According to Russell Hollick, Chief Software Architect at global ERP provider SYSPRO, software development skills remain in short supply globally and especially locally. He says it is up to the private sector to expand and develop this small talent pool. "Education is the key to solving all of our problems as a strong skillset means gainful employment which in turn promotes stability and increased consumer spending, all positive spin offs from a strong education."

Hollick says the challenge though is imparting general skills and awareness of how a business is run alongside the more specific software development and coding skills.

He says the standard of education in the market is often not very high as many tertiary institutions are ticking boxes to charge fees and not properly educating students. As a result private sector companies like SYSPRO have to start from scratch with their training including developing EQ, social skills and workplace readiness skills.

The company started training young interns in its internship developer programme over 10 years ago. They are currently being trained in SQL server, database optimization and performance. Alongside their IT skills though they are also instructed in how businesses are run so they can see the rationale and purposes behind software development and how it adds business value.

The SYSPRO development team has over 100 developers, technical writers and testers the majority of who were trained at SYSPRO and elected to remain there. Over 90 percent of those who were trained and mentored by SYSPRO and are still with the company today.

Hollick says government needs to do more to encourage the private sector to mentor and train the youth by giving strong incentives to companies. As we celebrate Youth Day and reflect on SA having the highest unemployment levels amongst the youth the clock is ticking and all sectors of society need to work together to resolve our unemployment crisis.

He concludes that SYSPRO will continue to grow the scarce IT skills pool, especially in the much needed area of software development.