The National Broadband Network rollout by NBN Co has sparked warnings about shortages of skilled IT professionals required to complete the project.
The Australian reports that NBN Co plans to triple its headcount from 100 to 300 employees by the ‘middle of the year’.
NBN Co is looking to hire high level executives and IT planners and engineers in the immediate future, with field construction staff to follow as the network is rolled out, creating 25,000 jobs over the lifetime of the eight year project.
NBN Co last week signed a $23 million deal with Accenture to handle NBN Co’s back office administration of new recruits so the company could focus on the task of hiring top talent.
NBN Co human resources officer Kevin Brown said a five-year, $23 million deal with Accenture announced last week would allow the company to focus on hiring while Accenture took care of administrative tasks related to the workforce expansion process.
Despite announcing a ‘no-poaching’ policy, actively discouraging NBN Co from headhunting staff from “potential customers” as well as a policy of informing customers where top-level executives apply for positions with NBN Co, NBN Co is confident of being able to attract top talent to the organisation.
Robert Olivier, director of Advantage Professional said NBN Co talent would have to imported rather than sourced locally.
“The thing is this has not been done before here so they are going to find it very difficult to find that know-how,” Mr Olivier said.
