NATC is looking for a Head of IT Services

Contributed by Farzana Rasheed

This blog post discusses how NATC is using an exciting forum, Escape the City, to attract an international IT professional. It also discusses the wider challenges of finding skills and talent in a post-conflict society which has limits in producing a skilled work force. 

In our efforts to recruit an international IT Engineer, we posted the opportunity at Escape the City. Take a look here. We hope to attract the attention of an IT wizard looking to escape corporate boredom in a more advanced economy and, come to Liberia to deliver and manage NATC's clients' IT needs. 

NATC's current team of technicians is comprised of local technicians, who despite being hardworking and innovative, still need the supervision and guidance of a more qualified and experienced IT Professional. 

Moreover, most of our clientele is comprised of international multinationals who want to deal with more qualified and experienced IT professionals. 

Because of Liberia's educational and professional vacuum, being a post-conflict society, the country's technicians have limited exposure to either rigorous educational grounding or consistent practical training. 

We discussed these challenges in an earlier post: "How important is Spelling to Your Business?"

Hence, our technicians have reached their limits in being able to deal with more sophisticated technology. Also, since our technicians are not exposed to the IT developments elsewhere, we are not able to introduce and recommend newer products.

We have a trainee programme at our company but our over - loaded senior technician is not able to devote enough attention to training the juniors. It also seems that youngsters we come across just do not seem to want to invest the time into training in the basics and, work their way up. In fact, we have tripled our trainee monthly allowance since the last 1 year but even then, it seems the young people do not have the discipline nor patience to learn, take advantage of an opportunity and carve a career.  

We had had a high turn over of trainees. In fact, the young chap who blogged about joining NATC last October, is gone! The young fellow did not show up for work for at least 1 week. We later found out that he was asked by his father in Ghana to "come back to school." A bright and enthusiastic young man, I was looking forward to his growth and contribution to NATC. 

Given these challenges in hiring, training, nurturing and growing a technical team in Liberia, our next step in meeting them is to hire an international IT Engineer looking to escape to West Africa for an exciting challenge. We believe it will change the dynamics within our company. This candidate will be able to put all his/her energies in nurturing and growing our team as well as meet our clients' needs!