IT Recruiter in Thailand shares his thoughts

Peter Fischbach was a serial entrepreneur and computer contractor in New York before he came to Thailand in the '80s. His first job was for a purchase order system for the United Nations in BASIC in DOS. Soon after settling down, he found out there were no IT recruitment and placement companies so instead of continuing as a programmer, he set up ISM recruitment and now lays claims to one of the largest if not the largest database of Thai IT professionals. He shared his experience on the Thai IT scene over two decades with Database.

Peter Fischbach.

ISM recruitment offers standard recruitment and search for jobs for permanent hire and also does contracting, providing fixed term programmer resources. Many companies do not want to go through the process of hiring and firing 20 Java programmers for six months then have to fire them.

Because the talent pool in Thailand is somewhat limited, the two sides of the business work together, looking at the same pool of talent, either on a fixed term or permanent basis.

"The analogy is that we're not building the house, but we're renting them the tools to build the house themselves," he explained.

ISM Recruitment's client base consists of multinationals, large Thai companies and a lot of financial institutions: Banks, consumer finance, insurance, not just directly but vendors who supply to the FSI industry.

Fischbach also does executive recruitment for sales directors, country managers or technical positions.

So what skills are in demand today? Fischbach says that in programming, Java is still the dominant requirement with Dot Net showing strong growth lately. Requirements in particular skills are on the rise, such as data warehousing (working with certain products, data cleansing, database design, SQL), Virtualisation (VMWare) and a lot of basic IT user support skills.

ISM still gets the occasional request for COBOL, but for legacy skill sets, more common requests are for RPG and AS/400 these days.

"When people ask for a COBOL programmer with three to five years' experience, I tell them, I've got one with 50 years' experience," he said.

Mobile development is quickly taking off, though the absolute numbers are not yet great. Apple iPhone, Android and generic C/C# skills are needed. It is usually the big companies who want a mobile app, such as a payment tool or a booking app who hire the programmers, not IT companies focused on mobile applications.

"Education? I'd say it's getting better over a perspective of 20 years in Thailand. The issue is not so much whether they are teaching the right technology, it's more an issue of how the education does or doesn't promote the students' ability to think creatively in problem solving," he said.

"It's a lack of ability to think outside the box that people lack."

Fischbach said that over his 20 years in the industry, one of the biggest roadblocks to development is Thailand's immigration rules. A company without a lot of capital and BOI approval finds it very hard to bring in foreign workers.

"I can speak with absolute knowledge they are not taking away Thai jobs. There is demand out there. Jobs are left unfilled. People want to come here, transfer skills and pay taxes," he said.

While IT companies are in a BOI promoted category, today most of the demand for IT professionals is not from IT companies, but from non-IT sectors which need IT resources. Financial services in particular today show a aversion to hiring foreigners due to pressure from the central bank and this is causing many projects to be delayed or even going to other countries.

Then there is the new tax break for SMEs. To qualify as an SME, registered capital must not exceed 5 million baht. However, immigration rules allow for one work permit per 2 million baht capital, so in order to bring in talent and skills, they need to increase capital and then break out of the lower tax category that the government is promoting. "The stereotypical brainy kid garage start-up usually starts with two or three people," he said.

Another issue is with English skills. Programmers need to communicate with project managers in English and yet there is resistance to using English earlier in school for historic reasons.