It’s no secret in the Las Vegas technology scene: It’s difficult to find qualified candidates for top engineering jobs.
That was confirmed in a Metropolitan Policy Program and Brookings Mountain West study released today titled, “Cracking the Code on STEM: A People Strategy for Nevada’s Economy."
The study’s findings were simple: While Southern Nevada has a wealth of jobs in STEM fields, locals just don’t have the skills or education to get hired. The report notes that there are three Nevada business sectors bound to offer an influx of STEM jobs in the near future: health and medical services, business and IT and high-tech manufacturing. But there just aren’t enough education programs to nurture local talent to fill them out.
That’s why recruiters at major slot machine makers and startup companies often travel to Silicon Valley and beyond to find the software engineers and data scientists they need to get the job done.
Here’s what a few local tech insiders had to say about the report’s findings and who should be responsible for fixing the talent gap. Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Jonathan Daniels, professor and drone specialist, UNLV’s Department of Mechanical Engineering
Parents who are engineers and scientists don't want to come here if their children won't get the opportunity to become engineers and scientists. It's not just about bringing someone here to stay for a show. It’s ‘Is this good for my family?’ That's where the industry could get involved. If there were better programs, it would lead our younger generation to stay here.
R Blank, founder of EM Shield
This is a problem broadly dissecting the whole country. At the higher levels of education, there's a bigger pool to draw from. That doesn't really exist here in Las Vegas. The real question is: are we training the employees of the future? The answer is no. It's really hard to find a school that's actually teaching these skills at an early age. That's what you really need to have to have students go on to become more specialized, to create clever solutions to problems, to be able to evaluate. That's not happening anywhere. In Las Vegas, there’s UNLV, and it's not particularly known for its influence on technology.
It's all of society's responsibility to make this happen. It's hard to say where the dividing line is. I don't think the industry has a responsibility to do it, but they have a strong interest in doing it to make sure the employees of the future are there.
There are simple things you can do. It used to be you had to learn one foreign language in school. Now you should be learning a computer programming language.
Allan Teruel, chief technology officer at JusCollege
I believe that the talent pool here in Las Vegas is growing and it's getting better. We have a lot of people in the area, but the talent was better outside. I hired a group from Vietnam almost two years ago. They are full stack web development engineers. They understand everything from databases to the operating system to coding. Just finding those kinds of skills in a group of individuals is very challenging.
In Las Vegas, the demand for high quality technology individuals is bigger than the supply. We knew that in order for us to scale, we needed to automate and bring more efficiency to our process. Therefore, we had to bring in technology. We knew technology was very expensive. We knew we had to go out and find talented individuals but also stay in a budget. I call going to Vietnam “Money Ball” hiring. We want to go to undiscovered or untapped markets and find smart individuals and recruit them in the most cost efficient manner. Vietnam has invested a lot into the education of engineers. They’ve worked a lot with Microsoft, along with government officials. It's a tremendous untapped market of talented students who are able to fulfill our needs.