Shortage of IT professionals impedes Lexmark’s growth

Despite the aggressive move to grow their research and development operations in Cebu with two new buildings at the Cebu Business Park, Lexmark executive shared that the shortage of IT-enabled workers in the industry is slowing their growth.

“There is in fact a shortage so we are recruiting employees from all over the country because we can’t get enough of them from Cebu,” shared Stan Combs, president and chief executive officer of Lexmark.

Lexmark is a manufacturer and developer of printers and printing solutions with worldwide operations.

Worldwide, Lexmark’s Cebu operations accommodate 29 percent of their total work force, and with the recent completion of their Lexmark Plaza 2, their manpower needs are expected to grow further.

Currently, Combs said that they are in need of several IT-enabled professionals such as programmers, engineers, software developers and technical writers and technical skilled personnel to operate and man their new Lexmark Research and Development Center (LRDC) in Cebu Business Park.

“We cannot grow as much as we can because of the shortage. We have not yet filled in all the areas that we need and we are still short in number in terms of people to hire,” shared Combs.

Their LRDC said Combs is considered as their second biggest operations in the world next to their main office in Lexington, Kentucky.

“The facility can house a few hundred more so once we complete hiring; we anticipate having 300 to 400 more in this area over the next three to four years. We have a very steady growth plan to fill up the facility up to 2012,” Combs said.

He added that they are hiring for highly-skilled and white collar  jobs that is good in generating career opportunities not only for Cebu but as well as the entire country so employees need not go offshore to look for better jobs.

Combs said that they have also forged partnerships with various universities to tap qualified graduates such as the University of San Carlos wherein they tried bringing the industry to the classroom and completed senior thesis for the mechanical engineering course last March.

“We brought the industry earlier to them by giving them challenges that are faced in the real workplace. We provide them with tools and necessary devices and they try to make prototypes for our products,” said Combs.

However, Combs said that the shortage is not stopping them from growing the business. As a matter of fact, they are planning to expand and grow their capability in their Cebu operation to involve the development of “derivative designs” based on the products developed by their corporate headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky

Lexmark’s’ two buildings measures 30, 000 square meters combined. Combs said that the Lexmark Plaza 1, which is a 23-level building, will house all their offices and will be completed on the end of this year.

He also revealed that they are considering the possibility of a third building to house its shared services or business process outsourcing unit which manages their accounting, finance, supply chain management and sales support functions which are currently at the Innove IT Plaza.