What does your company do?
Logical Advantage is a privately held, regional IT consulting firm that provides results-oriented, software consulting, development and integration firm. We are a long-term partner and trusted advisor of choice for our clients from recommending solutions to solution concepts and architecture to implementation to ongoing development support.
How did you find out about IT-oLogy?
2 years ago we recognized that the biggest challenge to any software development firm or any company that hires IT professionals was the lack of a qualified talent pipeline. John Fread led a taskforce to glean insight into Charlotte’s ability to grow, attract and retain qualified IT resources for this growing demand. IT-oLogy was actually recommended to the taskforce as an organization to look into that was engaged in the same effort. We quickly realized after meeting with Lonnie Emard, President of IT-oLogy, that IT-oLogy’s mission was in-line with ours and instead of re-inventing the wheel, made the decision to open a Charlotte branch of IT-oLogy.
Why did you get involved?
We got involved because the Charlotte metropolitan area is home to some 24,000+ IT and IT related industry jobs. At any given time, there are approximately 1,800 open positions yet only 300 job seekers in the area; there are simply more jobs than there are qualified candidates. The single largest impediment to growing our business is finding qualified IT professionals. The lack of IT talent is systemic and needs to be addressed at all levels, from K-12 to the University level to re-educating/training adult learners. It’s the only way we’ll even come close to closing the IT Talent Gap.
What is the return/value for LA so far?
By bringing together a variety of IT efforts already underway, IT-oLogy provides a cohesive mechanism to build out our IT community and as this starts to grab hold, it’s allowing logical Advantage to benefit by attracting, growing and retaining top IT talent to fuel our growth as well as our clients. This is a long-term game for us, but it is already starting to make a tangible difference in bringing to light the need for IT talent.
By bringing together a variety of IT efforts already underway, IT-oLogy provides a cohesive mechanism to build out our IT community and as this starts to grab hold, it’s allowing logical Advantage to benefit by attracting, growing and retaining top IT talent to fuel our growth as well as our clients. This is a long-term game for us, but it is already starting to make a tangible difference in bringing to light the need for IT talent.