VoIP professionals find a voice

Banks are paying up for people to work on voice-related products: contractors with the right CV can expect to make 500 to 600 a day.

Banks are combining data and voice networks. But implementing the systems requires a rare skillset.

"We receive quite a lot of requests for voice engineers from our investment banks, but it is quite hard to find the right candidates with appropriate experience. They need knowledge of, usually, Cisco voice products, as well as experience of dealer boards and applications such as NICE recording and other technologies related to bank compliance procedures," says Ben Davis, senior infrastructure consultant with recruitment consultants McGregor Boyall Associates.

Richard Hobart, a consultant at Aston Carter, a rival IT specialist, says project managers who can implement voice systems are equally hard to come by. "Migration is a particular problem," he says. "Very few people have experience of the two systems in an investment banking environment."

The shortage is a concern to Cisco which is becoming the dominant player in the VoIP space. "Our work supporting key unified communications deployments in the investment banking community makes us acutely aware of the skills shortage the industry is facing at the moment," says David Meads, operations director for financial services, Cisco UK. "This isn't a problem that can be solved overnight: what we can and continue to do is work to train our reseller partners and professional services teams to grow in their understanding of the operational business of these customers."

In the meantime, those with the rare combination of VoIP and investment banking experience can continue to cash in.