"We have about 1000 jobs in Australia that export to the rest of the world, making life-changing and world-changing contributions... I don't think that we, as an industry, have fully communicated to the general public the changing nature of our industry." Asia Pacific leader of the IT project advisory service group at KPMG, Mark Tims, said the 10 year career plan is just not there anymore. "Young people are looking for diversity with opportunities to travel. We do not recruit purely [seeking] technology degrees," Tims said.

"We have economics and marketing degrees for example. For us the underlying technology knowledge is important, however the ability to think, solve problems and engage in business discussion is also important." CSC HR director, Barbara Price, said over the past three years the company has picked up between 50 to 100 graduates per year and this trend is likely to continue. Price said a big advantage that comes with the ICT industry is the flexibility to be hooked up anywhere.

"The ICT industry is suitable for people at the mature aged level who want to cut down to three or four days a week, single parents and women returning to the workforce - we are flexible and that's our advantage," she said. Xavier Desdoigts, director of technical operations, Animal Logic at Fox Studios Australia said the backroom image of IT is destructive to the industry.

He said the reality is that ICT is an enabler "to what you want to do." Tripoint CEO, Ian Woollett, said Australia is the clever country, especially in the ICT space where there are lots of innovators.

"As a company we have mostly mature people that work for us because we understand that we can't afford to just have analyst programmers," he said.

- with Sandra Rossi