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Recruiting IT Students?
spacemonk asks: "I teach at a community college and our enrollment numbers are down in our IT programs. We have found that many have the perception that there are few IT jobs. We feel this is causing many students, who might be interested in IT, to enroll in other programs. There is obviously a lot of conflicting information regarding the impact of off-shoring, and so forth, but much of what we have found indicates that the IT job market is improving, and IT is still a career that can offer job opportunities to students. For example, we have had internship opportunities that we have not been able to send candidates to, simply because we don't have the students. Needless to say, this is very frustrating. How would you honestly describe the IT job market to students considering this major? What can be done to recruit more students into IT programs?"
The reason why there were so many IT students 5-10 years ago is because IT jobs were paying higher-than-others wages during the dotcom boom. So as you can expect from average students, they (or their parents) would be more interested in getting an IT job, even if IT wasn't what they wanted as a career.
Now, IT skills have been commoditized, and companies are paying standard wages for IT jobs. As a result, students are moving away from this ordinary job and either looking for something more lucurative, or simply choosing something that they are interested in (like Arts, History etc).
Since companies' needs ( as in wages, not the actual work demand ) for IT have been downsized, shouldn't colleges and universities do the same?
Cassette factory had its time, and it may still be producing cassettes, but it also has to make room for CDs/DVDs.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
A lot of people were pumped through technicial schools during the bubble. Many of those people were only chasing the supposed promise of big bucks in the IT field. Educational institutes make some pretty good money on their (and the tax payers') backs as well. I worked with enough of these people to become a bit bitter about the whole thing. If you're trying to drum up the same type of business from the same type of people, I can't say I wish you much luck. The world is always in need of throughly educated people who have a genuine interest in technology though.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
My suggestion for getting a job in IT is to have a secondary skillset. I work at an audio post production house doing IT work. I have the job because I also know audio. If you can't apply your IT skills to what the business is doing, then you are not as useful to the company.
There are definitely jobs to be had for people who can support the infrastructure of what it takes to do business in today's world. You just need to be able to apply what you know to what is being done.
I can't, with any sense of responsibility to young people in the US, encourage them to study IT.
The jobs are going overseas, as investors are mandating it either for cost reasons or because they now have a stake in some offshore concern. The jobs are emotionally frustuating because management expects programming to work on time and on budget like other engineering disciplines, but in practice its still an academic exercise with little thought to design and expectations. And, increasingly the vendors have turned the jobs into a vocational trade and not the creative and intellectual exercise it used to be.
There are still good jobs out there, but you'll have to make them yourself and hope you hang in there long enough to run the company and outsource the work to someone else. Otherwise, your a network support guy or sitting at a help desk in some cubicle waiting for the phone to ring for a question from an idiot in Finance.
But I'm not bitter...
Sleep is for the Weak
If wages haven't gone up yet, then they're lying about how hard it is to recruit.
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be outsourced.
we can't find qualified people
Perhaps instead of trying to find qualified people for a low salary, you should try to find quality people that are intelligent and eager to learn, with minimal experience (they should be able to tell you about ssh and port 25). I have no sympathy for companies that complain about a lack of qualified people when they want the moon in skills but offer a smaller salary than a guy can make driving a fed-ex truck.
Why not train a bright entry level person to be a Linux Admin? I don't understand this absolute refusal to train IT workers. If you're not willing to train somebody who has an IT background in a related field, how can you complain?!
There are two reasons someone chooses a particular major most of the time:
1) They think they'll make a lot of money doing it.
2) They think they'd enjoy doing that the rest of their lives.
Seems like you're worried too much about group 1. Don't. Ignore them. You're better off if they major in business or Chemical Engineering or Sports Medicine or whatever else strikes their fancy. They're not really interested in the field. There are worse motivations, and many people are successful who are mostly looking for a payday, but that's not who you should focus your attention on.
For the second group, that are already interested, you need to convince them that they'll be able to make a living at it, and that this is more interesting to them than another field. I can't offer super specific advice, since I don't find IT interesting in the least (I'm a perl programmer) - but you probably want to give as much real world examples of what kinds of jobs people actually get in IT and problems they actually solve. The people who are drawn in, those are the ones you want to keep.
And really, above all else, treat the students with respect. This will be so strange and rare, you'll instantly be a step up on how most people seem to approach them.
-- Kate
The students today are reading it correctly. While I wish it were otherwise, this is not a long term career anymore. If you hit a hot technology you can ride that for a good while but looking at the market in general few people I know will recommend IT as a career. IT has become the assembly line worker of the 1970s or the steel worker of the 1960s. While today, you can find fabricators in niche markets making a lot of money, the vast majority moved to other industries and professions.
I run an IT Consulting company and cannot recommend this to family or friends. I am not pessimistic about my company's ability to earn money and keep me comfortable, but in general it is an ugly market to enter.
Here is what the typical college graduate in IT will encounter.
. You will start at fair wages and long hours. Under difficult deadlines and penny pinching companies you will be squeezed for everything you can produce.
. You are considered an "expense" that must be controlled. More often than not you will get an "good boy" instead of a bonus.
. You are as respected and appreciated as a union laborer.
. There is a pervasive belief that you are interchangeable with any other developer at half the price.
. Unlike other industries where age implies experience (and we can all argue whether it should), in IT age is taken as an indicator of being "behind".
. If you do not work at a software company, you salary will top out around 35 and you will get slightly lower than COLA in subsequent years.
. There is always someone willing to do your job for less than. They will be in two categories Offshore or Fresh out of University. It does not make sense logically, but bean counters do not use logic of this type.
. Your experience is weighed against your age/salary and with few exceptions age/salary will do you in. I often (too often) hear people say for what they pay a 40 year developer they can get three out of college - and then they do.
. Churn is high, making job security low - It is a myth contractors are fired first.
As I said, I make my living on this and while I hire and pay well, most of my competitors do not. They often win bids because they can low ball me. I often win second rounds because the first round was spent with nothing produced and we put a team on the ground that gets results. However, success does not matter these days, its all about price. I can guarantee a project for $700,000 and someone with next to zero experience bidding $675,000 will get it. Most often they bid $250,000 figuring once they get in it will be hard to get them out. (There is a reason recruiters for programming shops are called pimps)
Well, now that I vented most of that, I feel better. I am guessing this will end up flame-bait or troll (of which it is neither). It is a reflection of my frustration as I watch good developers move into other industries so they can have a family and pay a mortgage.
If you really want to help your students, stop teaching regular IT and focus on niche markets - embedded systems, AI, robotics. Things that are bleeding edge. Make the course horribly difficult so only the best and brightest make it through. It is better to choose another career in college than at 40. Add project management courses and "learning to learn" because anyone entering this as profession will need to stay on the bleeding edge or be unemployed. The difficult part for you will be replacing the instructors you have with those that can teach these topics.
Now I am guessing people will reply to this with - "Hey - I am doing fine" and that's good for them. I see the industry as a whole, not just the individual programmers and it does not look pretty for a career. For the top 20% sure - the rest...
OK, lemme see if I understand your predicament...you want to hire an entry level admin at subsistence wages, complain you can't find anyone with the qualifications you expect and, apparently, won't hire anyone with fewer qualifications and train them , and then have the gall to tell students to go out and get more experience ?
Am I the only one to see the irony here ?
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
Let's face the facts -- school does not teach you enough to make anything of yourself in the corporate world. This isn't true only for IT, but also in Finance, Marketing, Sales, etc. School gives you a groundwork and when you start a job, you build upon that when you get out of school and start working.
Now if you agree with what I've just said, take into consideration the following: the private sector does not hire IT workers without experience. The notion that there are 'more jobs' available is probably true -- but look at the requirements. This is not the dot-com era any longer -- it's impossible for a no-knowledge, just out of school, wet behind the ears college graduate is going to get an awesome job without the skills necessary to help the company they work for achieve their business goals (and this is a large reason why the dot-com era went as bust as it did).
Pick up a paper, or check Monster, CareerBuilder, Dice -- all the IT positions are looking for *seasoned* employees. "5-7 Years experience." "Senior level position." These are some of the tag words that will put college graduates out of business when it comes to looking for a job. And *that* is the reason why nobody wants to get into IT.
There was a recent article in Information Week that explained the HUGE age disparity between IT workers. The reason is, that *most* companies aren't changing things around every day -- it's very cost prohibitive and it requires way too much overhead. They stick with the same technologies, so companies continue to run Windows NT 4.0 and the like -- and as a result, the same people stay in their jobs. This creates no openings 'on the bottom', and it's the most glaring thing to me in the IT world.
If you want to solve the problem of low enrollment in IT programs -- it's not to do with the job market. It's to do with the lack of INTERNSHIPS and REAL EXPERIENCE that employers are looking for. Unfortunately for me, the career services center in my school was useless, and I had a VERY tough time, and after lying on my resume about experience in years, I finally landed a crappy IT job. I'm much better off now, but the fact remains -- how can you expect students to line up for IT programs in a school, if you don't teach them what BUSINESS needs are important to keep met, instead of teaching them about "blahblah theory of x and y". Those theories make you competent programmers, but the 'quick and dirty' method of coding is often what's used and in business, it's what people want -- results.
So as a college professor, you have to work with major companies to get REAL internships to these students. They have to become PART of the curriculum. The idea of going to college, completing X number of credits, and graduating to a great job is OVER. The year is 2005 -- and money talks. Numbers are what counts, and if that number is how fast they want you to complete a project, how often they upgrade, how many years of experience you have, or the retention length on IT workers it translates into only ONE number -- the paycheck you're going to be bringing home. And if you don't have the skills from college to make it in the BUSINESS WORLD, then the doors that open so infrequently for entry level IT workers simply won't exist.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Bit of advice. As someone who has been on the hiring in and looking to get hired end.
I certainly beleive you have 8 years of experience. But if you do the math, you show your professional career began at 16.
When someone sees this in an hr department this resume will immediately go to the bottom of the pile. It appears to have been padded.
I am 35, and have been working with computers since I was 12.
I start my work experience from age 18. By which time you are normally out of school.
A resume looks good with all of your skills, just don't say the length of time if it started in your teen years.
I had an interviewer call me on this a long time ago. Took his advice.
Another tip is your years in the business should be matched by job dates on a resume.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
That's exactly the kind of "qualification" that is irrelevant. Do you know the COM3 default base port on obsolete PCs (0x3E8, INT 4)? If not, you are an ignorant poseur who should go back to tending cattle in Elbonia.
I have considerable Delphi experience yet am passed up constantly for Delphi jobs because my experience is either too old, or TOO NEW, FFS. This kind of microfiltering of qualifications is bullshit. I'm a computer scientist. What I need to accomplish the task, I learn. I've written Perl scripts. Can I even write a simple Perl script during a job interview? No. Can I learn enough in a couple of days to hack it up like a pro? Hell yes.
I hate the programming field, it's full of paradigm-driven morons who are too busy playing with UML and "Design Patterns". You can have them.
Unfortunately, those who know SSH and port 25 are demanding salaries of at least $60K/year.
That should tell you that what you are willing to pay is unreasonable for the area. That's not a lot of money for an experienced sysadmin, especially for Silicon Valley. I suggest hiring people to telecommute. You can probably find someone living in a cheaper area (such as the midwest) willing to work for what you are willing to pay.
I have worked for several companies that allow sysadmins to telecommute. It works, but you might have to shift your thinking.
I agree with this one. The major problem is that business STOPPED hiring enough people to both get the job done AND give them time to learn on their own and/or cross-train other people. Add to that the perception that IT is getting simplified so you only need to hire one "Insert Windows/Cisco/UNIX/Linux/DB/Web Guru Here" for peanuts. This makes people who actually know what to do feel undervalued (perception) and impossible for anyone to break in (excessive expectations).
It's literally an education thing for business - if they want the market of available employees to be better, there has to be flexibility in every environment for people to learn. This not only includes NOT burning their employees out but also giving them the ability to promote a learning environment.
HR - Fight back when someone says I want "All This" and ask the hard questions - What do you really need this person to do? Without this person, what business impact is there? Shouldn't we pay this person decent money if they can help prevent loss and risk?
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
Hmmm...
Can't find people to hire.
Won't hire folks without senior level experience.
Advice to college students: Go find a job without senior level experience and get learned up so we can hire you.
Only problem.... that's what every business is doing. The place I work for hires -only- senior people with at least 8 years experience. Everything else (175+ positions) is done by entry level people in india.
CLUE???
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I saw another explaination recently, that the real problem is the double blind HR department. The standard scenario goes something like this:
C-level bigwhig says "We have an opening in IT, pass it on to HR
HR says "We have an opening in IT, put out an advert"
Response to the advert is 1000+ resumes, which takes HR 3 months just to weed down to 12 perspective candidates.
6 of those candidates have taken other jobs. The other six are put through another 3 months of interviews.
At the end of the interviews, they're lucky if they have ONE candidate suitable.
C-level bigwhig says "It took 6 months to fill ONE IT position? There must be a shortage in IT".
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.