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?"

Comments

Noooo kidding.

[SlashChick]

I own a web hosting company, and we've been going through major hiring woes lately. It's not that we can't find people to hire. Oh, there are plenty of people out there. It's just that we can't find qualified people.

It's unbelievable how little Linux system administration experience some candidates have. We're paying a low-to-mid-level salary, so I don't expect to hire a UNIX guru. But these people are failing even the most basic tests. One claimed "Senior UNIX systems administrator" on his resume, but when asked to SSH into a server from a Linux workstation, typed "telnet [server] 25".

Some of the questions we ask in an interview: "Why would you use SSH instead of telnet?" "What is port 25?" "How do you reset the root password on a server when you don't know the current root password?" These are really basic questions, and yet the majority of candidates have no clue how to answer them.

I have a feeling this is only going to get worse as fewer and fewer people enter the IT field. There seems to be a large gap between the entry level, where candidates know little or nothing (or they only know point-and-drool generic PC troubleshooting skills), and the upper end, which demands (but probably deserves) outrageous salaries for knowing how to set up routers and SANs. We're looking for the people fiddling around with Linux servers and setting them up in their spare time who want some on-the-job experience administering and maintaining Linux servers. However, even here in Silicon Valley, that's proven remarkably hard to find. We also keep having to increase our workers' salaries to find even moderately qualified people, which means our costs go up and we can't hire as many people as we need to.

My advice to college students: Go out there and get yourself some experience. There are plenty of jobs out there that you can get right out of college in IT. Sure, they may not pay 6 figures a year, but if you enjoy computers, they're fun jobs. As far as recruiting students into IT, it will probably take a few years before it becomes a popular field again, due to the fact that so many people entered it expecting high salaries several years back. My advice: Set realistic expectations of those entering IT (6 figures right out of college? No. A job right out of college? Probably), and convince those not in a CS/IT major to take elective computer classes in case they want to be in a computer-related field later.

Re:Noooo kidding.

[The Vulture]

I live in the Valley, and anything less than $60K/year is gettng pretty difficult to live (a decent lifestyle) on.

I started out in 1999 at $45K/year in the Valley. It was very rough, I had enough for my apartment in a crappy (pun not intended) area of town (i.e. walking around human feces and homeless people on the sidewalks) and a bus pass, although I did tend to walk to work a fair amount to save money. After the bare necessities, I did have some money left over for some luxuries, like cable TV and DSL. But, I didn't have a car - and living in the Valley without a car makes a lot of things difficult, like grocery shopping. Not a whole lot of money left over for toys, and forget about supporting a family on that. Luckily my student loans weren't that bad, so I could afford to make payments on them.

I can tell you the only reasons why I survived on that salary:
1. I had very little furniture in my cramped studio apartment. My TV was a Commodore 1702 monitor (12 or 13", I think) with a cable converter. My drawers were baskets that held my clothes
2. I didn't have a car. Therefore, no insurance payments or gas.
3. I had lived on my own for the previous six years (four of them in a dorm room), and was used to having nothing (in the way of personal belongings) except for my computer, toiletries, and clothes.
4. (This is the most important) I had little debt, so I was able to make the minimum payments and keep people off of my back.
But honestly, that's not much of a life to live, and almost everybody wants better than that.

I'm grateful for the experiences that I had and do have upcoming with the company I'm currently working, but I wouldn't be able to do it now in 2005 on only $45K per year (which is what I'm guessing you'd be offering - $45-$50K per year). It's just too expensive to live in Silicon Valley on such a small salary.

If you really want talented people, then I think you'll have to pony up the $60K per year. After getting laid off from that $45K/year job (in 2001), I was asking for almost double, and easily got it. Back then, people were willing to work for promises of better pay, now people don't buy into that hype and want the money up front. As far as I'm concerned, stock options and promises are worth the paper they're printed on, and nothing more, until I actually get cash in my bank account from them.

-- Joe

Sad truth is...

[DigitalSpyder]

No other industry I am aware of requires constant certification like ours, offers the lowest salaries for our skillsets, yet has the highest turnover rates.

To be quite fair, I couldn't recommend the industry to someone unless they really loved the work.

I don't know what to tell you, friend.

[Anti-Trend]

I am a 24-year-old IT/IS pro with 8 years of field experience under my belt, NT, UNIX, Linux, AIX and AS400 administration experience, built hundereds of workstations, worked with JPL, government, trained tech students and more. That being said, I cannot find a job to save my life right now. I'm actually thinking about falling back on my education in clinical counseling; there may not be many good tech jobs available, but there's always people with psycho-emotional problems. ;-)

Actually Id advise them to do the plumbing course.

[MrBandersnatch]

Having, since 1988, seen 2 major down swings in the IT job market which have lasted several years; retained myself AT LEAST 3 times in order to have current marketable skills; twice had to take jobs on a lower salary than I was on 5 years previosuly; and lost a job recently due to it being outsourced....there is abolutely no chance in hell Id advise anyone to enter IT as a profession. Academia...fine. Profession. No way. If I had known what I would go through working in IT as a young man Id have done something worthwhile, well paid and easy in comparison ( like becoming a GP ). Instead...well lets just say Im retraining again (and it isnt in IT).

Re:Well, what kind of IT?

[stnuke]

Me? I'd say get your degree in whatever you want - unless you're going to a top 5 school it won't matter what it's in. If you *want* to be a programmer, then you don't need college to be employed, and academic programs are turning into vocational ones under pressure from industry. Something about managers who want their new hires to show up already knowing everything about everything or work for less than you need to pay your loans. Note that this is a failure of the educational institutions for not telling industry to go to hell and industry for having managers who don't know the difference between a monkey and somebody who can learn.

Whatever you do, unless you move up the ladder, is going to be toast in 5 years or less. Count on it. Then you'll be stuck trying to learn a new skillset so that you can get a new job doing the next hot thing that will be gone in 5 years.

But somebody asking for advice? If you've got a degree or job or are mostly through, get your job, do what you can, but set yourself up to LEAVE IT AND DON'T COME BACK for after your industry collapses or shrinks. If you're just starting, do something else. The promise of CS is ash. If the technical side appeals to you, go into engineering and if the reasoning side appeals, go into math. If you're looking for something other than these, please for the love of god get your degree in something appropriate like psychology or art or english rather than creating little bastardized fields that will leave you unemployable and CS with a bad name.

Re:How would I describe the market?

[chris_mahan]

Amen!

I would add that HR automatically filters out anybody that does NOT have a 4 year degree, thereby immediately disqualifying some of the finest candidates.

I work at a fortune 500 in IT. It's so true it's sad.

Heard in a meeting this morning: "The reason why companies use EJBs is because some developers wanted to have that to put on their resumes."

It took us 1 year to fill 4 positions, and 3 are H1.