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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.
If it was me, I'd tell prospective students that prospects are really bleak, like north of England bleak. That way, they'd pick another field, the shortage of new recruits would continue, and wages might start to go up again.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
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.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
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
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...
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.
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.
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.