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How Will Recent Financial Downturns Affect IT Jobs?
An anonymous reader writes "So, with the financial crisis and loss of jobs everywhere, what are the chances of getting a good IT job? I'm going to graduate this year with a BS in Software Engineering majoring in Network Security. I'll be looking for a job as a penetration tester eventually, but I hear that is hard to get right out of college so I'll be looking for a job as a Junior Network Admin or similar type of job to start off in. Is there a lack of jobs in this field? I figure computers always need fixing so they have to have some sort of IT personnel on staff to maintain the core of their business. Anyone have a good insight on this issue?"
I was a new grad once. It was horrible: it took me 10 months to find my first job.
I'm sorry to have to be the one to break the bad news to you, but your grades in school don't matter anymore. What recruiters look at is your experience. Which, by definition, you don't have. So your resume ends up at the bottom of the pile.
As soon as you have some kind of job, then companies are much more willing to take you seriously. It's stupid but it's true. I make the same mistake now when I am the one hiring.
Now I'm happy to also give you some good news. You're probably not graduating until the summer. That's great. First of all, the economy will be just about to turn around (the media won't tell you, but they also didn't tell you one year ago that we were in a recession). Second, it gives you some time to add experience to your resume: internships matter a lot, volunteer for an open source project, etc.
Don't have the time? You really have two options: play by university rules and be a bland student, or stand out and go the extra mile. Guess which ones gets the job?
--
FairSoftware.net -- the community where software developers start fair businesses
The economy globally has tanked. My firm has just shed *another* 400 IT jobs. I know many people who got made redundant just before Christmas. Firms are collapsing left right and centre and those left are cutting right back to keep afloat.
Personally,I'd take pretty much any job you can get right now,IT or otherwise. It's not a time to be picky.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
As the CEO of a small IT company in the US (mostly Midwest-focused), I'd say we hire more out of experience than education. We're consultants, though, but we have helped hire full timers for our customers who want someone there manning the stations all the time.
For those in college now, GO INTERN. It doesn't matter how much you make, but how much you can mark up that portfolio. If you're graduating and can't find work, then WORK SOMEWHERE. I can't begin to tell you how many people I've interviewed who are 5-6 months out of college but aren't working anywhere, even Starbucks. The lack of showing responsibility by not doing something is a turn-off.
For us, business is way up. Clients are keeping their hardware longer, which means more maintenance work. They're getting more focused on information security (external and internal), as well as keeping what they have in tip-top shape. We're turning away work.
Here's a big part of being a successful IT employee: be mobile. Fully, if possible. Try not to sign any long term leases, and DO NOT BUY property even if mom and dad or the grandfolk offer to get you something. I took on work in LA in 2008 because they couldn't find a decent consultant locally, even paying for my flights and hotel stays. If you're mobile, your chance of getting work goes way up. Once you move, stay mobile-capable if other jobs pop up. Don't just look close to home or close to school, look everywhere.
One area that is seeing rapid growth is in health care clinics (not big hospitals). I think we field a few calls a month from possible clients who have to maintain a large infrastructure and are sick of high priced consultants. That's when we usually try to place full timers rather than work a contract out in an environment that really needs full time management of IT.
I personally would stay out of software development if you don't have any real portfolio of work done, but in terms of maintenance, the job market looks pretty reasonable in the 4 markets I monitor. It's just a matter of that dreaded experience that most college graduates have none of. It would be very hard for me to hire someone on degree alone. My last 3 hires didn't even graduate college, but are phenomenal at showing up on time, doing their job right, and giving our clients 150% of themselves when needed.
Get involved in some open source project, not just as a peripheral person but **really** get engaged and make a very useful contribution. Show that you can word with others, solve problems (the fun technical stuff), help finish off documentation (shows you can also do the boring stuff that is important) and get some references from the project leads.
What most employers really look for is the "bushy tail factor": people who are flexible, practical and can learn new stuff fast.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have a couple friends graduating this year, they are in a bad way... Last year graduates from the same school, with the same degree all had 3-4 offers and could basically pick where they wanted to live and what company they wanted to work for...
This year students are lucky if they've got 1 offer, and the offers are 30-40% below last year's offers. All the big companies have hiring freezes or are outright laying people off.
Just read an article on CNBC about how graduating in a recession will hurt your earnings potential for as much as 20 years... I'd recommend staying in school til things recover.
The good news is that there are some companies who'll see "penetration tester" on your resume and immediately hire you.
The bad news is that many of those jobs will involve creepy bosses and excessive amounts of astroglide.
For now, your best bet is to stay in school and ride out this downturn. Expect the market to be soft for the next 2-3 years. Even if you can find a job now, it is likely to not be a very good experience. With the number of people out of work now, and the number of potential employers small, those that are hiring are paying low wages for very long hours. Don't expect any on the job training these days either. Most IT departments are shrinking instead of expanding. If you get a job, you will be expected to hit the ground running.
This happens every few years - last time was in 2001 - 2003 or so. The market was down for a couple of years and grads couldn't get jobs. The smart ones stuck with school and got better or additional degrees so when the market turned they ended up with better starting salaries that will allow them to pay off their student loans sooner.
Hang in there, there will be plenty of jobs again soon enough.
IT, because it's generally had it so good over the last couple decades, has never developed the notion that you have to "pay your dues" at the beginning, meaning working crappy jobs to build experience to get a better job. Other, more competitive fields, have long had this aspect, so the idea is more familiar.
With the economy in the toilet for now and the next couple years, new IT grads have to pay their dues. Grab the best job you can, which won't be great, do well in it, and constantly look for ways to move up the ladder. The first few years will probably suck in one or several ways, but you're suffering will be rewarded later with better positions. The days of college hotshots walking into six figure jobs are over. Get a job, learn your craft, build your resume, and always watch out for your career.
Bonus advice: the days of socially inept geeks are also over. Social skills are as important as programming skills. The geek who can make friends easily, express himself clearly to non-technical people, and generally get along with everyone else, will always have an advantage over the aspie nerd who can quote machine code but doesn't know to shower every day.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
You ask if jobs are available, and of course they are, its just that every job (theoretically) goes to the most qualified person. Experience is key to that, but you don't even have to find a job to get it. I spend all kinds of time poking around on google or hackaday finding neat things to learn about. I'm a mechanical engineer but i taught myself C# recently (hey, it works) and i can write some pretty useful apps for work now. I taught myself CNC programming because i didn't want to wait to take it as a grad student (and i never ended up graduating). I spent many hours in high school learning how to use basic stamps and build an omni-directional hexapod before i even got to college. My high school was a podunk mountain school with wood shop being the most technical class, but i went out on my own and learned what i need to know.
You should do the same, whatever field it is you want to learn, go practice it as much as possible. Be able to wow interviewers with your knowledge of things that you could only have by trying it, not by hearing about it in a classroom. Of course getting a job will teach you that stuff but a lot of things can be learned at home too, before you have a job. As someone else said, even starbucks is good because it shows willingness to commit, but if you do end up there, you can still get experience at home. Hell, freshman year in college i didn't drink, so most of my friday and saturday nights were spent programming. I eventually got a good social life (yay booze!) but i learned a lot that year.
My junior year i heard about a local place that needed a mechanical engineer, and even though i hadn't graduated, all of my personal experience is what got me the job. I ended up finishing my senior year but i still needed a lot more credits, and i was so burnt out i said screw it, started full time at that job, and now have excellent pay, flexible hours, and a sweet job in general.
Now i have even more experience from what i've done at this job, but i wasn't just sitting around before that, and you should make sure you don't either.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
I worked as a pen tester a couple years ago. Some may not agree, but go for one of the Big 4 accounting firms or their sister companies. The company name is huge on resumes, you learn lots of business stuff. Knowing how to properly document, follow procedures, create repeatable tests is extremely important. You can learn this in both sides, either audit or implementation. I started in implementation. Knowing how to build something makes it much easier to take apart (pen testing). You learn how the technology is implemented and what mistakes are normally made. I went from there to auditing and pen testing. I was immediately the top "tech" star (which was sad), but I didn't know how to properly document. Audit firms are masters of documentation. From there you can jump into full on pen testing. People that don't have a rounded background are not good pen testers IMO. If you are in DC area, you have many options. Audit has sox and fisma, fiscam and a boat load of others.
In five years, we'll be out of this slump
It may take much longer than that. After 1929, the stock market didn't reach its previous high until 1954. And that was with WWII in the middle. Japan hasn't come back from their 1989 crash yet. This recession may be "L-shaped".
The really depressing analysis is that not only is this the start of the Second Great Depression, it's when we start running out of key raw materials like oil, copper, etc. Slowly, industrial civilization, which is only two centuries old, winds down. The world becomes the Rust Belt. We end up with a sustainable society in which life is nasty, brutish, and short. Probably Islamic, too; Islam does well in dysfunctional societies.
Go to grad school while you wait for the economy to turn around. In fact, you might want to go for a PhD.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Major hiring industries for the next few years, are going to be anyone, directly or indirectly, who receives a slice of the pork pie that the US government will be distributing.
Follow the news, and prepare applications for any industry that is looking for government money. If the industry gets rebuffed by the government, oh well.
If an industry gets some pork, send them your applications immediately.
Good, healthy companies are just going to ride out the next couple of years with the folks that they have, and won't be hiring.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I can't begin to tell you how many people I've interviewed who are 5-6 months out of college but aren't working anywhere, even Starbucks. The lack of showing responsibility by not doing something is a turn-off.
That's YOUR opinion.
There are folks who worked their asses off in school and decided to take a break. Which is a good thing because, I don't know about you, I wouldn't want someone who hasn't relaxed a bit; otherwise, they have a tendency to burn out.
Many of those places won't have anything to do with someone with a BS or higher because they're "over qualified".
There could be family issues that is none of your business. Just because you're an employer doesn't mean you need to know every little thing about their life.
That's the trouble with employers these days, they have all of these "shoulds" and "oughts" about what makes a good hire that's based on nothing or worse, experience based on a previous hire or two.
And the trouble is, if there's the slightest non conforming aspect of someone's work history, they're marked for life. And yet, American business wants folks who "think outside the box". No they don't. Because folks who really do are rejected out of hand because "they're irresponsible" or some other asinine label.
Experience always trumps education.
Grades are important, but only while you are competing against other recent college graduates. If a company is hiring a new IT person and has 10 recent graduates to look between, the one with the highest grades will be an easy call for an interview.
But that isn't the situation now.
Right now, we have laid off IT workers who have already had a job, sometimes years of them, and that experience (and demonstrated success at holding a job for a while) is more valuable than your schooling, and a 0.5 difference in GPA.
Someone liked them long enough to let them keep an IT job for some number of years. You, however, are an unknown factor. Thus, they are the safer bet.
They have already proven they can stick to a college degree long enough to get it (as have you). They have also proven they can be successful in a real IT environment. Thus, they are 2 for 2. You are 1 for 2.
Just get any IT job you can find, at least for now. Trade up when options are better. Don't hold out for your dream job now, or you might not get anything at all.
Hey, don't worry too much. I just graduated in December from Michigan Technological University with a 3.1, packed up a U-Haul, and moved out to NYC without a job offer. No one's heard of MTU out here, but within a week I had two really good offers, and got my salary up pretty high by having the two companies fight for me. I had two summer internships, I was the GM of a student group, and I had a student job at the sys admin place on campus. Anyway, it's not so bad. I highly recommend you pick a place that you want to live (and that has a decent local economy), move there, and start pounding the pavement. I spent 3 months applying for jobs in NYC from Michigan, and it was essentially useless. Once you're local, you're golden. Good luck!
FAs the CEO of a small IT company in the US (mostly Midwest-focused), I'd say we hire more out of experience than education. We're consultants, though, but we have helped hire full timers for our customers who want someone there manning the stations all the time.
For those in college now, GO INTERN. It doesn't matter how much you make, but how much you can mark up that portfolio. If you're graduating and can't find work, then WORK SOMEWHERE. I can't begin to tell you how many people I've interviewed who are 5-6 months out of college but aren't working anywhere, even Starbucks. The lack of showing responsibility by not doing something is a turn-off.
I did the Internship thing. Back when I was looking for my first job I was lucky, the .com bubble was still inflating so the internship helped me get a job. In this climate I don't think it will get you very far. By the time the .com bubble burst I had over 2 years of experience as a developer. It still took me months to find a crappy new job as a system administrator since the market was flooded with developers who had much more experience than I did. Every advert for developer jobs specified at least 4-5 years of experience, specified a list of MS, Cisco, SAP etc... certificates as a must-have and half of those adverts specified that people without University degrees need not apply. Everywhere in the region companies had gone belly up, others had started massive layoffs which were aggravated by a string of mergers with the resultant extra layoffs. In an economic climate like the current one, I wouldn't want to be an engineering graduate with only a diploma and an internship; even if I had a little OSS contribution to my name. Thankfully, I now have 10 years of experience which means that my CV stands a good chance of getting me to an interview even in the current economic blood bath. I do agree with you that it is better to work at even Starbucks or McDonalds than to sit around doing nothing and collecting unemployment benefits. As for experience, it is easy to harp on about business realities, how they force one to only hire experienced people. The problem with everybody only hiring only experienced people is that graduates still have to get experience somewhere, somebody has to offer entry level jobs, that's where experience begins. It is a bit farcical that governments (at least in Europe) have begun to legislate and offer tax breaks to encourage companies to offer entry level positions for the engineering graduates that the local universities are producing.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I agree that many of the positions that have been eliminated will be refilled - they have to be. But those positions will be refilled by younger, and cheaper, workers - in many cases: guest workers.
Long term, I firmly believe that the trend is down for US IT workers. Simply put: US workers are being priced out of the market. Offshore workers are much cheaper, and the jobs that can not be done offshore, will be done by guest workers, which is still significantly cheaper. Also, hiring guest workers makes it easier to offshore even more jobs.
BTW: since the positions would be re-filled anyway, Obama's $3000 per employee stimulus package is just another handout to US corporations. Obama will be praised for creating jobs.
Don't you remember? Our government was BSing about "ooooohhh...we can't know yet, etc...", while all the "oh shit! recession!" stories were popping up.
You think the economy is going to turn around mid-2009? OK, I'll stick my neck out, you're fucking insane. You sound like a conservative talk radio pundit.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this one's gonna stretch into 2010.
Oh, and for the submitter, you've got an OK chance...you're young and cheap. Salary and healthcare-wise. Don't feel so glum.
Blar.
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1. Experience: self-educate in an emerging technology in your chosen field. You have the advantage of being unbiased to legacy practices. With an emerging technology, no one has experience. In today's world of cheap hardware and open-source software, it has never been easier for motivated people to find a way to contribute. Treat the learning process as an extended interview, including your project emails and contributions.
2. People: you're already at the bottom, nowhere to go but up. Don't further handicap yourself with low expectations, reality will be happy to reduce your expectations for you. Aim as high as you can imagine and work down as necessary. Rank the top ten companies or organizations (globally) with people who are experts in your chosen field. Identify some of these people by name and learn about their career path and current projects. Find a way to contribute to similar projects. Work backwards from their social network to your social network and try to have F2F conversations with local contacts who are best-of-breed.
3. Budgets: use your F2F contacts to obtain intelligence on budgets. In a poor economy with layoffs, the remaining people often have too much work to handle. Creative volunteering and compensation ideas can get you involved in real-world projects where the experience is worth 10X the dollar value comp. It all starts and ends with people, be they HR, managers or customers. So focus on being useful and building relationships with people. The most valuable information is often very transient (e.g. time sensitive hiring opportunities) and communicated only by word of mouth.
4. Recession: some of the best engineering creations have come from highly constrained environments. If you can be successful in an environment of fiscal discipline, you will only be more successful when boom times return. The same cannot be said for those who begin careers in boom times and are shocked by their first major downturn. There is no better time to start working than now. It doesn't mean you'll find a job quickly, but you will learn much more than by staying in school (which also costs money, even if deferred).
10 years from now, business schools will have course material dedicated to the lessons of these unprecedented economic times. New grads have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to experience the kind of business environment where fortunes will be lost and won, as economic hierarchies adjust. Don't miss the excitement by hiding in school!
... you'll be arrested. I'll be looking for a job as a penetration tester
And the trouble is, if there's the slightest non conforming aspect of someone's work history, they're marked for life. And yet, American business wants folks who "think outside the box". No they don't. Because folks who really do are rejected out of hand because "they're irresponsible" or some other asinine label.
I'd like to point out "behavioral interviewing" and "personality tests" in this category too.
There are federal laws banning the use of polygraphs in interviews, but this type of thing is VERY similar.
I'm a pessimist and an introvert. This does NOT interfere with my ability to put on a professional face and be friendly to clients, but it does cause a great deal of stress when a potential job is at stake. Further, being a pessimist, while many people frown on it, has many positive qualities in a work environment, such as a propensity to properly assess and prepare for likely hurdles on a project.
This doesn't matter though, as the slightest sign of discomfort is construed as some kind of black mark.
The academic equivalent would be someone being passed up who knows their stuff but doesn't test well, while an incompetent who's good at telling people what they want to hear gets top marks.
What really irks me though is when people give you tests or as questions on internal company policy. These are things you should be told in your training or in your interview by the HR staff; you should not be chucked out of the hire process because you are being forced to guess and you guessed wrong.
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As one of the primary technical interviewers at my company, we've never been interested in grades. Rather, we're more interested in someone that can jump in and be productive quickly.
"Keeping busy is a major sign of maturity and helps the hirer decide whether or not you have a positive attitude."
It's not merely a sign of maturity, but it's a major sign of maturity. What are the other major and minor signs of maturity?
What exactly is a positive attitude? What is it's relationship to the major and minor signs of maturity and how does it relate to the bottom line of a company? Why does the hirer need help in deciding if the candidate has it?
I definitely hear that a lot from interviewers, but have also heard that a strong interest in advanced classes combined with something above a 3.0 helps a good deal
I don't suppose it has ever occurred to you that not everybody is in *your* situation? Maybe you should try reading the news? Massive layoffs announced constantly, new records of unemployment set every month. Major business failures all over the place. Record foreclosures, and so on and so on.
This might be hard for you to understand, but if *you* are employed, that does mean the entire world is employed. If you are getting interviews, it does not mean that everybody in the world is getting interviews. Understand? Probably not.
Your unverifiable, arrogant, bragging, does not change the current economic situation. And the current economic situation is easily verifiable.
BTW: I am gainfully employed myself. But I am not so stupid, uniformed, and arrogant, as to assume that because *I* am employed, then everything must be just dandy for everybody else.
It's not just you, look at the job ads. Education is nice to have, as an extra; but experience is a must.
In this economy, if you don't already have experience, you are not likely to get it.
For me, when I graduated college two and a half years ago, I went into the job market with not experience, but with code samples. If you're starting out at entry-level and wanna have a damn good chance of getting the job, you gotta have an app of some sorts that you can demonstrate to potential employers so they get a better idea of your programming style and whether you were able to apply the concepts that you learned to that said app.
The way I managed to get my code samples was through my Senior Project, in which I wrote two J2ME demo games for two different handsets (both MIDP1 and 2). One month after graduation, I interviewed for a mobile game developer and had my samples on hand to give to the employer. As a result, I was hired by them shortly thereafter and managed to hold on to that job up until early last year when I was let go. Even after that, I still had connections to the mobile industry and I was taken care of with more work up until last summer, but at least I came away with experience and contacts, something valuable in this economy. Without those code samples, God knows where I could of ended up, probably doing code for some dodgy come and go Hedge Fund, but the fact remains the same: just like artists have samples of their work, so should software engineers. said app.
Also, OP should broaden his search and not just focus on IT given the state of this dismal economy. In other words, build up your digital portfolio to showcase to employers when interviewing for whatever entry-level software engineer position matches your skills. The important thing right now is to get your foot on the door and pop your cherry with some professional experience. Best of luck to you in this fierce job market.
I prefer to think of myself as an optimistic pessimist. I see failure modes in systems and procedures. Part of my present role is to document and train in possible solutions.
With that being said, one problem I've faced in the past was never being seen as taking problems seriously. $WIDGET is down, everyone else is shouting, don't you appreciate the problem. Gee, I understand the problem, wrote the chapter on how to resolve it, and can give you a planning estimate (which is always longer than my internal estimate). I'm not freaking out because I don't feel the need to put on a show.
Oh by the way, when $SYSTEM was planned out, the stakeholders decided redundancy was too expensive. Would you like to review that decision? Learning to say that politely is still something that I have to approach carefully.
for a person to work while they were in school.
Bar need (I come from a country where University education is almost free) if you are a student your work should be to study. Anything else is an unwanted distraction.
Once you have graduated you will have plenty of time to start from the bottom, but you will have learned all the tools that you need to have a successful career.
Plenty of friends that thought were advancing their prospects by doing menial IT work eventually could not complete their education (work trumps school work any time). They remained in low level positions while people that obtained good degree grades went to obtain good jobs with better prospects.
This is not a universal rule of course, but it stands to reason to think a good education is not worth having.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.