IT Graduates Not "Well-Trained, Ready-To-Go" 609
coondoggie writes "There is a disconnect between students getting high-tech degrees and what employers are looking for in those graduates. Employers agree that colleges and universities need to provide their students with the essential skills required to run IT departments, yet only 8% of hiring managers would rate IT graduates hired as 'well-trained, ready-to-go,' according to a survey of 376 organizations that are members of the IBM user group Share and Database Trends and Applications subscribers."
Of course graduates lack what IT managers want (Score:5, Interesting)
No one ever graduated with the wide range of expert-level skills and the absurd amount of experience required. IT employers want candidates to know everything under the sun, and to have known those skills at least since they were created. For example, I remember seeing a job post 10 years ago that required 20 years of Java... do the math.
IT managers need to get real. The chances that they'll actually find a candidate with real expertise in PHP, RoR, Python, MySQL, Oracle, Apache, Cisco, JavaScript, jQuery, UI/UX, Photoshop, and Flash is pretty slim (yes, I saw that just the other day).
Re:Who's suprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember:
1) you get a BA/BS and you think you know something
2) you get a MS/MA and realize you know nothing
3) you get a PhD and realize that nobody else knows anything either -- and it's all ok; we shall muddle on together.
I fail to see why business should expect new graduates to be ready to work; at best when I review resumes I'm looking for someone who's ready to learn with solid abilities to analyze problems. A spark of creativity is a bonus too.
Re:Of course graduates lack what IT managers want (Score:2, Interesting)
To use the car analogy, it would be like posting an auto mechanic position that specifies, "must have real experience with Breaks, Transmission, Steering, Engines, Air Filters, Air Conditioning, Fuel Filters, Suspension, Radiators, Stereos, and Upholstery." It would be reasonable to expect an auto mechanic to be familiar with all of those systems. Similarly, it's reasonable to expect IT professionals to be familiar with a long string of technologies.
The trick, I find, is to understand that people can gain that experience in a variety of different ways, and not to expect people who have that kind of experience to have written books on the subject. Those lists of technologies indicate the need for a generalist, rather than a specialist. And that's where the miscommunication usually occurs. Those IT managers aren't seeking for a specialist in each of those technologies. Rather, they're describing their environment, and saying 'we need somebody who can function in this environment with these technologies'.
Re:It's Called 'Experience'! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a senior developer at one of the world's biggest software companies. The only reason I didn't move to management is because I want to continue writing code. I dropped out of college in the middle of my second year.
A degree certainly helps you get a job, and skips you past a few of the bottom rungs, but after a certain point talent and experience are all that matters. Its true that without a degree I had to work my way from tech support -> sysadmin -> software qa -> software development, and my friends who stuck with schol went straight to software development. However when I finally got to write code for a living I was already considered mid-level, and they were junior devs, and now ten years into the field we're all about at the same place.
Maybe my path wouldn't work for most people, but "you will die penniless and alone if you don't go to college" scare tactics just annoy me.
Re:It's a good disconnect (Score:4, Interesting)
Sound advice. The requirements you listed are pretty universal throughout the job market, no matter what the industry. However, the issue here is that employers are looking seemless transition from school to work. This is a somewhat unreasonable desire because the people who have the characteristics you list probably could find work without additional education. That leaves everybody else. If you ran a school, could you practically train everyone for all the junior level opportunities offered? Probably not, as the job market is too diverse.
We could argue about the educational process but for me it boils down to the tortoise/hare race. Educating students on technical specifics works well in the short run but has limited shelf life. Educating on generalities lasts a life time. It is up to the student to transfer the generalities to specifics. Those who do that, do well. Ever wonder why those with degrees form the minority of the workforce but run the majority of companies? The degree must be adding value somewhere.
Re:It's Called 'Experience'! (Score:4, Interesting)
That's definitely an issue. A shocking number of employers want to have a person with both a degree and experience, but good luck getting experience without having to volunteer. If you look at the job postings for jobs it's more or less impossible to find any that are listed without requiring several years of relevant experience.
It's also a compelling reason not to have work study positions in college. I remember when I was in college virtually all the jobs on campus were exclusives for work study students, and it was in the middle of nowhere so good luck getting a job off campus without a car, at which point you'd have to work a ton of hours just to be able to afford to work. But, without a job during the school year, it's that much harder to get the experience needed to be able to land a job after college without volunteering. Which if you didn't have extensive financial aid you probably can't afford to do anyways.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's Called 'Experience'! (Score:5, Interesting)
Wholeheartedly agree.. Not long ago, I had to call the HR department out in a serious fashion. I was recruiting for a couple of Developers.. HR field the CVs, and pass them on. I ended up with a pile, and in that pile were just a couple that looked vaguely interesting, but on interview turned out not to have the goods. Shortly afterwards, I got a few calls from candidates who were asking if their applications had been received (which to me, they hadn't, and over the phone, they seemed pretty good fits).. I went and asked HR where these applications were, and was told that they'd been 'Pre-Filtered' through HR's own internal process for applicability for the role. After yanking out the ones they'd 'filtered out', I discovered several that were pretty much an exact fit. HR just didn't know the words that actually said what the experience was, so discounted them entirely, rather than leave the judgement call to someone who knew what was going on.
Needless to say, I hit the roof with them for wasting my time. I went on to hire a couple of those that HR had rejected.
Re:It's Called 'Experience'! (Score:5, Interesting)
It is actually more complicated than that. Any company should be ideally run as three companies. Company 1 owns all the capital assets plus pays management, company 2 the business contracts and company 3 manages and pays the staff. Company 2 is the company that actually trades, and rents the assets and contracts management from company 1 and contracts the staff from company 3 which also contracts management from company 1.
You should be able to guess why it is structured in that manner. If contracts go bad, company 2 goes bankrupt but all of the assets are retained in company 1. Company 3 is kept in survival mode only, barely able to meet current employee contractual conditions let alone long term ones, those unpaid long term obligations actually become a bonus for company 1 when all the staff are dumped. All profits are constantly siphoned off from company 2 and 3, in building rentals and management fees so if anything goes wrong the companies are simply wound up with minimum loses to management. Sometimes (far to often) management just let's debt build up in company 2 and 3 until they collapse and then walks away with all the profits in company 1. Interesting side note, if the employees are unionised, the union has the funds to pursue company 1 to recover the employees lost pay, no union and the employees are screwed (mortgages and credit cards ensure they have no means to pursue company 1), another reason why companies hate unions.
Back on topic there is a major difference between trade schools and universities. If you want staff you can immediately employ trade schools are the only way to go. If you want employees with a broad knowledge and research skills, that you need to train, universities are the way to go. If you want the best employee pick the ones who do both in either order, university and trade schools for certification.
Re:It's a good disconnect (Score:2, Interesting)
Most CS programs in the US do have a course on functional specs. Its generally called something along the line of "Software Design and Documentation", it is normally take the last semester of their senior year. It usually an overview course that covers basic software design, touches on source control, bug tracking, functional specs, etc.
I also wouldn't consider taking a month to come up to speed on a new programming language a long time. It takes time to learn a new language, especially its nuances. Take someone coming from Java to C#. There a lot of significant differences between the languages. On the surface they look similar, until you start getting into events, delegates, LINQ, the asynch programming model, properties, etc. These take time to learn how to use effectively.
Not to mention, every place I've worked has had a different way of doing things, different source control systems, bug tracking, development processes, release processes. There are gaps in the current education, but due to the lack of any sort of standardization on the part of the industry I wouldn't expect any college grad to be able to hit the ground running. Even for experienced hires I allocated 1-2 months for them to come up to speed.