IT Graduates Not "Well-Trained, Ready-To-Go" [ Edited ]

[walterbyrd]

Sunday February 27 

> "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."

http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/02/27/1530247/IT-Graduates-Not-Well-Trained-Ready-To-Go

[idm]

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walterbyrd wrote:

Sunday February 27 

> "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."

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News Flash to Employers.... University is NOT trade school nor vocational school. There was a time not so long ago when employers invested in their employees, including new hires, through training. Fortunately, my current employer is enlightened and provides a six-month on-the-job paid training programme for their client-facing technical support employees.

[pitz]

a)  How many businesses actually hire new grads to 'run' IT departments?

b)  How can businesses make this claim when their HR people are deluged by resumes, or simply screen most of the good ones out for various reasons?

c)  Why would anyone with decent managerial talent fight their way to get into IT, when its dominated by low salaries and H1-Bs? 

My personal experience has been that managers these days are pretty childish generally speaking when it comes to skills.  They want someone who is 100% up to speed on their own internal proprietary products (see a previous post of mine where a MSFT recruiter called me up and asked me if I had used internal MSFT proprietary tools), but don't want to train, or even let anyone mentor someone in the organization. 

And no CS program in the entire country will teach proprietary DBMS such as Oracle, or ERP such as SAP.  They simply don't have time, and the stuff really isn't all that difficult if one has a good CS background and 6 months worth of SAP or Oracle coursework and practical experience. 

[nbb7304]

I don't think they mean they expect the grads will be running the IT department; it's just phrased badly.  But the basic problem is right here:

"In a new survey of 376 employers, a majority report that they depend on the educational sector—universities and colleges—to provide graduates with specific IT skills in enterprise programming languages and mainframe administration skills, as well as business skills such as problem-solving and communications abilities."

Why would they expect that?  It's tempting to believe they don't really expect that and the whole thing is a lie to excuse hiring temporary workers, but I think utter incompetence on the part of the employers is also a possible factor. 

Problem solving is a general sort of thing and I'd hope any CS, SE, or other IT graduate would be able to do it.  Communications abilities is general, but communications in a business setting is different than in a school, and it's not reasonable to expect graduates to make the transition seamlessly on day 1.

Enterprise programming languages?  You can expect a SE or CS graduate to know how to program, in at least one language.  That's it.  You don't get the languages of your choice, because you can't order up IT grads from your local U like cheeseburgers (or like hoapres orders up Java architects).

Mainframe administration skills.... no, I changed my mind.  It is malice.  No one could be this stupid.

[jbt52]

Unfortunately, i think this is the case with most degrees and professions. the real test is in internships, volunteering at appropriate places and getting specialied certs. i mean, name one career where you just get a degree than go right into working in the field?

[hoapres]

>> name one career.

1.  IT is not a career but a throw away job.

2.  Doctors and lawyers for the most part don't work at minimum wage.

[walterbyrd]

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nbb7304 wrote

Mainframe administration skills.... no, I changed my mind.  It is malice.  No one could be this stupid.

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Consider the source.

> according to a survey of 376 organizations that are members of the IBM user group

[swu]

What is a "throw away job"? Anyone think being a dentist is a good profession?

[walterbyrd]

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idm wrote:

There was a time not so long ago when employers invested in their employees, including new hires, through training.

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It is simply not cost efficient to train your employees for their next job. An employer could spend thousands training somebody, and that person might leave the day after his/her training is complete.

A visa worker is a different situation. You know you have a visa worker for, at least three, and probably, six years. It's worth training a visa worker. Even after the six years, the visa will probably stay on with a green card, or go back to his/her home country, and work for your company's division over there.

A visa worker only needs a tech degree. A US worker needs to be thoughly experienced in each, and every, product, and technology that you use. US techies are notorious job hoppers. Money spent training US techies, is just money that you are donating to your competition.Training US workers is even worse than throwing your money away.

[acp19809]

I'm sure the CEO just burst forth from Wharton or Harvard Business school ready to hit the ground running at 23.