Perceived IT skills shortage

Owen101 · 23-04-2009 8:20pm #1

Apologies if on the wrong thread here but watching the RTE 6 oclock news there this eve I got a bit p'd off. There was a whole 10 minute piece on the shortage of IT skills currently in Ireland..somewhere to the order of about 5,000 unfilled vacancies at the moment!

Is this total BS or what or just from where exactly are they getting these figures? Im thinking it must be either from agencies advertising jobs that dont exist or universities attempting to fill their college places.

I am one of last years computer science graduates and have found it difficult to get a foot in the door.Although there's jobs there its the usual need more experience, cant get experience w/o job scenario. Im sure Im but one of thousands..

Employers, could you lower your flippin' expectations slightly please and give some of the graduates a break. You never know you might actually find someone to fill some these IT vacancies...

johnnyskeleton · 23-04-2009 8:32pm

Owen101 wrote: »

Employers, could you lower your flippin' expectations slightly please and give some of the graduates a break. You never know you might actually find someone to fill some these IT vacancies...

I think the employers are perfectly entitled to require a certain skill level for a skilled job.

The problem in Ireland seems to be that we have a lot of people with low end computer science qualifications whereas these companies are looking for highly trained persons.

An IT qualification doesn't qualify someone to work in any IT job

leninbenjamin · 23-04-2009 8:34pm

tele sales or tele support or simple data entry into a PC are considered 'IT' by those who compile the stats.

KerranJast · 23-04-2009 8:36pm

Yeah theres no point in a company hiring someone for the sake of it. The problem in Ireland is that theres been a huge dropoff in graduates with high level quality degrees or experience especially in coding and design.

graduate · 23-04-2009 8:46pm

Perhaps the IT industry has a problem with its structure. Previously people might start off mostly programming after graduating and move into more customer facing roles over time. Now the routine programming type work often takes place 10000km away, but the business end of things still takes place in Ireland. There may be a gap in how people reach the customer faces roles, where experience is valuable.

MysticalRain · 23-04-2009 8:49pm

Well it's a sort of chicken and egg problem. Lots of IT graduates with little experience. Not a lot of employers willing to take them on because they only want highly experienced people and aren't willing to train them.

NewDubliner · 23-04-2009 8:54pm

MysticalRain wrote: »

Well it's a sort of chicken and egg problem. Lots of IT graduates with little experience.

Or talent...too many bluffers in the industry, not enough doers.

marblesolutions · 23-04-2009 9:14pm

I know what you mean I am a science graduate with a good honours degree in Chemistry and it is almost impossible to find a job yet I constantly hear about a Smart Economy and the need for more Science graduates. Why ?

97i9y3941 · 23-04-2009 9:16pm

leninbenjamin wrote: »

tele sales or tele support or simple data entry into a PC are considered 'IT' by those who compile the stats.

yup i often think wasteing time ringing some of them companies for support,they will tell you what you already tried to recetify the fault

Firetrap · 23-04-2009 9:18pm

Is it an issue with the sorts of courses being offered in the universities and ITs?

Webmonkey · 23-04-2009 9:18pm

I am graduating this year and I am finding it impossible to find a job. I got one interview alright, luckily they found me so I'm hoping that will work out or there will be no hope.
What kills me is they are looking for commercial experience. I've being developing websites for years now, and I consider what I do good yet no this is not enough. Obviously being part of a team and in the real world is important too but from a skills perspective it is right annoying.

They don't give anyone a chance. There are graduates coming out that are a lot better than programmers in industry that have being programming for years.

But I do agree, I wouldn't hire the majority of people that come out of computer courses but they should at least give people a chance instead of knocking them off because they have no commercial experience.

97i9y3941 · 23-04-2009 9:20pm

nope,just not enough irish are doing the courses,the goverment been ignorant blind doesnt take the following in order-

1-not everyone cant afford go to college,the grants seem to benefit the well off

2-the maths on these courses will drive you nuts

pwd · 23-04-2009 9:24pm

Computer science degrees need an overhaul to produce graduates with strong skillsets for IT jobs. No more of this "learning how to learn" wank.
There should be aptitude tests to start a course. The number of people who study IT who have sod-all aptitude for it is appalling. The number of them who come out with high honours thanks to good memories devalues the degrees as a whole.
The degrees should be harder to get into, not just based on leaving cert results. They should have content more relevant to skills people will actually use. There should be more of a technical focus in how they are assessed. There should be stricter controls against cheating.

marblesolutions · 23-04-2009 9:34pm

I don't believe the problem lies with the courses but I do believe more work experience woud benefit everyone. Employers would have the oppertunity to see what the student can do and it would make for more interesting reading on cv's. Some courses could easily lend themselves to a year out in industry.

97i9y3941 · 23-04-2009 9:35pm

marblesolutions wrote: »

I don't believe the problem lies with the courses but I do believe more work experience woud benefit everyone. Employers would have the oppertunity to see what the student can do and it would make for more interesting reading on cv's. Some courses could easily lend themselves to a year out in industry.

defo,harks back to the old days,when you see some of the older employees are the best workers

Webmonkey · 23-04-2009 9:40pm

marblesolutions wrote: »

I don't believe the problem lies with the courses but I do believe more work experience woud benefit everyone. Employers would have the oppertunity to see what the student can do and it would make for more interesting reading on cv's. Some courses could easily lend themselves to a year out in industry.

Every course should have it. On top of this, rather than having lots of exams that people can learn off (some people can cramb loads of stuff not knowing what it is, sickens me), give more full blown projects right from the begining. Make people problem solve, see the bigger picture. Think for themselves, assignments are too easy to go off and google for an answer, what a lot of people do.

Crash · 23-04-2009 9:47pm

Owen101 wrote: »

Apologies if on the wrong thread here but watching the RTE 6 oclock news there this eve I got a bit p'd off. There was a whole 10 minute piece on the shortage of IT skills currently in Ireland..somewhere to the order of about 5,000 unfilled vacancies at the moment!

Is this total BS or what or just from where exactly are they getting these figures? Im thinking it must be either from agencies advertising jobs that dont exist or universities attempting to fill their college places.

I am one of last years computer science graduates and have found it difficult to get a foot in the door.Although there's jobs there its the usual need more experience, cant get experience w/o job scenario. Im sure Im but one of thousands..

Employers, could you lower your flippin' expectations slightly please and give some of the graduates a break. You never know you might actually find someone to fill some these IT vacancies...

Part of it stems as well from the fact that many roles being advertised as graduate roles are in fact not graduate roles, but entry level 6months to a year experience. I laughed my ass off when I saw that report, having spent just shy of 6 month unemployed since coming home in September having finished in July. Jobs in IT/CS are not being filled generally because of 1)too few graduate positions existing at the moment to provide the necessary experience and 2) Employers being unrealistic about the skillset required for a position. I have numerous friends who are in well placed grad/entry level positions that required a high level to get hired, however feel completely underutilised because the skillset for the job doesn't even come close to the skillset they were expected to have when interviewed. Idiocy from all sides imo

KerranJast · 23-04-2009 9:47pm

Programming is a hard subject to cram for tbh. You either understand the methods or you dont.

Webmonkey · 23-04-2009 9:50pm

Programming isn't the only subject in computer science. People do learn programs, structures, snippets off by heart not knowing what they doing. I've seen it through my years in college.

KerranJast · 23-04-2009 9:58pm

Webmonkey wrote: »

Programming isn't the only subject in computer science. People do learn programs, structures, snippets off by heart not knowing what they doing. I've seen it through my years in college.

Sure but the main problem is the majority of recent grads have either poor grades (2nd class or below) or are from the myriad of "& computing" courses that have little to do with the needs of the industry.

Webmonkey · 23-04-2009 10:00pm

KerranJast wrote: »

Sure but the main problem is the majority of recent grads have either poor grades (2nd class or below) or are from the myriad of "& computing" courses that have little to do with the needs of the industry.

Yeah that's true... a lot of courses are well outdated by now.

weiss · 23-04-2009 10:23pm

Webmonkey wrote:

What kills me is they are looking for commercial experience. I've being developing websites for years now, and I consider what I do good yet no this is not enough. Obviously being part of a team and in the real world is important too but from a skills perspective it is right annoying.

They don't give anyone a chance. There are graduates coming out that are a lot better than programmers in industry that have being programming for years.

Could you do freelance work?

There are many websites now which offer money for work..of course you still need to be careful not to get work stolen from you, but the money is there.

Owen101 · 23-04-2009 10:37pm

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

I think the employers are perfectly entitled to require a certain skill level for a skilled job.

But not all these '5000' jobs require expert skill level surely?

Or, if they cant be filled then they must be demanding 3-5 years experience in some eccentric set of technologies. In that case, they'll probably never be filled. Why go on national news giving people the impression there's all these jobs out there waiting for people to walk into? Employers, lower your expectations.

And in light of the recession, there must be 1000s more properly skilled people out there now. To say the vacancies cant be filled just sounds ridiculous.

IMHO the IT skills shortage is a complete lie!

weiss · 23-04-2009 10:43pm

Owen101 wrote:

And in light of the recession, there must be 1000s more properly skilled people out there now. To say the vacancies cant be filled just sounds ridiculous.

IMHO the IT skills shortage is a complete lie!

Fair point, but its also fair to say that graduates need to lower their expectations too.

MysticalRain · 23-04-2009 10:48pm

I just watched the piece off the RTE website now and it's a hoot! The guy from Google basically stated in so many words that they only want to recruit from the top 200 IT graduates in the country. High standards indeed. But a company who is that choosy is always going to have a hard time finding people at that rate. Apparently their recruitment process is about eight months long which doesn't help matters either.

I would love to see how they arrived at that "5000" figure. I wonder if those journalists in RTE are adding up all the jobs listed on the top 2-3 recruitment websites in Ireland without considering the fact that a typical job might be listed on all 2-3 websites.

Owen101 · 23-04-2009 11:04pm

pwd wrote: »

There should be aptitude tests to start a course. The number of people who study IT who have sod-all aptitude for it is appalling. The number of them who come out with high honours thanks to good memories devalues the degrees as a whole.
The degrees should be harder to get into, not just based on leaving cert results. They should have content more relevant to skills people will actually use. There should be more of a technical focus in how they are assessed. There should be stricter controls against cheating.

Absolutely. At the moment it seems to be just a gravy train for the universities knowing full well half the 1st years wont finish the course.

Getting back to the point, if there are 5000 jobs out there could the govt please start working with the companies to sweeten the deal a bit (sponsored work ex. maybe) and start considering graduates or those with even some of the skills.

Id happily work at dole rate in some company if I knew I was getting valuable experience in stuff Im actually interested in. If the company felt I was no good after say 1-3 months they could say thanks but no thanks but at least Im now starting to accrue some experience.

dvpower · 23-04-2009 11:16pm

KerranJast wrote: »

Programming is a hard subject to cram for tbh. You either understand the methods or you dont.

Depends on the exam. Some of the MS certification (MCP) exams have a lot of questions that just require that you remember some syntax. Waste of time imho; I can't remember the syntax of methods that I use every day, since intellisense remembers it for me.

Crash · 23-04-2009 11:23pm

Having had friends go through the Google interview scheme, and having gone through the MS previously, Its quite interesting how the interview process itself essentially weeds out candidates. In Google its the sheer length of time and effort involved, in MS its 6 1 hour interviews for 6 different positions in 1 day.

I do remember reading something recently about how Googles interview process is in fact its biggest limiter on how fast the company can grow, as they simply can't hire fast enough.

Meh, i'm happy with my company - interviewed on the Thursday, found out the next Friday, started on the Monday after - 4 months before the grad program began

Worked out well.

LoLth · 24-04-2009 10:18am

to the guys having trouble getting work straight out of college: its the same everywhere. 12 years ago when I left college with a shiney finance degree I couldnt get a job because they all wanted 6 months experience. eventually, after almost a year, I had completely given up. interviews became something I expected to fail in because of experience shortfall and I got a suprise job in market analysis. (voluntary work in the local credit union helped a lot - Before this I had offered to work for free, just to get the experience)

4 years later, I had moved to IT and worked as the network admin for over a year. the company shut down and moved to england and I went looking for work. I was turned down for data entry jobs because I didnt have a computer based degree. eventually I got into tele-support and started working my way back up all over again.

It happens. Employers' expectations for even the most basic of IT jobs is completely out of touch with reality. Havign said that, i worked in one company where the Network Engineer was employed on the back of a CCNP and a load of experience in a routing heavy environment. Somewhere aroudn the middle of his second week he asked me (who had nothing to do with Cisco kit) to show him how to telnet to a router.....

IT , imho, should be ability driven and not just a list of certs. I had an interview two years ago where the last part was a physical test. they simulated something wrong on the network and you did what you could to find and resolve it. Really enjoyed that.

AARRRGH · 24-04-2009 11:20am

The 'vacancy' figures are taken from the various jobsites; in other words, at least 95% of the vacancies are with agencies, so most likely are duplicates or fake job adverts to attract CVs.

The main problem is most people who study computer science in college really should have picked a different subject. We are churning out people who don't really like computers, can't program, and in general are technically crap.

We have to look abroad for a lot of our employees as it is so hard to get decent, skilled people in Ireland. This isn't because people don't want to study computer science anymore, it's because most of the people we interview clearly have no interest in IT.

For example, someone who's hobby is writing little applications or working on open source projects - they are one in a million. And they're the type of people you want to hire.

AARRRGH · 24-04-2009 11:25am

pwd wrote: »

There should be stricter controls against cheating.

I agree with the rest of your post, but the above quote in particular really bothered me when I was in college.

People who were CLEARLY cheating (as in, were practically caught with their hand in the cookie jar) were allowed pass.

Drove me nuts as it devalues my qualification. And from an employers perspective, I can't trust anyone who has a degree. Maybe they're a moron who cheated? I just don't know. So I will only hire someone who has a number of references I can speak to.

Perceived IT skills shortage

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