Seven of them. It’s probably a problem with technical degrees in general, not just IT.
5 thoughts on “Skills That Recent IT Grads Are Lacking”
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Seven of them. It’s probably a problem with technical degrees in general, not just IT.
Comments are closed.
As several of the comments accurately noted, the managers want entry level people to have 10 years of experience.
Two of those seven I’m sure are wanted by business, but I think the businesses wanting them are asking a bit much.
1) Experience with Enterprise Systems Integration
Um, we’re talking about new grads. New means lack of experience. Further, what business means by Enterprise Systems is often not something simply simulated in a classroom environment. Could one do it? Sure. When I was at LM, we had a program with a local college that allowed their students to work in our enterprise environment. Still, the opportunities were rare, and even then, the last thing we’d let them do is handle the system integration. I think these businesses should stick with consultants for these tasks rather then new hires.
2) Familiarity with Legacy Systems
Indeed, this probably goes beyond just IT. But again, new grads probably have little experience with legacy systems. And just because 20 years ago, the company developed in nothing but Cobol, doesn’t mean today’s solutions should still rely on Cobol. I say this because I went into a company that had this situation. They still employed one of their legacy Cobol developers and had him develop a new enterprise application for a new business field. Not only did I find serious flaws (flaws costing the company $13 million in unrealized revenue) but the Cobol developer couldn’t fix them without rewriting everything. Here’s the deal, I and a friend could rewrite everything in VBA (which isn’t very powerful, it’s just what we decided to use to integrate with Office) and SQL. We did so in a week, without needing to look at the Cobol code. We simply needed to understand the tasks. The company wanted us to use Cobol, but that’s because they were stuck in the past, and it was costing them lots of money. Indeed, they nearly went bankrupt.
The first skill mentioned I think is the most critical lacking. I’ve seen IT folks, who rarely venture from the front of their monitor. In one project, I was even asked to develop something, and the people were shocked when I asked to see the process that the application would replace. When I was done, they got a product that simply automated tasks, while having the exact same input and output they were previously accustomed to using.
Alas, I was so disappointed with the IT field and the stupidity that abounds, I was happy to go back to hardware.
It’s much worse than that.
Wanted: programming skills.
Unit testing, OO design, refactoring, version control, incremental development.
Indeed, by my count, at least 5 of the 7 skills are largely a by-product of age and are unlikely to be effectively inculcated by education alone.
I can’t understand how anyone can in the business world without a fundamental understanding of accounting. On the other hand, I’ve never known a job where you didn’t have to learn something.
It is fun to feel superior when someone asks for ten years of experience in a technology that’s two years old.
I don’t think most people have a clue… I was going to say …about what they want, but it seems to stand on it’s own.