Research shows growing awareness of need to train IT staff as
vacancies stay unfilled. Bill Goodwin reports on changes in
employment strategy
Employers have begun to hire significantly more graduates to
fill their IT and e-commerce vacancies in what amounts to a change
in direction for many IT departments.
During 1999, the number of graduates entering the IT profession
rose by an estimated 50% to around 5,000 graduates, the largest
increase in graduate recruitment for a decade.
Over the next few years industry observers expect the number of
graduates entering the profession to grow just as rapidly, as
competition for e-commerce and Internet skills intensifies.
The growing importance of graduates for IT employers represents
a marked shift in policy for companies that until now, have
preferred to recruit experienced staff, rather than inexperienced
graduates with the heavy training investment that demands.
The trend has been highlighted in research by the Alliance for
Information Systems Skills, an umbrella group of employers and
training organisations, which has been made available exclusively
to Computer Weekly.
Based on a survey of 200 graduate recruiting companies, the
research reveals that last year the number of graduates recruited
grew to around a third of all IT practitioners taken on.
The sharp upturn is partly a result of employers seeking
alternative sources of labour as IT vacancies become harder to
fill. But it also reflects a growing awareness among employers of
the need to train IT staff.
Last year, a Government working party, chaired by EDS director
Alan Stevens, was instrumental in highlighting the crucial
importance of training graduates, if Britain is to beat its IT
skills crisis.
The report has encouraged employers to investigate schemes like
the graduate apprentice programme, which is helping companies like
EDS turn raw graduates into experienced employees.
"People have begun to take their strategy for recruiting people
for IT work more seriously. The Stevens strategy group report has
got people thinking," said Matthew Dixon, director of research and
strategy at the IT National Training Organis-ation.
And yet, there is still a long way to go before companies are
employing graduates at the rate they did in the 1980's and early
1990's, says Philip Virgo, strategic advisor to the Institute for
the Management of Information Systems.
Graduate recruitment has nose-dived from an all-time high in the
late 1980s. The growth of outsourcing in the 1990s has ensured
that, until now, demand has shown few signs of recovering.
Even today, the proportion of graduates entering the IT
profession is still way below the proportion experts believe is
necessary to keep pace with demand. As a result, says Virgo, the
trend to recruit more graduates can only continue.
"This year should see a further sharp increase in the number of
graduates going into IT. But a lot will be going directly into
e-commerce posts rather than traditional IT posts. "E-procurement
will be the biggest area along with network skills and the skills
needed for marketing e-commerce," Virgo says.