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IT Careers
Current projects include:
Understanding the Future
This two-year project brings employers together with HE Careers Services to deliver an essential step change in their understanding of the IT Services industry. The industry will learn what information and contacts are needed by HE, and provide them in the most accessible way, including innovative student materials and regional events. The industry is in critical need of increased and broadened graduate intake for its future competitiveness.
This project will address misperceptions and the lack of knowledge that inhibits students from all disciplines considering the industry as a suitable career option. It will also open up the opportunities for graduates.
Partners include the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services, and the Universities of Oxford and Nottingham.
We are now well into the initial phase, with our on-line survey playing a major research role, and focus groups around the country further exploring issues raised. A report of our findings will be posted on the e-skills NTO website in the spring.
Contact: Jane Standley on or
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21st Century Women
This two-year project, starting July 2000, will increase the number of women undergraduates gaining jobs in IT Services and related careers, by improving the interaction between employers and HE. Women are severely under-represented in this sector, despite its tremendous growth and employers keenness to redress the gender imbalance.
The project will develop and deliver new, sector-wide women appealing materials, will create alumni links between students and will run women-in-the-industry, and multi-employer workshops.
The partners include IBM, Andersen Consulting, The Universities of Cambridge and Warwick, the Surrey Institute of Art & Design and the Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services (AGCAS).
Contact: Liz Stroombergen on or
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Image
This project is designed to develop a co-ordinated campaign to promote the positive aspects of careers in ICT (Information Communications Technology) occupations, to encourage more people to take up these jobs.
The current image of the ICT industries is constraining its growth. The industry needs large numbers of new employees, yet ICT is failing to attract the right calibre of recruits in the required quantities.
The particular areas to be considered within this project are why:
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Too few people are attracted into ICT careers
2.
People with the skills most valued by ICT employers fail to recognise their value in ICT
3.
The sector is wrongly perceived as boring, anti-social and nerdy
4.
The most able students typically view ICT as less attractive than law, medicine or finance
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Of students completing IT-related degrees, only 30% of women and 50% of men enter IT jobs
6.
Of students completing non-IT related degrees, only 1.3% of women and 3.36% of men enter IT jobs
7.
Women are hugely under-represented
Contact:
Anne Cantelo on or
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Broadening Recruitment
- A proposal to broaden recruitment to the ICT sector
This project is designed to provide employers with access to support and advice about effective, practical recruitment, retention and training practices to help them employ staff from non-traditional groups.
ICT industries are undergoing dramatic growth, particularly in services and in the high-tech communications and software arenas, largely driven by the internet revolution. The rate of expansion in the UK is constrained by availability of suitable skills, with traditional recruitment approaches unable to meet demand.
Employers who have never previously recruited from non-traditional groups need confidence that such individuals can be integrated into the workforce quickly, and they need access to simple route-maps identifying practical approaches to successful recruitment, retention and training in this environment. In terms of graduate recruitment, a recent survey into employer attitudes showed that, while it is usual for many larger IT companies routinely to take non-IT students, only a quarter of the SMEs were recruiting in this way. However, evidence from SMEs who do recruit non-IT graduates shows that the reality can be in fact the opposite, if managed well. This project will consider broadening recruitment from a wide variety of backgrounds.
This project will draw on and spread good practice. Through this initiative, a consortium of the NTOs with primary responsibilities across the ICT arena, will work together to address the situation.
Contact:
Astrid Flowers on or
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Work Experience
- A proposal to increase work experience in the ICT sector
This project is designed to increase the number and quality of ICT-based work experience placements.
The single biggest inhibitor to growth in the ICT industries is the lack of suitably skilled staff. Employers consistently report that new employees are unable to 'hit the ground running' due to lack of previous work experience, and express strong desire for potential recruits to be able to demonstrate application of skills in a work environment. The benefits of work experience is directly reflected by the fact that 81% of graduates with prior work experience secure career jobs, as compared to only 66% of those without.
This issue is not unique to ICT - indeed, this project draws on many studies documenting the benefits of Work Experience for students and employers, and which also describe the barriers to employer involvement.
However, the effect on the ICT industries is especially severe given the explosive expansion of the sector and the dynamic nature of the work.
Contact:
Andrew Palmer on or
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Fastpath
Fastpath is a project funded under the One North East Skills Development Fund.
The project aims to improve graduate access to high growth, knowledge-based industry, by establishing, for the first time in the North East, an employer-led, sectoral approach to the graduate employment needs of the IT industry.
It will help small and medium sized enterprises broaden their access to the graduate labour market, by working directly with companies to help them overcome inhibitors to graduate employment.
Finally it will facilitate collaboration between companies and the Universities of the NE in order to produce graduates able to support the regions growth in the electronic economy.
The project is partnered by IBM and Compaq, TNL (Hexham), The University of Northumbria at Newcastle, Universities for the North East (Knowledge House), The E-Business Foundation and other regional representatives from industry and private and public education and training establishments.
The research phase of the project runs until the end of March 2001 with the remainder of the project (implementation and evaluation) running through to February 2002.
Contact:
Andrew Palmer on or
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