IT is still it

"Of course not! Whoever told you that must have been joking." Was my reply to a question raised by an IT student who was deeply concerned about his employability in the future. His question really was, "Is IT going to be like nursing?"

This was not my first time to hear something like this. More than seven years ago, I was faced with a similar concern after my brother, who was among the best IT graduates in his time at Cebu Institute of Technology, chose to make a career in the pharmaceutical industry as a medical representative fearing that the IT glut may become for real and ruin his "travel ambitions." Not that I blamed him for departing from what I believed could have been a more promising career than a mouthpiece for a pharma company, he was among those who fell for the rumor of a looming IT bubble that was thought to knock the IT profession down on a colossal scale similar to the dotcom crash in Silicon Valley.

It did not happen of course, but he said he had no regrets whatsoever joining the drugs business saying that he savors every moment of his stay -- the perks, the trips and the promotion which he said is quicker than having to face the computer the whole time coding and doodling.

On another note, it's quite observable that a lot of our IT graduates end up working outside their field of discipline. And what's even more disturbing is the fact that many of our brightest graduates are not into IT. While we have been plugging that we produce the best computer professionals to employers around the world, but we have no solid campaign to encourage students to work for technology firms to show what they got in their talent chest.

Industry associations in the IT sector should try to balance its campaign to really promote IT not just the call centers which have been overly promoted. Besides, I don't even want to consider call centers as part of the IT sector as they are intrinsically contact services. And so, we should not encourage IT graduates to work in call centers unless the work is related to their study.

Going back, do we have enough jobs with the amount of IT graduates we produced yearly? The better question is, does the skills-set of our IT graduates match the needs of companies? There are thousands of IT jobs available but there is a "specialization glut." And if you ask if there would be enough employers to accommodate IT graduates who specialize in web design, the answer is no. The same is true for IT graduates who specialize in network or systems administration.

Unlike 15 years ago, web design is no longer confined to a few. With the advent of Wordpress, Googlesites and other web creation tools, the need for web developers would be lesser in the next 3 to 5 years. Network administration has fast become a DIY thing too with the availability of freeware to manage networks even by the not-so-techie. But it's not the end of the world for them. It’s just only a matter of upgrading their skills. Say, web developers should try their hands on Web 2.0 or for network administrators to master cloud computing and cloud security. What makes an IT graduate unemployable is when he or she stops learning and knowing what’s new.

The academe on its part also needs some upgrade. Hundreds of hours are spent by students learning old computer language and irrelevant tools. Hundreds of hours are wasted on learning how to create a website bereft of any notion on how it would impact a company’s image and marketing efforts. I believe the academe should be the first to know the trends and technologies currently employed by companies and from there develop a course attuned to the prevailing needs of the industry.    

Students should not only be taught how to program but to be inventive and solutions-oriented. The goal should not just stop from the idea of employment but to capitalize on their skills to become employers themselves.

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