Over the past year The IT Job Board has picked up on an underlying sentiment from IT Professionals in the market that they are either being made redundant or missing out on job opportunities to lesser qualified, less experienced candidates who are willing to work for less.
Is this really the case? Are higher skilled IT professionals just not needed or are employers sacrificing the expertise and knowledge their business needs in order to save money?
And what happens to those with more experience? Should you accept a position with a much lower salary? Are you expected to use only half your knowledge, to not be challenged and to not develop in your day to day working life?
The IT Job Board decided to find out.
You get what you pay for
According to recruitment consultants that we spoke to, employers will shell out for specific, niche skill sets such as Coldfusion or PHP5 even if it means the expense of using an agent to find the right person for the job. However a skill such as project management is much more common in the marketplace and the number of candidates on the market has rocketed since the onset of the recession.
In this situation hiring managers are faced with plenty of choice, and with budgets under scrutiny the outcome is inevitable: candidates who have the relevant skills but little or no experience will be able to do the job but will expect a lower salary. But in doing so employers could be trading off quality for cost efficiency.
However, if you speak to recent graduates, so many of them are unemployed, doing internships or working in a completely different industry just to earn a living. An article published in the Times three days ago described just how dire the situation for future graduates is looking, as an extra 80,000 students are expected to flood the market and will be competing for graduate jobs within the next three years.
Over-qualified or ageist?
From our research it seemed there were in fact two issues being unearthed here.
The first is that the recession has probably forced IT professionals to apply for jobs they may well be over-qualified for.
The second issue that has emerged when researching this topic is whether or not being ‘over-qualified’ is an excuse for companies being ageist. We had many comments in the ‘Have your Say’ section on the blog when we posted a question about this, and this has resurfaced this week.
One comment from an IT professional was: ‘I have requested feedback where I have not got an interview for a position and been told I was over-qualified. Whether there was also an undercurrent of ageism as well is difficult to judge (I don’t indicate my age on my CV but an approximation can be gathered from work history).
After 18 months still trying to get back into work I suppose I would have to say the biggest issue is in convincing recruiters. Many do not recognise my Chartered award and so an easy option for them is to opt for graduates where they at least (in theory) have an inkling of the candidate’s potential.’
Ageism became officially illegal following the introduction of new legislation in 2006, which means that there is very little evidence given that no employer would want to admit to having reservations about a candidate’s age. So the evidence we come across is primarily anecdotal and it is difficult to decipher the extent to which ageism in IT plays a part in preventing an IT pro from being employed.
Yet Stephen Lytle, Sr. Technical Recruiter, feels in many cases managers truly believe a candidate is over-qualified.
‘In my opinion, there are few things more frustrating than being told you are too good for a position. I am sure others agree, but being that I am in a position to understand the hiring managers’ point of view, I will share it with you.
‘There are a few reasons why managers will not hire overqualified candidates. The first, and essentially most important, being that overqualified candidates will be bored with the work they are doing and will jump ship to a new and better opportunity as soon as it presents itself. Getting the budget approved for a new position, sorting through resumes, interviewing candidates, extending an offer, and taking an employee on board is very time intensive. The hiring manager only wants to do this one time, so all red flags will be addressed to prevent this process from having to be repeated.
Additionally, managers feel they will be pressured to provide that employee opportunity for advancement to meet their skills and abilities. Essentially, they hired you for a specific role and want to fill that role, by promoting you they will once again have to fill that role.
Finally, it is less common but managers feel that a candidate who comes in with an abundance of experience will want to do things their way. Whether this is true or not will be determined later, but as I said, managers want to prevent challenges as much as possible.’
But surely an older worker would be more settled and reliable than a rookie looking for a leg up to the next rung on their career ladder.
The fight for a job
It appears that initial career prospects for recent IT graduates and those graduating in the near future are not that great. The recession, lack of job openings and the abundance of candidates on the market means the sheer volume of applications employers receive is enormous and varies from the very highly skilled and experienced to the novice IT worker.
So it seems graduates are not necessarily stealing your jobs but if a graduate is capable of carrying out the role, is eager to land their first job and, more importantly, will accept a lower salary, they provide strong competition for the more experienced.
But what remains unclear is whether or not hiring lower skilled IT professionals in order to scrimp on the budget is becoming a growing trend or if this is just a temporary measure until the recession passes. And even if this is just for the interim, in the long term will this have a lasting impact? Will companies compromising the level of service for cheaper labour hinder business?
But we cannot forget that there is value in taking on graduates and normally there is a place in the market for every level. However the current conditions mean we are faced with a surplus of candidates on the market and fewer jobs.
But according to The Times, the government’s aim for 50% of school leavers to continue their education to degree level, could result in the surplus of IT professionals remaining even when the market picks up again.
So I put it to you, what can be done to help IT grads find a place in the market and how can we win what could be an ongoing battle with an excess of jobseekers in the future too?
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Posted on October 23, 2009 by LeftGnome
I’ve experienced this phenomenon of hiring inexperienced grads. On the one hand I would commend firms for having an active policy of hiring grads. The talent pipeline needs to be kept primed, training tomorrows engineers and managers, etc. On the other hand I have seen a lot of positions filled by people who do not have the skills or experience to properly execute the position. In one recent case, an entire key team was staffed up with grads who had less than one year’s experience average. Even this would not be the end of the world, as long as leadership, mentoring and advice was made available. But realistically a senior person can’t mentor more than 2-4 people. I found myself mentoring 2 grads closely and a few other junior people more loosely. All of this was unofficial and unresourced – and I was a contractor!
In general this is another symptom of failing to resource IT properly. We should have a combination of grads and senior people who can mentor them, as well as senior people in all key roles to ensure the work is done properly. Anything less is a recipe for unravelling IT, increasing problems, pedalling faster and going backwards.
The root failure is the failure of IT management to convince general management of the strategic importance of IT to almost all modern businesses, especially financial sector businesses which are not much more than IT plus Sales. As long as IT is seen as a cost centre, these businesses are doomed. They need to see IT as critical to their performance and competitiveness, and hire (and retain) staff accordingly. Companies that fail to perceive this will end up on the scrapheap.