2008 set to be a bumper year for IT graduates

by Andrew Hendry

January 21, 2008 —

Career placements for IT graduates has finally recovered
from the dot-com burst and looks set overtake the national average across all
sectors for graduate job placements.

In 2003 career placements for Australian IT graduates searching for full-time
work was at its lowest ebb; 68.1 percent compared to a national average across
all sectors of 80.1 percent.

Since then IT graduate placements have climbed to 83 percent for 2007, and
are expected to continue to rise as the demand for skilled IT workers grows,
according to the not-for-profit research and careers education body Graduate
Careers Australia (GCA).

"There were fairly low employment prospects for IT graduates, as there
was for the entire IT sector which was fairly poor for five or six years,"
said Bruce Guthrie, research manager for GCA.

According to Guthrie, IT graduates are just now coming back to a position where
their employment figures reflect the figures of graduates across all job sectors.

"For example, last year in our latest destination survey which takes place
about four months after people have finished their degrees, 83 percent of IT
graduates who wanted a full time job were in full time employment."

Those figures are still slightly off the pace of the GCA's national average
for all graduates of 84.5 percent, but are expected to continue to rise.

"They were hugely behind the national average. It has gone from 70.5 percent
in 2004, to 73.7 percent in 2005, 78.8 percent in 2006 to 83 percent last year.
So it's going in the right direction," Guthrie said.

"I would expect it to continue and certainly the projections from the
Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, as they were before the election,
also indicated a continued recovery in the demand for IT graduates and IT employers
in general."

Guthrie explained that it was important to note that these figures do not represent
the situation of IT workers in general.

"What you need to keep in mind with these figures is that they are new
graduates with varying amounts of experience, and in many cases little, if any,
experience. So it can take them a little longer to find work than somebody who
has been in the labor market for a couple of years," he said.

While experienced IT workers are always in high demand, the figures demonstrate
that the market for new IT graduates in general has not kept pace with graduate
levels across all job sectors.

"Just to give you a further flavor, in the year 2000 the employment figures
for computer science graduates was 88.2 percent when employment figures for
all graduates was 83.6 percent. So there they were over four percentage points
ahead of the national figure and following that they dropped well below before
starting their long-term recovery."

"So job prospects were in a hole and quite a deep hole. They are improving
but they haven't quite caught up to equate with the job prospects for all graduates,"
Guthrie said.

In terms of salaries, IT graduates began their careers on a median starting
salary of A$43,200 (US$37,882.20) in 2007.

"That's a baseline group, we're talking about new graduates aged less
than 25 in their first full-time job in Australia, so its people without experience
at all. Anybody with more experience would obviously attract a greater salary,"
Guthrie said.

In 2006 that figure stood at A$42,000, and in 2005 the median salary was A$39,900.
In 2003, the worst year for IT graduate placements, the median salary was A$38,000.

But despite falling just short of graduate employment levels across all sectors,
IT graduates did enjoy a slightly higher median salary of A$42,000 compared
to A$40,800 for all graduates in 2007. Simon Lynch, national director of technology
for recruitment consultancy Michael
Page International, believes that the higher salary levels of graduates
reflect a drop in IT course enrolments and an increased demand for skilled IT
workers.

"There are obviously less people who are completing IT courses and therefore
less IT graduates, so supply and demand has a definite impact on increasing
salaries for them. There's less graduates coming out, which is probably why
we're seeing a bit of an increase on the back of that," he said.

He believes burgeoning IT fields, such as unified communications, and a short
supply of skilled workers to fill positions within these emerging technologies
are contributing to this increase.

"Voice is quite pertinent at the moment; there are a lot of projects and
stuff happening within the voice space. It is definitely an area we are seeing
candidates in short supply and increased demand."

Michael Page International is anticipating a 6 percent growth in salaries for
IT professionals over the course of 2008, and Lynch doesn't forecast a return
to the poor graduate recruitment figures of 2003.

"Anyone who is in IT now and wants to be in IT is employed. There are
very few people out there who are struggling to find work, that's a fair indication
that everyone is in demand."

But he stresses that financial rewards should not be the key motivator for
IT graduates plotting their career path.

"Personally I think career development should be the key decider. For
the sake of a couple of thousand dollars in your first year as a graduate over
the career and opportunities that are going to present themselves afterwards,
I think you'd be crazy to do if for the dollars as opposed to the career development,"
he said.

"Things that haven't really been a factor five years ago are becoming
more of a factor now. Things like environmental policy, work/life balance within
the business, those sort of factors are really becoming a lot more pertinent
for the Generation Y people who are coming through now."

Computerworld Australia