Survey: Training, Education Needed to Secure IT Job

The survey of Canadian IT employees was undertaken by Statistics Canada
on behalf of Human Resources Development Canada and Software Human
Resource Council (SHRC). It was conducted in the fall of 2000. This is
the second part of the study. The first part, an employer survey, was
released earlier this year.

Paul Swinwood, Ottawa-based president of the SHRC, said the pilot survey
results reinforced a point his organization has stated all along: that
both training and education are needed to become gainfully employed in
the IT sector.

"What we are finding is that these people who have taken a six-week Java
course are still having difficulty finding employment, because they have
nothing with which to add to it," he said. "So it's the total package,
it's the total skill that matters, and it's not just learning a tool."

Swinwood used the analogy that a person with a skill set in the
automotive industry cannot just take a six-week course in C++ and be
expected to assist in writing the air traffic control system for
Transport Canada -- making the point that our knowledge-based economy
requires both training and education. The survey focused on three
industries, including insurance companies in Ontario, architecture,
engineering and related services in Quebec, and computer systems design
and related services across the country. IT workers employed at
locations that were previously polled for the employer survey were
contacted. Of that sampling, 1,454 employees returned questionnaires
that were partially or fully completed.

According to the survey, the demographics for IT employees from the
three industries varied greatly from each other, as well as from the
labour force as a whole. Across the country in the computer systems
design and related services group, approximately 56 per cent of
employees were under the age of 35. This varied from the insurance
carriers industry in Ontario, where approximately 36 per cent of
employees were under the age of 35, while the architectural, engineering
and related services industry was similar with approximately 67 per cent
of the workers under 35 years old. In the labour force as a whole in
2001, 39 per cent were under the age of 35.

Swinwood said students interested in entering the IT sector need to
determine where they want to work in the field, because it will evolve
quickly.

"They (students) will need a grounding in the 'why' of information
technology, not necessarily the 'what', specifically the Java and C++,
because these change on an 18-month basis," he said. "But if you don't
have a knowledge of the 'why' of how things happen and why things
happen, then you won't be able to pick up the new technology."

The survey also found: the average tenure for computer programmers in
their current positions ranged from 3.5 to 4.5 years, as opposed to an
average of just under eight years for the labour force as a whole;
one-third of IT employees' first jobs after completing their education
was not in the IT field; word-of-mouth recruitment was the most-used
method for finding an IT position; and immigrants make up 20 to 30 per
cent of the IT workforce in the three industries surveyed.

The survey also found that in the computer system design area, 78 per
cent of the IT employees are male, while only 22 per cent are female. In
the insurance carriers sector, 64 per cent are male, while 36 per cent
are female. In the architectural and engineering area, the results found
87 per cent of employees were male, and 13 per cent were female.

A national survey of IT occupations will begin next week and will sample
35,000 employees at 23,000 companies in six different sectors, that will
include both the federal and provincial governments. Results from the
nation-wide survey should become available in about a year's time,
Swinwood said. Visit the SHRC Web site at http://www.shrc.ca for the
full report on the employee survey.