TARGETjobs IT student survey on graduate careers in IT 2012

IT Student Survey 2012 | 1© GTI Media, June 2012

TARGETjobs ITStudent Survey 2012

Copyright GTI Media 2012

2 | IT Student Survey 2012 © GTI Media, June 2012

Main findings• The majority of students decided on an IT career before starting university.• When choosing an employer, the type of job role offered is the most importantfactor, but many don’t yet know what their desired job role will be.

• Starting salary isn’t the most important factor for most students in choosing anemployer, and their expectations of what they will earn are realistic.

• Most students have only considered applying for jobs with IT or financeemployers.

• The most popular sources of information for deciding between employers areemployers’ websites and careers media such as TARGETjobs.

• Most students have limited their applications for jobs or internships to asensible number.

• Students know how important work experience is, but don’t feel there isenough being offered.

• Only 29 per cent of students report that their degree course has taught themthe technical skills they need to get the job they want.

Facts and figures

• We contacted undergraduate students from the targetjobs.co.uk database whohad told us that they were interested in working in the IT sector. 720completed the survey, which was live on the site for a three-week period inApril/May 2012.

• There was a wide variety of universities represented in the sample, with the following producing the most responses: Bath, Bristol, Cambridge,Durham, Edinburgh, Imperial College, Manchester, Oxford and Warwick.

• 38 per cent of respondents were studying computer science or closely relatedsubjects while 15 per cent were studying unrelated subjects. The remainderwere doing science and engineering degrees.

• 28 per cent of respondents were final year undergraduates and around 15 percent were first years.

Career choice

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The majority (61 per cent) had decided on an IT career before starting universitybut 21 per cent of a student sample interested in working in the sector were notsure if that’s where they would end up. These are the students that employers inthe sector need to persuade to stay in IT.

The two most important factors when choosing an employer were the job roleitself (clear leader) and the training and development on offer. Location was notconsidered a key factor.

Significantly, when asked about their preferred job role, nearly a third saidthey had not decided yet.

Nearly half saw themselves working for a IT or technology company althougha significant number were considering technical careers in finance firms.

Employers

© GTI Media, June 2012

The two places that students went first for information about IT employers wereemployers’ own websites and specialist sites and publications such asTARGETjobs IT. The campus careers service and careers fairs were the next mostpopular sources.

Respondents had a reasonable grasp of likely starting salaries with 37 per centexpecting to be paid £21k–£25k. A significant minority expected that they wouldbe paid less than £20k on graduation.

Interestingly, over 80 per cent thought that they would be moving employersin the first four years.

Jobs and internships

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We asked final year students how many jobs they had applied for. 21 per centhadn’t applied for any but the majority had applied for 1–15. 12 per cent hadapplied for more than 25.

We asked penultimate years the same question about internships, with over athird saying that they hadn’t applied for any.

But they did overwhelmingly feel that internships were either ‘very important’or ‘critically important’ in increasingly employability. Only 5 per cent believedthem to be unimportant.

Many were not confident at all of securing a job or internship in 2012. Thesewere some of the reasons they gave (in their own words):

• The competition for jobs is very tough and there are not that manyopportunities.

• Level of competition, lack of understanding as to what graduate employerswant.

• As a first year student it is difficult to get a summer placement as mostemployers are looking for second years.

• I am an international student. Employers want to hire candidates with workpermits.

Skills for work

Students studying technical disciplines were asked whether their degree hadtaught them the technical skills needed to get the job they wanted. Only 10 percent said no.

Issues, concerns and questions about a career in IT

Finally we asked respondents if they wanted to share any issues and concerns.This is a selection of responses with only small edits for language and grammar.



Many responses concerned work experience/internships, the recruitment processand equal opportunities.

Work experience/internships

• I think there should be more summer internships as this is what helped me todecide on my career path.

• Consider a few internship programmes for lower-year students.• How do you treat applicants who have little/no work experience, but have

done projects on their own time? Eg making a mobile app, contributing toopen source projects, etc?

• Why do employers look for experience knowing graduates have littleexperience in the working environment?

• Very often graduates face a problem of not having enough experience which isexpected by almost every employer today. But these employers need to realisethat only way possible to get experience is to be given a chance. Without achance or opportunity it is not possible to for fresh graduates to have theexperience they are looking for.

• The fact that, if a student does not any real working experience there shouldbe at least an option to work unpaid for a period of time, if willing to.

• The increasing need for experience for first jobs! Some people don’t get theright internship or may not have the right grade but still make a invaluablemember of a team, more should be done to help undergraduates into theirfield.

The recruitment process

• Provide more descriptive information about job roles.• State clearly which programming languages they'd prefer.• Be more open with visa requirements.• They should process applications quicker. I have several times been left to wait

for a very long time for them to come back to me.• They should all consider students who have little or no IT experience and be

disposed to employ them.• I wish the employers would also register with the careers service at the

University and inform when there is a requirement.• For software development roles, I have been told many times that companies

seek mathematicians to be programmers. However, the fact that I study Maths,and not computer science, is severely hindering my chances of getting aninternship in this sector. Why is this?

• How many graduates that they are taking every year should be mentioned inthe job adverts so that the applicants can decide to apply for it or not.

• I strongly feel that companies should always advertise placements throughUniversities, as students like myself find it hard to keep up to date with findingplacements that are not listed.

• The earlier the recruitment process can start, and the quicker they are atprogressing candidates through the recruitment process, the easier they willfind it to get top class candidates. No recruitment process should take morethan 2 months from start to finish.

• When being interviewed for Easter technology internships at banks, all thequestions I was asked were related to investment banking and nothing to dowith technology or my degree course. I thought this was unfair and a bitirrelevant as most companies say you will learn all relevant extra informationon the job.


Equal opportunities

• IT seems intimidatingly male-dominated. Events specifically for women orsimply more women featured in careers literature would be encouraging.

• Little scope for mature students who are retraining.• Expectations that new graduates are geographically flexible and able to work

away from home for extended periods. This discriminates against maturestudents.

• Be more lenient with requirements for jobs as new faces and a wide range ofpeople can benefit companies positively.

• Why do employers have a biased outlook towards international students?? Fora graduate role, they are not taking a candidate who has a work experience of2 yrs with an MNC, has a masters, a bachelors in IT, with hons. They recruitsomeone who is British, and has done a Bachelors in Arts or geography.

The content of this report is the property of GTI Media, so please ask permission if you wantto use any part of it (usually freely given) and always credit the source as the TARGETjobs ITStudent Survey 2012.

Please feel free to contact us with any observations or suggestions for next year’ssurvey.

Chris Phillips, Publishing Director, GTI [email protected]

Kirsty Drummond, IT Account [email protected]

Liz Adams, TARGETjobs IT Editor01491 828939targetjobsIT.co.uk

June 2012


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TARGETjobs IT student survey on graduate careers in IT 2012