By Andy McCue, 4 January 2007 14:40
NEWS
Graduates entering the workplace lack basic skills such as writing and arithmetic, and leave university with poor business awareness, according to CIOs.
A third of silicon.com's 12-person CIO Jury IT user panel said they have had problems with the quality and quantity of university leavers when recruiting graduates and a separate report this week revealed graduates from IT courses have the highest rate of unemployment across all degree subjects.
Paul Broome, IT director at 192.com, complained about a lack of technical knowledge among IT graduates today.
He said: "Too many know nothing about the basics and therefore have feet of clay. If you never learnt a low-level language you won't understand string and other concepts fully and if you don't understand how a gate opens and closes in silicon as the bits pass through you'll never fully grasp computers."
Others noted a lack of more basic all-round skills in many new graduates. Neil Harvey, head of IT and accommodation at the Food Standards Agency, said: "My impression from dealing with younger colleagues today is that notable numbers of them lack basic good mental arithmetic, spelling and grammar abilities. It also seems to be regarded as an 'old-fashioned' standard - after all, we have spell-checkers and calculators, don't we?"
Murray Bain, IT director at NHS Direct, said graduate job candidates often lack business awareness and a holistic view to IT as a support function to the rest of the business.
Luke Mellors, IT director at Expotel, said experience is a better indication of quality than any qualifications.
He said: "Individuals without work experience often lack key troubleshooting and environment skills needed to perform even the most basic IT jobs. I look for experience prior to education and even certification as it is the only true indicator that someone can do the job. It's harsh reality but a reality and necessity none the less."
The quality of graduates also varies across different universities. Steve Clarke, head of internal computing at AOL UK, said when he recruited for a trainee position at a previous company, the quality of candidates coming from "new" universities in London was poor, with basic language difficulties, a lack of technical knowledge and an absence of preparation common.
Clarke said: "In the end we abandoned our search because we couldn't find the right calibre candidate. Later we worked directly with the 'older' universities and that enabled us to recruit successfully."
But not everyone had bad things to say about the quality of UK graduates. Graham Yellowley, director of technology at investment bank Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International, said: "We have recruited graduates the last couple of years and have been very pleased with their knowledge and attitude."
Richard Steel, CIO at the London Borough of Newham, said: "We tend to develop relationships with undergraduates early, through work experience programmes, or similar, which has great benefits all round. Technical ability is rarely a problem but candidates' ability to write effectively remains a problem in all recruitment."
Rorie Devine, CTO at Betfair, added: "We have found some very talented and committed graduates."
Today's CIO Jury was...
Murray Bain, IT director, NHS Direct
Alastair Behenna, CIO, Harvey Nash
Paul Broome, IT director, 192.com
Steve Clarke, head of internal computing, AOL UK
Rorie Devine, CTO, Betfair
Neil Harvey, head of IT and accommodation, Food Standards Agency
John Keeling, director of computer services, John Lewis
Luke Mellors, IT director, Expotel
Colin Moore, head of IS, Department for Education and Skills
Richard Steel, CIO, London Borough of Newham
Ted Woodhouse, director of IT strategy, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Graham Yellowley, director of technology, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International
Comments
There are 14 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Most CIO's here on the east coast don't even know how to defrag their own hard drives and are just paper certificate holders with no real life hardware experience.
So it seems the road goes both ways on this one.
2. Christopher Quinton
We always try and recruit graduates with Maths, Physics or Chemistry degrees - with a 2.1 or above.
Those with a good Maths-based degree generally have sound problem-solving skills, which is the most important skill required of a programmer. Teaching them to program is relatively easy after that.
3. Roger Ash
Ironic isn't it? While graduates can't get jobs because of a lack of business awareness and experience, those with such qualities can't get jobs because they're "too old".
4. anonymous
and CIOs are too picky.
I do remember after gradutation how many times I was turned down because
of "lack of experience".
To this day I still wonder how I was supposed to gain some experience without getting a job.
5. Ian Savell
You can teach IT to a graduate but you can't teach basic skills to an IT guy...
I agree with Christopher Quinton. First look for someone who has a good brain and learning ability as shown by a good degree in a "hard" subject, preferably one that is real-world based and with relevance to your target market. You'll probably find they already have good IT skills because they used them to get their degree. They are also receptive to training and well motivated.
My experience is that a lot of young people choose IT at school because they don't do well at other subjects and like to play with computers. They then go on to get mediocre degrees from low grade city universities and unemployment beckons.
6. anonymous
This does not surprise me one bit. I deal daily with "postgraduate" students, whose knowledge of basic grammar and relatively simple mathematics is quite atrocious. I mischievously set them a problem that I had set for 1st year undergraduates in the 1980s (changing the numbers, but essentially the same question). Today's students made a complete Horlicks of it; earlier students managed OK. Rising school standards? Ha ha.
7. anonymous
I work in education as a course coordinator and lecturer. The current standard of maths and English leaving GCSE to follow engineering is apalling. I find that the standard I studied at age 12 (I'm nearly retired now!) was higher than that taught to current 16 year olds and this is entirely due to the constant meddling in education by bad governments and education ministers trying to justify their jobs, but the introduction of 'modern' methods of testing. I have nothing good to say about current secondary school education. It is even worse in Wales, where a hidden agenda of promoting the Welsh language is depriving education of vital resources and talent.
8. David Bowler
Has anyone ever studied whether poor grammar and spelling in one's own first language is correlated with poor programming and software development skills? One would expect a connection, given the attention to detail, logical consistency, and accuracy required in both cases.
Perhaps a PhD topic for someone out there?
9. Paul W
A comparison of salaries offered by the same organisations might make more interesting reading. Some HR departments really do believe that “money isn’t everything” whereas decent Maths graduates tend to be able to work out for themselves that their loans will not pay themselves off.
10. Mike F
CIOs lack basic technical skills, hence the reason for their poor software purchasing decisions that have lead to a ubiquitous corporate IT infrastructure of extremely poor quality and high unreliability. The question is not why college students shun IT, it's why would anyone want to be saddled with 7x24 on-call responsibility to support the IT mess made by the CIOs.
11. Richard Sarson
When I was young, computers didn't exist, so we learnt about business. Then, when computers did arrive in late '50s, we applied them as tools to business tasks, which we understood. And what we implemented tended to work.
The trouble started, when IT people got fancy ideas about their own cleverness, and when universities encouraged their arrogance with so-called "computer science" degrees. IT became divorced from real life. Since then, little has worked properly.
It is nice to see the CIOs realise this at last. Let's hope that academia too learns the error of its ways, and learns to produce useful graduates, not long-haired techies.
12. Rob H
The issue of poor grammar, spelling, business and math’s skills are unrelated to IT.
It affects every area. Companies complain every year about this in one variation or another.
I would hardly call these CIO’s UK top IT chiefs; maybe they were the only ones who weren't too busy to spend time on this issue.
Companies/ senior management want oven ready employees at the cheapest prices and then complain about the quality. They want PhD holders so that they can impress the customers. I'm surprised they are even bothered since they are more interested in sourcing overseas, or is that that route has turned out not to be as fruitful for their own bonuses as they hoped. The UK has an appalling management culture, the answers given by CIO’s is just an example.
IT has become one of the most politicized and discriminating areas to work in. It has become the “old stuck in it ways” model that has labeled its contemporary and more traditional industries that IT has originally sought to avoid.
Being a good problem solver does not depend on math’s or chemistry degrees. It depends on people and the company’s definition of problem solving.
Ask a room full of people who are problem solvers and most will put their hands up – see? 99.9% of people are problem solvers; they have a testing model called life!
Ask the same people who are innovators and count the hands put up. That’s what’s you should be looking at.
When IT becomes a more passionate and innovative place to work, then you will get better skilled employees rather than your shrink wrapped rubbish you keep calling cost-effective.
13. Howard Roscoe
I've been involved in some interviewing of late for software developers and we've had graduate developers applying who have allegedly attained 1st class degress from reasonabley well known universities but didn't know about basic object oOriented principles ( encapsulation etc) we've found that the level of degree doesn't appear to be an indicator of actual ability.
However, in agreement with a previous poster, we have recently employed a physics graduate and a maths graduate who are doing very well.
14. Nick
While I do agree that not being able to communicate in an articulate manner is a barrier to functioning in a business, most of the problems I see are related to technical people not thinking problems through and just charging straight in. Common sense and an interest in how the business functions are important qualities that should not be overlooked. As for business knowledge, who is a worse employee: a graduate with no experience, or someone who has been in the job for 10 years and does not care to know?