How Will Recent Financial Downturns Affect IT Jobs? 372
An anonymous reader writes "So, with the financial crisis and loss of jobs everywhere, what are the chances of getting a good IT job? I'm going to graduate this year with a BS in Software Engineering majoring in Network Security. I'll be looking for a job as a penetration tester eventually, but I hear that is hard to get right out of college so I'll be looking for a job as a Junior Network Admin or similar type of job to start off in. Is there a lack of jobs in this field? I figure computers always need fixing so they have to have some sort of IT personnel on staff to maintain the core of their business. Anyone have a good insight on this issue?"
Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:5, Informative)
I was a new grad once. It was horrible: it took me 10 months to find my first job.
I'm sorry to have to be the one to break the bad news to you, but your grades in school don't matter anymore. What recruiters look at is your experience. Which, by definition, you don't have. So your resume ends up at the bottom of the pile.
As soon as you have some kind of job, then companies are much more willing to take you seriously. It's stupid but it's true. I make the same mistake now when I am the one hiring.
Now I'm happy to also give you some good news. You're probably not graduating until the summer. That's great. First of all, the economy will be just about to turn around (the media won't tell you, but they also didn't tell you one year ago that we were in a recession). Second, it gives you some time to add experience to your resume: internships matter a lot, volunteer for an open source project, etc.
Don't have the time? You really have two options: play by university rules and be a bland student, or stand out and go the extra mile. Guess which ones gets the job?
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FairSoftware.net [fairsoftware.net] -- the community where software developers start fair businesses
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:2, Informative)
Agreed. The best time to get experience is while you're in school. If you have none when you graduate you'll have a BS and an internship earning very little. Even if you have to stay in school another semester consider getting a good internship (perhaps full-time) to get some experience under your belt. If your resume shows a full-time internship, it will definitely stand out amongst the others who had a part-time one.
Sorry but... (Score:5, Informative)
Personally,I'd take pretty much any job you can get right now,IT or otherwise. It's not a time to be picky.
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:5, Informative)
During last year of high school I also started working lightly during regular school months and it's really paid off. Two years into college now and I've already got a few years of real-world experience under my belt. When I get out of college
Seriously, any still-schooling people otu there reading this. GET A FUCKING JOB because grades DO NOT MATTER!
not specific to "network admin" (Score:4, Informative)
I have a couple friends graduating this year, they are in a bad way... Last year graduates from the same school, with the same degree all had 3-4 offers and could basically pick where they wanted to live and what company they wanted to work for...
This year students are lucky if they've got 1 offer, and the offers are 30-40% below last year's offers. All the big companies have hiring freezes or are outright laying people off.
Just read an article on CNBC about how graduating in a recession will hurt your earnings potential for as much as 20 years... I'd recommend staying in school til things recover.
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:3, Informative)
I think it depends on your career aspirations. GPA matters quite a bit for some internships, and is very important for getting into a good graduate program.
Which means that indirectly, GPA can matter quite a bit for getting your first job, as you yourself said that internships matter. If you had two otherwise equal candidates just out of school, but one had a successful internship at Google, while the other had a successful internship at the local library's IT department, whom would you likely hire?
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:4, Informative)
I'm going to have to third/fourth/fifth (depending on comment lag) the 'Get a job whilst you're still in school, experience counts' viewpoint. It really does help. And if you find yourself jobless even temporarily, make sure you do something with the time. Ideally, that would be the internship that has been mentioned here, but sometimes it'll have to be even less formal than that - this is where networking comes in. Unpaid/very minimally paid work on something isn't as great a CV bullet as an actual job but it is a lot easier to come by. Any connections that you have may come in useful; any college professors/researchers you might know from your university career may be able to provide you with something, although they're less likely to be able to pay you.
Open source code may arguably count in this, but it's very dependent on what the project is. If I'm hiring I generally look for something that I can find, download and see working. If, like so many projects, it turns out to be an itch that got scratched and then immediately placed on line with no testing or docs, I'd be impressed that it was placed online at all but wouldn't rank it very highly as experience. If on the other hand I can see evidence of what you did during your work on the project I might rank it somewhat higher, assuming HR ever let me see the CV (they have their own viewpoint on what 'experience' means).
I know this sounds obvious but it's very important to actually get around to applying, to do a little research before the interview, and to turn up to job interviews when the date has been agreed. Last hiring session I went on, only half of the people I invited for interview turned up. One of those who didn't emailed and apologised, so I sent him another interview date that he failed to meet either, which was facepalm-worthy and rather sad... two of those that I did interview hadn't bothered to look up the software packages mentioned by name in the original advert. And that was in the midst of the credit crunch.
Good luck to the OP and to all in their position, and if you do end up medium to long-term unemployed my advice to you is to keep busy and make sure you keep using your skills and abilities, find something you want to work on - I went back to studying when jobless after the dot-com boom, and one friend of mine wrote a book whilst unemployed! Also, get out of the house on a regular basis, even if it's only to yoga class or something. Unemployment is a nasty state if you let it get you down and is very likely to leave you feeling depressed and worthless (for no good reason - unemployment can happen to anybody), so keep your eyes open for that and find strategies to keep your spirits up.
Re:not specific to "network admin" (Score:5, Informative)
Uh... how so? The article cited studies by Standford and Harvard economists who studied the lives of graduates during the 80-82 recession the 90-91 recession and the 87 market crash... In all 3 cases graduates of those years significantly under earned graduates with similar degrees from the years immediately surrounding the recession years for example the graduating classes of 78,79, and 83 all earned significantly more over the next 20 years than their peers who graduated during the recession. Same for the market crash in 87, classes of 86 and 88 earned much more over the next 20 years... obviously 20 years haven't elapsed yet on the 91 recession, but the trend is still in place through 15 years graduates of the classes surrounding the recession are much better off.
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sorry to have to be the one to break the bad news to you, but your grades in school don't matter anymore. What recruiters look at is your experience. Which, by definition, you don't have. So your resume ends up at the bottom of the pile.
Agreed 100%. That's why wherever you go, make sure it has a good co-op/internship program. My degree was half co-op terms - 4 months of school, 4 months of work - right up until graduation. By the time I graduated I had already signed a contract to start working full time. It basically gives you 2 years or so of industry experience before you hit graduation. If you're looking at going into a technical field and want an easy time getting a job when you're finished, a good co-op program is by far the most important factor.
The hierarchy of experience/education is simple (Score:3, Informative)
Experience always trumps education.
Grades are important, but only while you are competing against other recent college graduates. If a company is hiring a new IT person and has 10 recent graduates to look between, the one with the highest grades will be an easy call for an interview.
But that isn't the situation now.
Right now, we have laid off IT workers who have already had a job, sometimes years of them, and that experience (and demonstrated success at holding a job for a while) is more valuable than your schooling, and a 0.5 difference in GPA.
Someone liked them long enough to let them keep an IT job for some number of years. You, however, are an unknown factor. Thus, they are the safer bet.
They have already proven they can stick to a college degree long enough to get it (as have you). They have also proven they can be successful in a real IT environment. Thus, they are 2 for 2. You are 1 for 2.
Just get any IT job you can find, at least for now. Trade up when options are better. Don't hold out for your dream job now, or you might not get anything at all.
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking of CCNA, CCNP and CCISP, these certifications are not just a good idea, for some companies they are a must to even be considered.
Their value is marginal at best. I would never want to work at a place which demands the certification, because it shows they don't know what makes a good engineer.
Re:Yo-yo effect? (Score:3, Informative)
I agree that many of the positions that have been eliminated will be refilled - they have to be. But those positions will be refilled by younger, and cheaper, workers - in many cases: guest workers.
Long term, I firmly believe that the trend is down for US IT workers. Simply put: US workers are being priced out of the market. Offshore workers are much cheaper, and the jobs that can not be done offshore, will be done by guest workers, which is still significantly cheaper. Also, hiring guest workers makes it easier to offshore even more jobs.
BTW: since the positions would be re-filled anyway, Obama's $3000 per employee stimulus package is just another handout to US corporations. Obama will be praised for creating jobs.
yeah (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:3, Informative)
I thought that grades mattered MUCH more in any job pertaining to the "hard" sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, math..)?
People hire People (Score:5, Informative)
1. Experience: self-educate in an emerging technology in your chosen field. You have the advantage of being unbiased to legacy practices. With an emerging technology, no one has experience. In today's world of cheap hardware and open-source software, it has never been easier for motivated people to find a way to contribute. Treat the learning process as an extended interview, including your project emails and contributions.
2. People: you're already at the bottom, nowhere to go but up. Don't further handicap yourself with low expectations, reality will be happy to reduce your expectations for you. Aim as high as you can imagine and work down as necessary. Rank the top ten companies or organizations (globally) with people who are experts in your chosen field. Identify some of these people by name and learn about their career path and current projects. Find a way to contribute to similar projects. Work backwards from their social network to your social network and try to have F2F conversations with local contacts who are best-of-breed.
3. Budgets: use your F2F contacts to obtain intelligence on budgets. In a poor economy with layoffs, the remaining people often have too much work to handle. Creative volunteering and compensation ideas can get you involved in real-world projects where the experience is worth 10X the dollar value comp. It all starts and ends with people, be they HR, managers or customers. So focus on being useful and building relationships with people. The most valuable information is often very transient (e.g. time sensitive hiring opportunities) and communicated only by word of mouth.
4. Recession: some of the best engineering creations have come from highly constrained environments. If you can be successful in an environment of fiscal discipline, you will only be more successful when boom times return. The same cannot be said for those who begin careers in boom times and are shocked by their first major downturn. There is no better time to start working than now. It doesn't mean you'll find a job quickly, but you will learn much more than by staying in school (which also costs money, even if deferred).
10 years from now, business schools will have course material dedicated to the lessons of these unprecedented economic times. New grads have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to experience the kind of business environment where fortunes will be lost and won, as economic hierarchies adjust. Don't miss the excitement by hiding in school!
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:3, Informative)
Writing an app that has sold/is selling on a popular online store is much more than saying you run linux at home. While it may be a hobby, it is real verifiable experience.
They will call and all that will be said is that yes you worked there. Short of getting fired and charged with a crime a previous employer will say very little during a reference check.
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the group that makes that call is the National Bureau of Economic Research [nber.org], a private think-tank. It's not related to any government agency.
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:2, Informative)
I had no papers to my name, and I started at 68,000 which got bumped to 73,000 on my 30 day review. And it was in '97. I did have a couple of solo programming projects, and an internship at an evil corporation...
I say an MIT grad could get 60k with a bit of effort.
Re:Best Advice is to Stand Out (Score:4, Informative)
OK, let's talk turkey. What you know enables you to do the job. Who you know enables you to get the job.
My usual strategy when I am not working is to volunteer at a non-profit organization. Go the extra mile and help with fundraisers and do those things nobody else wants to do. This gets you noticed by the board, and those folks are usually decision makers or influential people in the business world.
You can also do a stint in Americorps. This helps you pay back some of those loans and helps you make contacts.
Every job I got was because of who I knew, and not what I knew.
Start networking now, actually you should have started networking two years ago, but it is not too late.
Colleges teach you to know stuff, but unless you know people you are up the creek.
Good luck from a Masters student in the middle of changing careers. (Don't pass up opportunities that are not directly in your field if you think you might enjoy them.)
Re:As an interviewer I agree (Score:4, Informative)
It's weird, it's like if you show up, talking the right way, and dressed to not care, you get far. I don't understand it.
QFT.
I interviewed with my present shop the day before Xmas, dressed in jeans and a hoodie (they were clean), and unshaven for a few days. I did have a smart resume, and also have 12 years UNIX admin/engineering experience. I have no degrees, or advanced training outside of vendor classes. I was candidate number 11, and the last to be interviewed.
During the interview, I was asked how I would solve X problem, which coincidentally, the majority of their IT staff spent the better part of the night trying to fix. After asking a few routine questions, I was asked to 'demonstrate'. After 20 minutes, I got a 25k signing bonus, and the contractor that fsck'd it all up got 2 weeks notice.
To echo what others are saying... EXPERIENCE and demonstrable ability will get you farther than any degree. At least that resounds loud from my experience.