Get them while they’re young: tomorrow’s IT pros

The Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow’s ICT Skills (CCICT) is making an aggressive play for the minds of tomorrow via its new National ICT Week event, scheduled to take place this fall.

“We need to get the word out as to how the world is changing, and change people’s attitudes toward IT as a career plan,” said executive director David Ticoll. “IT people are not just geeky technologists doing code.”

National ICT Week will take place in late fall across five Canadian cities and will be split into several parts catering to different audiences, including educators, employers, and students.

“We’re aimed at students in general, for the most part—people making career decisions,” according to Ticoll.

To reel them in, he said, National ICT Week will be split for them between a few days. One half will concentrate on seminars, meet-and-greets, and contests and awards, while the other will consist of seeing cool IT in person by visiting a variety of IT environments, whether it be a hospital or a telecommunications company.

The CCICT will be pushing the idea of IT professionals as dynamic go-getters with endless opportunities for interesting career paths and opportunities for advancement. “In addition to being afraid of the dot-com crash fall-out and offshoring, they don’t really think an IT career is competitive,” said Ticoll. “But the reality is that the demand profile is changing: around 25 per cent of IT workers are business analysts, and those are the most in demand.”

(This disconnect is contributing to the current skills shortage on the employer side as well, Ticoll said: “When people say they’re only going to hire someone with a few years experience, they’re really saying they want someone with business skills and experience, and not just what they might have gotten out of a standard degree program.”)

CCICT member companies include founding member Bell Canada, as well as IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Cisco, and Research in Motion, along with industry partners like Canadian Tire, CN Rail, and McCain. Ticoll said that he hopes to find a few bright young IT stars from member companies that could act as ambassadors for the IT trade.

Info-Tech Research Group senior research analyst Jennifer Perrier-Knox said that it’s important for IT advocacy groups to tailor the message. One way is to stress the ways that an IT career is a good fit for the millennial worker. She said, “There’s job flexibility, interesting work, and the opportunity to build their resume and for advancement.”

Another ploy is to pitch an IT career in terms of existing interests, said Information Technology Association of Canada president Bernard Courtois. “We have to convey how pervasive ICT is now. For instance, if they want to improve the healthcare system, IT is the way to do it. Or if they care about the environment, IT is needed to reduce environmental impact.”

The upcoming year or two might be a better time for IT enrollment, according to Ticoll. He said, “During a recession, there are usually more university enrollments, period. With the economy, more people will be driven to more conservative prospects, so they’ll stick to the more professional areas.”

In the meantime, the CCICT is keeping busy by working with a group of universities to develop a more unified set of business/IT hybrid programs that will make it easier for potential enrollees to see the path to a job post-graduation, and the benefit of business skills. Co-op terms will be built into these programs to ensure that grads get those coveted business skills. Eventually, the group plans to develop a Web site that will make it easier for students to see what schools offer IT courses with a business slant.

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Comments (2)

High School Offfering Cisco CCNA

by Ryan 1/8/2009 12:00:00 AMLambrick Park Secondary offers Cisco CCNA certification which you can take at no cost.. and get fully certified while going to highschool at 17 years of age.... school located in Victoria BC, Canada.

ageism

by Marc 1/9/2009 12:00:00 AMAnd the IT industry ageism continues. Seems one has to be 'young' to be allowed in (or back in). To hell with no discrimination by age, if you're not young, don't bother. If you're over 35 and looking, even with years of experience in the field, the people hiring don't want to talk to you. But there's always lots of money and opportunities available to attract young people. Don't talk to me about 'attitude'. I used to have a great attitude. I was known as a 'can do' person. But 6 years of hitting that age discrimination wall starts to wear on you. Years of watching people with half your skills get hired over you just because they're 'young'. Years of watching people try to come up with an excuse to get you out of their office as soon as they see how old you are at the interview. Years of hearing the term 'overqualified' bandied about, even though it's provably not true. Years of learning the hard way that the myth of a career in IT is just that, a myth. So yea, go ahead and hire the young. Just don't tell them that if they happen to lose their position at the wrong time, the people doing the hiring will just leave them on the street after they hit 35 or 40, and good luck getting back in. I'd suggest that young people interested in a career stay well away from IT as a main profession. Learn a trade or go into a real profession such as medicine, the real sciences, business, accounting, even tourism. Learn IT as a backup whose tools you can then apply to your real profession. But IT, on its own, isn't the way to go if you value your future.