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Are you one of us?: How Employers Prioritize among IT Graduates

Authors:

Per Lauvås, Jr.,

Kjetil Raaen,

Anders Olof LarssonAuthors Info & Claims

SIGITE '21: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference on Information Technology Education

Pages 79 - 84

https://doi.org/10.1145/3450329.3476854

Published: 06 October 2021 Publication History

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Abstract

When we are designing IT education and degree programs, knowledge about what graduates need to succeed is important. One source of such knowledge are employers. This paper presents a survey of Norwegian employers asking what they are looking for in a recently graduated IT candidate. We confirm that the so called soft skills are highly prized. Among these, we identify a less reported concept of fitting into company or team culture as the most important. Another somewhat unexpected result is that employers do not expect to see a portfolio from graduates. Among technologies mentioned, Java is at the top followed closely by C# and .NET. Python and JavaScript are also mentioned often. Our study suggests that soft skills should be a focus throughout IT education programs.

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De Silva DHuijser HCunningham SPress N(2024)Essential Professional Skills and Competencies for Future Information Technology Graduates: Meeting IT Industry Demands2024 International Conference on Engineering Management of Communication and Technology (EMCTECH)10.1109/EMCTECH63049.2024.10741786(1-8)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EMCTECH63049.2024.10741786

Index Terms

Are you one of us?: How Employers Prioritize among IT Graduates
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
2. Software and its engineering

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SIGITE '21: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference on Information Technology Education

October 2021

165 pages

ISBN:9781450383554

DOI:10.1145/3450329

General Chairs:
Barry Lunt
Brigham Young University, USA
,
Derek Hansen
Brigham Young University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Paul Morrey
Utah Valley University, USA

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 06 October 2021

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SIGITE '21: The 22nd Annual Conference on Information Technology Education

October 6 - 9, 2021

UT, SnowBird, USA

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De Silva DHuijser HCunningham SPress N(2024)Essential Professional Skills and Competencies for Future Information Technology Graduates: Meeting IT Industry Demands2024 International Conference on Engineering Management of Communication and Technology (EMCTECH)10.1109/EMCTECH63049.2024.10741786(1-8)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/EMCTECH63049.2024.10741786

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Industry expectations of soft skills in IT graduates: a regional survey

Critical IT Project Management Competencies: Aligning Instructional Outcomes with Industry Expectations

Emotions and interpersonal skills for IT professionals: an exploratory study

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Industry expectations of soft skills in IT graduates: a regional survey

Critical IT Project Management Competencies: Aligning Instructional Outcomes with Industry Expectations

Emotions and interpersonal skills for IT professionals: an exploratory study

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