[AusNOG] Uni Graduates - Was Re: Sysadmin opportunities in Melbourne?

[Jonathan Thorpe]

Hi All,

As a former Uni graduate and now finding myself in the same firm (with a sabbatical in between) employing them, I agree with PRK’s comments.

I see Uni as a way of learning *how* to learn, not being able to walk out with a complete set of skills to fulfil a particular role. In an industry that is changing as rapidly as IT, this is highly valuable.

For many roles, it’s more interesting to me as to why someone has taken a particular path rather than the path they have taken.

I’ve worked with highly skilled people who have no formal qualifications and others that have several “relevant” degrees but lack the ability to apply critical thinking and independent learning to adapt to a changing industry.

Kind Regards,
Jonathan


From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of PRK
Sent: Tuesday, 6 January 2015 2:24 PM
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: [AusNOG] Uni Graduates - Was Re: Sysadmin opportunities in Melbourne?


Hi all,

Given the comments below, I thought I'd share some experience I've had with hiring Uni Graduates.

Several (5+) years go, my employer was struggling to find engineering staff in a very competitive mining driven market, so decided to try a graduate program.

From memory six graduates were brought on for a 2 year program. IIRC, there were 4 technical and 2 non technical. For the first year, the technical graduates rotated through the NOC (which I was managing at the time), Network Engineering, and programming. I think we lost one graduate (careless of us, I know), who didn't find the experience fulfilling.

For the second year, the graduates picked an area they found interesting, and worked with that team for the whole year. Two chose Networks, one chose programming.  Those three stayed on a good few years after the program ended, before moving onwards to bigger and better things.

From my perspective, the program was useful and resulted in good staff who stayed for several years and were well worth the investment in training & upskilling them.

However I wasn't involved in the development of the program & graduate selection process, so I don't know how much additional overhead that added.

In summary, in an employee's market, I'd have no problem hiring a Uni Graduate for certain roles and be happy with the trade off of their inexperience for someone who is willing to learn.  However if it's an employer's market, then I'm more likely to find someone who already has some experience, and is probably a better candidate.

Supply & demand.

prk.




On 2015-01-06 12:58, Nick Stallman wrote:
Would I employ a new uni graduate? Nope - not a chance no matter what the price was.
They don't have any of the skills I'd need them to have.
Universities aren't producing useful workers in IT.

Job postings aren't supposed to be training opportunities, usually the person posting them actually has a job that needs to get done.
On 06/01/15 12:48, Giles Pollock wrote:
I've long argued that any IT skills shortage that exists can be rectified by providing the appropriate incentives to employ and more importantly, train existing locals. There are more than enough people out there, but they are not being considered for roles as they aren't able to tick the right boxes when the job is sourced to the market.
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