Georgia Southern University
Digital Commons@Georgia Southern
Information Technology Faculty Publications
Department of Information Technology
2009
Knowledge and Skill Requirements for Entry-Level
Information Technology Workers: Do Employers
in the IT Industry View These Differently than
Employers in Other Industries?
Cheryl L. Aasheim
Georgia Southern University, caasheim@georgiasouthern.edu
Susan R. Williams
Georgia Southern University, rebstock@georgiasouthern.edu
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Recommended Citation
Aasheim, Cheryl L., Susan R. Williams. 2009. "Knowledge and Skill Requirements for Entry-Level Information Technology Workers:
Do Employers in the IT Industry View These Differently than Employers in Other Industries?." Information Technology Faculty
Publications, Paper 1.
http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/information-tech-facpubs/1
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KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL REQUIREMENTS FOR ENTRY-LEVEL INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY WORKERS: DO EMPLOYERS IN THE IT INDUSTRY VIEW THESE
DIFFERENTLY THAN EMPLOYERS IN OTHER INDUSTRIES?
Cheryl L. Aasheim
Georgia Southern University
PO Box 8150
Statesboro, GA 30460-8150
caasheim@georgiasouthern.edu
Susan Williams
Georgia Southern University
PO Box 8153, Statesboro, GA 30460-8153
rebstock@georgiasouthern.edu
ABSTRACT
In order to determine how to prepare graduates in IT-related degree programs for entry-level
jobs, employers in various industries were surveyed to determine whether there are differences in
skills and knowledge requirements across industries. The results of the survey are reported and
analyzed. Based on the findings of the survey, advising and curriculum recommendations are
made.
INTRODUCTION
Enrollments in Information Technology (IT)-related academic programs have declined
significantly in recent years, [8][20][21]. Several studies have investigated potential causes of the
enrollment decline, attributing it most often to factors such as curriculum problems [1][8][19],
issues that influence students to choose (or not choose) an IT-related major [27][29], lack of
availability of accurate information about the IT industry and related employment opportunities
to high school students[17], and offshore outsourcing of IT jobs [22][25].
The U.S. Department of Labor predicts that employment demand for IT-related professionals
will grow much faster than the average for all occupations through the year 2016. For example,
the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the number of jobs will increase 16% from 2006 to
2016 for the occupation entitled “computer and information systems managers”, 37% for
“computer scientists and database administrators”, and 53% for “network systems and data
communications analysts” [2][3]. It is also estimated that the United States will have only half
of the qualified graduates needed to meet the rapidly increasing demand for IT professionals
through 2012 because of the declining number of student enrollments [18].
To meet anticipated demand, it is urgent for IT-related academic programs to attract more
students and prepare graduates with critical knowledge and skills. A number of studies have been
conducted to determine the critical knowledge and skill sets that graduates need to perform ITrelated jobs successfully [4][5][10][11][13][24][26].
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the importance of various skills differs for
entry-level IT workers who seek employment in the IT sector as opposed to those who seek
employment in other industry sectors. In other words, do organizations whose primary business
is the creation and deployment of information technologies view the importance of entry-level
skills differently than organizations whose primary business utilizes information technologies to
create and deploy other types of products and services?
The approach of this study is to conduct a survey of IT managers and workers to examine their
views on the knowledge and skills required of entry-level IT workers. A comparison of the
results of surveys gathered from respondents working in organizations in the technology sector
to the respondents working in other areas is presented. The results provide insights that may be
helpful in designing curricula to better meet the entry-level needs of firms in the IT sector. The
results may also aid IS/IT professors in designing plans of study for students who plan to seek
employment with IT firms.
BACKGROUND
Despite the existence of model curricula for computing-related degree programs, several studies
suggest that there is a gap between the skills achieved by Information Systems (IS)/Information
Technology (IT) graduates and the skills required by employers [4][5][10][11][13][26][24].
These studies have examined this gap as it is perceived by IT professionals, academicians,
students, and users. Some have made recommendations to improve the IS curriculum
[11][12][14][26][28].
Lee and Han [11] studied skill requirements for entry-level programmers/analysts in Fortune 500
companies and investigated the gap between the IS 2002 model curriculum and the requirements
of the industry. They found that application development, software, social and business skills
were highly valued, and recommended that knowledge of technological trends, knowledge of
business functions and general problem solving skills be taken into account by the designers of
future IS curricula.
Surakka [23], who extended previous studies by Lethbridge [15][16], found that a decreased
level of importance is being placed on continuous mathematics and basic science, and that new
areas of emphasis, such as web-related skills, are emerging.
Fang, Lee and Koh [6] found that personal/interpersonal skills were more important in new hires
than core IS/IT skills and organizational knowledge. Both Surakka [23] and Fang et al. [6] used a
relatively small sample size, which leads to questions about the generalizability of their results.
Conversely, Abraham et al. [1] found that technical skills were the most desired in new hires.
They also reported that these technical skills were more likely to be outsourced and that the skills
associated with the “business content” found in IS curricula were more likely to be retained inhouse. The sample in Abraham et al. [1] consisted of non-IT firms only and a proportionally
larger share of Fortune 500 companies than is representative of the population of U.S. firms.
Kim et al. [10] sampled employees at one manufacturing firm in the northeast. They found that
project management was the highest ranking skill, and that security, Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) systems, end-user computing, and the integration of soft skills should be given
more emphasis in IS curricula.
Gallivan, et al. [7] examined skills listed in job advertisements and found that the skills listed
there (mostly technical ones) were inconsistent with the “soft” skills organizations claimed were
more important in new hires.
METHODOLOGY
The primary purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a difference in skill
requirements for entry-level IT workers in the IT sector versus other sectors. To this end, a
survey was designed and administered to IT managers and workers in various industries,
including IT related industries.
The skill items in the survey were created by examining the Association for Computing
Machinery
(ACM)
IT
Curriculum
(http://www.acm.org/education/curric_vols/IT_October_2005.pdf), the IS 2002 Curriculum from
the Association of Information Systems (AIS) (www.aisnet.org/Curriculum/), and current
empirical studies [1][6]. In addition, several demographic questions were added to the survey to
gather information about the respondents and their respective organizations. The IT managers,
CIOs (Chief Information Officers) and workers that participated in the survey were identified
through an email list from a respected online survey company.
A pilot study was conducted to test the questionnaire. The survey was administered to faculty,
students and IT staff at the authors’ university. Approximately thirty people participated in the
pilot study. Feedback was gathered, leading to an improved version of the survey that was used
in the data collection.
The final survey consisted of thirty-two skills/traits that participants were asked to rank in terms
of importance on a scale of 1 (not important) to 5 (very important). The survey was web-based
and administered via email by a reputable online survey company. The survey was administered
to IT managers/CIOs and workers in two separate data collection efforts. Responses were
received from 391 IT managers and 299 IT workers. Of these, 348 responses from IT managers
and 238 responses from IT workers were used for analysis. Responses were eliminated from the
analysis if they were incomplete or if the respondent indicated that their organization did not
employ an IT staff.
PROFILE OF RESPONDENTS
Responses were received from IT managers and workers from all states in the U.S. Thirty-two
percent of the respondents were from organizations with 10,000 or more employees. Table 1
describes the size of the respondents’ organizations in terms of the number of employees.
Approximately forty-five percent of the respondents work for organizations that have an IT staff
with more than 100 employees. Table 2 describes the size of the IT staff in the respondents’
organizations.
Table 1: Number of employees in respondents’ organizations
Number of Employees
Less than 100
100 – 499
500 – 999
1000 – 4999
5000 – 9999
10,000 or more
I do not know
Percent
10.6
12.6
10.1
18.5
12.1
32.0
3.9
Table 2: Number of IT employees in respondents’ organizations
Number of IT Employees
0 – 10
11 – 25
26 – 50
51 – 100
Greater than 100
I do not know
Percent
21.7
9.5
10.3
9.2
44.8
5.5
The respondents represented a cross-section of industries with 28.7% working in the IT industry.
The IT industry consisted of respondents working in organizations including consulting firms,
computer technology vendors, and telecommunications. Education and health care were the
most represented non-IT industry in the sample with 10.4% and 9.7% of the respondents working
in those industries respectively. Table 3 provides a summary of the industries represented by the
respondents.
Respondents were asked to identify IT areas or types of positions for which their organizations
hire full-time entry-level IT workers. Respondents could check more than one area. The top
three areas cited were help desk, programming and networking for the IT industry as well as the
non IT-related industries.
Non IT-related industries tend to have more help-desk and
networking positions available for entry-level IT workers than the IT industry while the IT
industry has more programming jobs. Table 4 summarizes the areas in which entry-level IT
workers are hired.
DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
To examine the degree to which mangers/workers in the IT industry differed with those in non
IT-related industries in their perceptions about the importance of various skills/traits for entrylevel IT workers an online survey was administered to both groups. The survey addressed thirtytwo skills/traits. Respondents were asked to rank the importance of each skill/trait on a scale of
1 (not important) to 5 (very important). For each skill/trait, an independent samples t-test was
conducted comparing the average importance of that skill/trait for respondents in the IT industry
to those working in non-IT related industries [9]. Table 5 provides a summary of the results
derived using SPSS 16, a popular statistical software package.
Table 3: Respondents’ industries
Industry
Percent
28.7
2.7
1.0
10.4
1.0
6.5
8.3
9.7
4.6
7.7
1.4
4.3
2.4
1.5
1.7
8.1
IT
Consulting (not in IT)
Delivery service related
Education
Engineering
Financial
Government /Military
Health care related
Insurance
Manufacturing
Non-profit
Retail
Transportation
Travel/Tourism
Utility
Other
Table 4: Summary of Areas in which Entry-Level IT Workers are Hired
Areas for which Full-Time Entry-Level IT Workers are Hired
Percent in Non
Percent in ITIT-related
Job Type
Industry
Industry
Clerical/Data Entry
Database Area
IT Help Desk
Networking
Programming
Systems Analysis & Design
Web Design & Development
27.5%
43.7%
63.5%
50.3%
60.5%
51.5%
46.7%
29.7%
45.7%
71.3%
59.8%
56.0%
50.5%
48.6%
There is a statistical difference (p < 0.10) in the average importance between the two groups for
the following skills/traits: knowledge of specific industry, high IT GPA, programming
languages, and systems development life cycle methodologies. Where the t-statistic is positive,
respondents from the IT industry place more importance on the skill/trait than non IT-related
industries. For all of the skills/traits in which the groups differ, the t-statistic is positive.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The results of this study suggest that IT/IS programs that seek to tailor their curricula to better
meet the entry-level needs of IT firms should focus on learning outcomes that support a higher
level of competency in the areas of programming languages, systems development life cycle
methodologies, and knowledge of the IT industry than programs that primarily seek to meet the
entry-level needs of non-IT firms. Similarly, IT/IS students who plan to seek employment in the
IT sector upon graduation should be advised to focus on developing skills in programming
languages and systems development methodologies, as well as increasing their knowledge of the
IT industry and attaining a high GPA in their IT/IS courses. These findings are not surprising
given that IT firms rely heavily upon programming skills and systems development
methodologies to create and deploy information technologies.
What is surprising, however, is that there is no significant difference between IT and non-IT
employers with respect the importance of any of the other skills/traits including but not limited to
networking, security, database, web development, analytical skills, creative thinking,
interpersonal skills, ability to work in teams, knowledge of business functions, relevant work
experience, packaged software, and so forth. This leads to a number of additional questions –
particularly with respect to the technical skills for which no significant difference was found. For
example, is the need for entry-level skills in the areas of networking, security, database, and web
development so ubiquitous that IT and non-IT firms value them essentially equally? Would IT
and non-IT firms value these skills differently for mid-level and senior-level workers? Do IT
firms view entry-level workers as skilled enough in areas such as networking, security and
database to contribute to the creation and deployment of these technologies? Additional research
is needed to answer these questions.
Table 5: Independent Samples t-Test for Equality of Means
Skill/Trait
t-Statistic
p-value
0.205
0.837
Communication skills
0.822
0.412
Ability to work in teams
-0.525
0.600
Interpersonal skills
0.952
0.342
Creative thinking
1.548
0.123
Analytical skills
-0.197
0.844
Honesty/integrity
-0.271
0.787
Flexibility/adaptability
0.647
0.518
Leadership skills
0.727
0.467
Organizational skills
1.141
0.255
Entrepreneurial/risk taker
-0.247
0.805
Motivation
1.211
0.227
Knowledge of your company
1.166
0.244
Knowledge of primary business functions
2.278
0.023
Knowledge of specific industry
-0.165
0.869
Awareness of IT technology trends
0.851
0.395
High overall college GPA
2.213
0.028
High IT GPA
1.055
0.292
Extra-curricular activities
2.012
0.045
Programming languages
1.017
0.310
Web development programming languages
-0.093
0.926
Database
1.371
0.171
Telecommunications/Networking
0.206
0.837
Security
1.756
0.080
Systems development life cycle methodologies
-0.918
0.360
Hardware concepts
-1.430
0.154
Packaged software
0.735
0.463
Operating systems
-0.070
0.944
Project management skills
0.205
0.837
Relevant work experience
0.822
0.412
Internship experience
-0.525
0.600
Any work experience
0.952
0.342
Co-op experience
* Significant at 10%
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