Problem on landing your first job in IT industry

The demand for software developers are rapidly increasing and we have more and more IT graduates every year. But why is it that fresh graduates is still having such a hard time landing their first job and employers are using lots of techniques in hiring but still cant find suitable candidates.

I’ve been interviewing IT graduates for the past 4–5 years coming from different universities. Some universities specially coming from private schools have a higher chance of getting hired they are just more prepared, but a majority of applicants coming from different schools where professors are mostly all around, professors got no choice but to teach on the subject matter that they are not expert on, the odds of being hired are alarming.

They are just simply unprepared, it’s not like they don’t have potential, that they are not hard working, they just simply fall way bellow short in terms of skills that is required to perform an entry level job. Please let me say that it’s no fault of their own and neither their professors, it’s the schools and the entire education system.

I know some people who became university professors right after they graduate, with absolutely zero experience neither in teaching nor with the industry. I’am a product of this myself, I went to university hoping that it will help me prepare for the industry, but most of my professor doesn’t really have on the job experience nor at-least intermediate level mastery of the subject matter. I even have one professor who were able to pass her doctorate by asking a student to do her project for her. And another professor who scolded me because I tried to sincerely ask about a particular topic and she weren’t able to answer it either.

I know I sounded like I was blaming the professors, no I’m not, I’m blaming the system, main reason for why we are in this particular situation is because some students who graduated unprepared for the industry had experience great difficulty landing their first job. So they applied to their alma matter as a professor which doesn’t have proper skills assessment, no job experience requirements. Even Masters degree in my opinion right now is not a valid credential. And then they will start teaching new set of hopeful students which will graduate unprepared and the cycle repeated all over again and now here we are. As a proof of this, I have interviewed a candidate who is currently working as a programming professor in a university which is known before as a great university for IT, who failed even to answer very basic syntax question and entry level developer exam. How can you prepare a bunch of kids who barely know how cook an omelette to a very competitive industry without having a proper skillset. You cant give what you do not have.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a machine and internet at home to help themselves to prepare, and even worst, most of less fortunate student doesn’t even have time to review at home, because they have to work after school, or they have too much responsibilities at home. They expect to learn from school. They are holding the hope that after they graduate, after they got that piece of paper that they spend 4 or more years to get, more than 4 years of struggle being a working student, barely having enough allowance to buy lunch is that they will be able to finally get a proper earning job.

The result? Well they will fail series of job interviews from different companies which will dramatically strip away their confidence. They will lose motivation, and eventually give up on finding a job in the industry. Most of them will end up in BPO, fast foods, retail and even worst some of them will completely give up on finding a job and just get married. Don’t get me wrong, theres nothing wrong in BPO industry, nor in fast food, retail and just settling in as house husband or wife, those are real and decent jobs, but those people spend years as in literally more than 4 years of their lives to study, to prepare, they deserve to have at-least a fair chance to compete, to have a career progression, to have an opportunity to be part of the industry they once dreamed of.

Ruining their first step into that career is just appalling. Universities, government, and professors, please ask yourselves, are we preparing these kids to succeed in life? or setting them up to fail?