IT Careers

Your group should use secondary and primary data to answer the following questions:

• Besides programming, what types of work do IT professionals do?
• What are some of the most important skills IT professional needs in terms of technical skills, business skills, and soft skills?
• Is there a shortage of IT Professionals in the United States today? Five years from now?
• What policies are being used to encourage young people into pursue IT careers? (STEM support)
• How does the global landscape look as far as shortages and surpluses of IT professionals?
• What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of IT careers? (good question for interviewees to answer!)
• What perceptions do the public have about IT professionals? How do IT professionals perceive themselves? (good question for interviewees to answer!)

Your group will likely find many studies by PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Gartner, McKinsey, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, and many others that look at current IT employment and predict future IT employment needs. Your group will find plenty of secondary resources on this topic.

For example, the following graph was created by emsi:

Source: http://www.economicmodeling.com/2012/09/26/an-it-worker-shortage-it-depends-on-the-state/

Source: http://www.greythorn.com.au/news/top-5-it-skills-in-demand-for-2014/2472/

Your group should also do original interviews with IT professionals. International students are highly encouraged to interview IT professionals from non-US companies. Because it will be easy to find IT professionals to interview, your group may want to aim for quite a few interviews, mixing the gender and nationalities of interviewees.

Your group might also want to do a survey on public perceptions of IT careers. Does the public think IT careers are all going offshore? Does the public think most IT professionals are pale, skinny, nerdy males?