Training is Everything

The IT career world has undergone extensive changes over the past decade, or so. Since the proliferation of ERP systems all the way to full-blown collaborative systems involving portals, internet/intranet access to corporate systems, the expectations for IT personnel have broadened. Business are looking for IT professionals with business knowledge and experience.

"The business community recognizes that college recruits tend to be technically astute, but lack the experience or judgment to apply those skills to business scenarios." says Amy Walker, a QM specialist with Pert Seminars. "If we recruit recent grads, say, to support a supply chain application, the concern is that graduates are unlikely to be familiar with the business processes involved."

Lack of experience in purchasing, production/manufacturing, inventory management, sales, distribution, warehouse management, and quality management severely inhibits businesses in supporting these applications.

Are corporations truly acting in crises mode? Or, is this a bias used by management to cut their training budget?

"Arguably, some of this is bias on the part of the business community." Walker concedes, "Experience in business is often more highly valued than the formal education and credentials. Technology is changing so rapidly that colleges and universities are unable to stay current. By the time a textbook is authored, edited, and hits the university bookstore market for the classroom, portions of the book may already be obsolete!"

If businesses and corporations are cutting back on their training budgets, what must a college graduate do to make 'bricks from straw'? How does a graduate acquire the experience necessary to handle the technical challenges corporate heads refuse to tackle?

"There is something to say for experience." Walker reflects, "Any experience a student can garner during their college years is helpful. Business seminars and management certifications can also be helpful."

IT grads have so much to accomplish in college, they do not often have the time, schedule or resources to attend business courses in addition to all of their required courses of the degree program. That’s where internships, business seminars, compressed training programs that focus on applying technical skills to business problems and issues are used to bridge the gaps.

Internships, part-time work during the college years, and various certifications are helpful.

IT salaries are still pretty strong. In the consulting and implementation/IT positions, the salaries for System Administrators, Business Systems Analysts, and Super-user/Power-users are still six figures. Yet, the outlook for training is surprisingly dismal.

SAP, for example, is a software company that has led much of this change worldwide. The company has an array of products, including ERP, Enterprise-wide software components, Advanced Supply Chain sof