Creating profile of IT specialist.

Pejic Bach, Mirjana ; Tusek, Marina ; Vidovic, Natasa 等

Abstract: The purpose of the paper is to present a survey on advertisements for IT specialist published at the web site www.moj-posao.net during the May 25th till October 13th, 2006. Following characteristics are investigated: employers' ownership, employers' trade, employee education, work experience, job type, job categories, certification and additional skills. Typical IT specialist has a full-time job in privately-owned company that provides business services. Undergraduate or graduate diploma is required. He works in fields such as programming, IS, DB, administration or BI. Additional skills that he should have are analytical skills, eagerness for a life-long learning, teamwork, interpersonal communication, responsibility and proactive mindset. The results of the survey are used to determine the competitiveness of Managerial Informatics graduates at the Faculty of Economics & Business in Zagreb, Croatia.

Keywords: IT specialist, education, graduate competitiveness

1. INTRODUCTION

In today's ever-changing world the time has come for a new generation of IT professionals. They should spot trends and be up-to-date with the newest movements in technology and business (Trauth, 2002). The goal of the paper is to develop a profile of IT specialist based on the survey conducted from the job advertisements for experts in Information Technologies published on the web site www.moj-posao.net. The results of the paper are used to determine the labor market competitiveness of the Business (Managerial) Informatics graduates at the Faculty of Economics & Business in Zagreb (FEB), Croatia. The FEB is an integral part of the University of Zagreb, the oldest university in Croatia and one of the oldest in Europe with history that officially starts on 23 September 1669.

2. SURVEY OF ADVERTISEMENTS FOR IT SPECIALIST

Web site www.moj-posao.net is a leading job-search site in Croatia and region in general, with around 350.000 monthly unique visitors. It is listed in the Top 10 international non-English job sites, according to the TopJobSites.com. We have tracked advertisements through 5 months, from May 25th to October 13th, 2006. During that period, 173 job advertisements in ICT and Internet category were published. Table 1 shows employers' ownership. Research indicates that the largest number of employers looking for IT specialists are private companies (91%), followed by jointly-owned companies (6%), and public companies (3%). Altough number of IT specialists in public and jointly-owned companies is small in number; their job is different to the great extent compared to the private corporations (Buehler, 2000).

Almost half of the employers are firms that provide business services (44%), followed by processing industry (22%), wholesale and retail (12%), financial intermediation (9%), transport, storage and communication (7%). Other industries are represented by less than 5%.

Table 2 shows employee education. Most employers preferred individuals possessing at least a Bachelor's degree in their field (72%). Furthermore, 12 percent require an Associate's degree and 16 percent require a High School graduation diploma, and both in the latter groups are about equally represented.

In the faculty structure, technical universities including Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (56%), Faculty of Science (49%), Faculty of Organization and Informatics (47%) represent the largest employed group, followed by the Faculty of Economics & Business--FEB (31%). In 88 percent of the cases, employers hire individual on a permanent basis, 9% goes to contractor and 3% are part-time jobs.

An equal number of firms and corporations prefer hiring persons with previous work experience (52%), as well as those without any prior experience (48%). The experience primarily depends on a stable workplace, positions that require a larger degree of responsibility consequently require more work experience. Ownership of particular certifications is mandatory condition in only 8 percent of the cases, however in today's very competitive market it can only be an advantage.

3. ESTIMATING COMPETITIVENESS OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM

The Faculty of Economics & Business is organized as an integral scientific educational institution. The FEB's basic organizational units are departments, formed as scientific educational units based on the relationship between scientific and educational disciplines and the similarities and synergy of the disciplines, so as to represent a homogenous unity. The departments perform all research and educational activities at all levels of studies, permanent education and other activities in the scope of work of the FEB that fall into the scientific and expert scope of activity of each unit.

Department of Informatics at FEB aims to educate top experts who utilize information technology in order to enhance the competitiveness of Croatian companies. The department established a major in Managerial Informatics (formerly known as Business Informatics) as a result of strong demand for bachelors of business with solid knowledge of informatics.

Every year the department organizes Days of Information Technology with the goal to show how IT can solve business problems and to present the best students in the previous year. Field trips are also organized for students every year so they can get a first-hand look at the business application of IT in the daily practice of leading Croatian companies. Getting to know the local characteristics of different Croatian regions is also an important part of these field trips (www.efzg.hr).

Results of this research are used in estimating competitiveness of the educational program of Managerial Informatics graduates at the Faculty of Economics & Business in Zagreb, Croatia. In order to estimate competitiveness we have compared courses that are offered at the educational program of Managerial Informatics with the type of jobs needed.

As it can be seen in Table 3, the type of jobs which the IT professional performs are varied according to the employers; however they are usually connected with programming (19%), information systems (12%), databases (12%), administration (10%), business intelligence (10%), ERP systems (7,5%), and various projects (7%). The entire job categories are covered with one of the courses offered at the Managerial Informatics program.

However, students are prepared for the two thirds of the job categories at the compulsory courses, while one third of the job categories are covered by elective courses.

At the educational program of Managerial Informatics additional elective courses are offered: English for Management Informatics and Innovations Management. Subjects of those courses were required in most of the advertisements for IT specialists, and were entitled as highly developed soft skills, or the additional skills.

Number of authors noted that IT specialists are required to develop those skills nowadays (Norton Nolan Institute, 2001; Stephens et al, 1994). Grupe (2003) also stress the need for the ethical approach to the job which assures employers that conflict of interest will be set to the minimum level.

Additional skills that IT specialist should have are foreign language knowledge, analytical skills, eagerness for a life-long learning, teamwork, interpersonal communication, responsibility, generating ideas and proactive mindset. It could be concluded that the educational program of Managerial Informatics offers both good knowledge needed for the job categories required, and also for the soft skill required.

4. CONCLUSION

The paper has reviewed advertisements for IT specialists published on the web site www.moj-posao.net. According to www.alexa.com the independent global statistics of website traffic ranking, Moj-posao.net is the second most popular website in Croatia, and we believe that published advertisements objectively represent the current state in Croatian labour market.

Based on the results of the survey the profile of IT specialist is created. IT specialists are mostly employed in privately owned companies (91%) that provide business services (44%). They have faculty diploma (72%) and most probably of some technical (50%) or business (31%) university. They are full time employed and their work is mainly connected with programming (17,9%), information systems (12,1%) or data bases (11,6%).

They should have developed additional i.e. soft skills and certification ownership can differentiate them on the market. The entire job types offered in the reviewed advertisements for IT specialists are offered mostly at the obligatory courses at the Managerial Informatics graduates at the Faculty of Economics & Business in Zagreb, Croatia. Based on the results of the research we could conclude that IT specialist should be an individual whose abilities bridge technology, economic knowledge, and social skills.

4. REFERENCES

Buehler, M. (2000). U.S. federal government CIOs: information technology's new managers--preliminary findings. Journal of Government Information, Vol. 27, 2945.

Grupe, F. (2003). Information systems professionals and conflict of interest. Information Management & Computer Security. Vol. 11, No. 1, 28-32.

Norton Nolan Institute. (2001). Say goodbye to the CIO, welcome to the business prophet. Information Management & Computer Security. Vol. 9, No. 3, 123-125.

Stephens, C., Lughmans, T. (1994). The CIO's chief concern: Communication. Information & Management. Vol. 27, No. 2, 129-137.

Trauth, E.M. (2002). The evolution of information resource management. Information & Management. Vol. 16, No. 5, 257-268.

Table. 1. Employers' ownership

Employers' ownership # Percentage

Private companies 147 91%
Jointly-owned cmpanies 5 3%
Public companies 9 6%

Table 2. Employee education

Employee education # Percentage

High School 22 16%
AS 17 12%
BS, MS, Ph.D. 101 72%

Table 3. Job categories and courses

Job categories Percentage Course Course Type

Programming 17,9% Business Application Compulsory
 Development
Information Systems 12,1% Business Information Compulsory/
 Systems/Information Elective
 System Audit
Databases 11,6% Data Management Compulsory
Administration 9,8% Document Management Elective
 in Business
Data warehousing/ 9,8% Business Compulsory
Business Intelligence
intelligence
ERP 7,5% Business Information Compulsory
 Systems
Projects 6,9% ICT Management Compulsory
WEB 5,2% E-Business Compulsory
Software development 5,2% Business Application Compulsory
 Development
Analyst 4,6% Decision Support Compulsory
 Systems
Networking 1,2% Distributed System Elective
 Management
Business processes 0,6% Information of Elective
 Business Processes