Code: Latin of the 21st century? Shortage of ICT engineers
Although code permeates every aspect of our daily lives, there aren't enough programmers on the labor market. The largest companies are having difficulty finding ICT engineers. Facebook has even begun recruiting directly on the EPFL campus.
It takes an average of 10 weeks to find one’s first job in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which is a very short time. In over half of the cases, students do not require any prior experience. Moreover, many graduates in the ICT field receive a job offer during the last semester of their training.
These are all indications of high demand on the labor market.
Appealing job prospects
The causes of this shortage cannot be attributed to working conditions that are favorable. Salaries, for instance, are high with “an average gross annual salary of CHF 120,000 for a position requiring 3 to 4 years of experience”, comments Albin Baptista, President of the Groupement Romand de l’Informatique (GRI).
Median gross annual salary one year after graduation (2005-2009) © Federal Statistical Office (FSO)
In addition, teleworking in ICT professions enables a good balance to be struck between working life and personal life.
A shortage that is expected to accentuate
“Switzerland needs at least 10,000 ICT specialists per year but there are only 3,000 graduating from Swiss higher education institutions and the PET sector”, explains Albin Baptista.
Andreas Kaelin, President of the association ICT-Formation professionnelle Suisse, confirms this: “32,000 jobs will remain vacant in ICT branches in 2017.” By 2020, companies will only be able to recruit 1/3 of the ICT engineers that they need.
Since currently only 13% of ICT professionals are women, one solution to the labor shortage would be to encourage more women to pursue an ICT field of study.
Facebook anticipates the trend
In order to counter recruitment difficulties, several large companies do not think twice about sending employee representatives to the various campuses: as a case in point, Alok Menghrajani is an alumni of the EPFL’s School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) who now works as an IT security engineer at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park. He has returned to the EPFL campus to meet with several future IC graduates, as seen in the documentary below.
> Watch the Nouvo documentary
> Listen to the RTS broadcast
Sources:
- "Les titulaires d’un diplôme MINT sur le marché du travail: Enquête auprès des personnes diplômées des hautes écoles: domaines mathématiques, informatique, sciences naturelles et technique", Federal Statistical Office (FSO), 2013
- "Indicateurs du marché du travail 2012", Federal Statistical Office (FSO), 2012
- "European Vacancy and Recruitment Report 2012", European Commission, 2012
- "Rapport d'enquête sur l'insertion professionnelle des diplômés EPFL de la promotion 2010", EPFL Career Center, 2012
- "La Suisse a besoin d’ingénieurs", economiesuisse, Swiss Engineering STV UTS ATS, 2011