Revealed: What students think of tech work

If IT is to plug its skills gap by attracting graduates from other disciplines the industry needs to convince students the work can be as exciting as its potentially wallet-fattening pay packets.

Research released today by a career development charity CRAC has found students' main reason for avoiding going into IT is a perception the work will be dull, dull, dull.

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More than 60 per cent of non-computing students cited "boring work" as the primary reason they would avoid joining the sector. Yet the vast majority of the nearly 2,000 students surveyed believe IT offers good career prospects and highly paid jobs. This is good news as it means students can be won over, according to the charity.

CRAC development director Robin Mellors-Bourne said employers should be able to counter negative perception about tech work as other views held about the sector are good.

He said in a statement: "We found that very few of the students hold negative perceptions about the IT profession or its people."

The research, entitled Do undergraduates want a career in IT?, found work experience remains the strongest influence on career choice for students, with existing schemes being very successful in portraying IT work in a good light, according to the charity.

It also found less than 10 per cent of respondents believe the benefits of an IT career were communicated to them at school.

Industry sector skills council, e-skills UK, and a leading UK academic recently criticised the teaching of IT in secondary schools and called for a radical overhauling of the curriculum, warning kids are being put off tech in droves by tedious lessons in Word and Excel.

Mike Rodd, director of industry body the British Computer Society (BCS) Learned Society, which is driving an outreach campaign to schools to improve IT's image, said in a statement: "Greater exposure of young people to the merits of a job in the IT sector is vital, we need to show them the variety of roles in IT and the importance that IT carries today. IT is at the heart of business these days and there are real opportunities now to have a career in IT which will ultimately lead to a position on the board."

Rodd added that studying a computing or ICT A-Level at school has "a surprisingly big impact" on whether a student ultimately chooses an IT career, regardless of what degree they study.

The CRAC research also found a gender divide in students' response to IT which suggests the industry will have to work harder to win over female undergraduates who are not studying computing.

Mellors-Bourne explained: "While female computing students were every bit as keen as their male counterparts to work in the sector, this was not the case for [female] students in other disciplines. The survey suggests that many women will be attracted by the impact that IT projects have in other sectors and areas of life, while the men tend to like the technical projects."

He added: "If the UK IT sector wants to remain competitive it needs to harness the best talent. It is already doing a lot right but we have identified a few key areas in which some decisive change could be really effective."