Some time ago, "My Circle" took part in a discussion organized by our friends from the Index School and dedicated to the employment of beginners. The organizers posed the following problem to the participants of the meeting:

“The IT industry has long been experiencing a shortage of professionals, and this is not news to anyone. It would seem that the way out of this situation should be novice specialists, who are present on the market in abundance. In reality, employers are most often not ready to take juniors, continuing the endless search for those very “strong middles”. Add to this the problem of “age” juniors: the chance of finding a good job for those who entered the industry after 35 years is almost zero. Each company is trying to solve this problem in its own way, but the situation on the market suggests that all these steps cannot yet significantly affect the overall balance of power.”

The discussion turned out to be lively and sharpened the questions raised even more. We decided to study the topic of beginner IT specialists in more depth and conducted a survey among users of Habr and My Circle. We collected more than 2000 responses, visualized them using charts, and today we are happy to share the results.

From the report you will learn at least the following

• Almost half of those who come to IT for the first time are still studying at universities.
• A third of specialists come to IT from completely different areas, and for the most part they go not from a bad life, but according to the calling of the soul.
• Nearly half of newcomers change their first IT specialization over time.
• Over time, metropolitan cities take away some of the specialists grown in the regions, and large private companies - specialists grown in small private or state companies.
• In the all-Russian market of novice specialists, capital cities make the greatest contribution to analytics, HR and sales; regional - in administration, full stack and mobile development; millionaires - in marketing.
• 50% of beginners find their first job in IT in less than a month, 62% are interviewed only in 1-2 companies.
• Approximately 50% of novice specialists find work through job sites, about 30% more through friends and acquaintances.
• 60% of newcomers start their careers in IT as a novice (junior), 33% as an intern, paid internships are twice as many as unpaid.
• 75% of interns and 85% of juniors work in their first company for more than six months, almost half of newcomers eventually change their first IT specialization to another one.
• 60% of companies do not have any adaptation mechanisms for beginners, 40% do not have any programs to attract them, and 20% do not work with interns and juniors at all.
• Most companies see the difficulty of assessing the potential of a future employee as the main risk of working with novice specialists.
• When applying for their first job, newcomers underestimate the importance of soft skills, which the employer puts even above technical knowledge.
• While 60% of companies say they don't care about newbie age, another 20% say they don't hire candidates over a certain age for newbie positions.

Who took part in the survey

To begin with, let's look at who exactly participated in the survey in order to understand the context in which we will interpret the answers. The result was approximately the same sample as in all of our past surveys.

Two-thirds of the respondents are developers. The only difference is that this time more juniors and interns took part in the survey. Usually, they make up a quarter of all respondents, but now there are more than a third of them.

As always, there are five men per woman, one in three from a non-million city, one in five out of a million, one in four from Moscow, one in ten from St. Petersburg.

Most work in small private companies, one in ten is temporarily unemployed. This time, slightly fewer freelancers and slightly more employees of large private companies participated in the survey than usual.

When you came to work in IT, was that your first job?

It is curious that more than a third of specialists who come to IT for the first time come here from other fields of activity not related to IT. Among those coming to HR, management, sales and content - more than half of them. Among those who come to game and desktop development, there are only a fifth of them.

From other fields of activity in IT come the most engineers, managers, salespeople, workers, technicians and teachers.

It turned out that from other areas in IT they go not from a bad life, but by the calling of the soul. For 58%, the main reason for retraining is the interest in the field of IT as such. Only 30% and 28%, respectively, indicated a financial reason or a problem with career growth in a previous job. Only 8% indicated the problem of finding a job in their previous profession.

Nearly 20% cited the possibility of remote work as a reason for choosing IT.

What is your education and its completion at the first job in IT?

As we learned from past research, 85% of professionals working in IT have higher education. Of these, 59% have an IT-related education, 19% have a non-core technical education, and 12% have a non-core humanitarian education.

The share of "humanitarians" is most in the same HR, sales, management and content, as well as in design and marketing. Least of all, their share is in desktop, full stack and back-end development, as well as in telecommunications. The share of "techies" with non-IT education is the largest in marketing and testing.

At the time of the first job in IT, only 33% of specialists have completed higher education, 45% are still studying at the university. Of those coming to HR, analytics, testing and management, more than half have already graduated. Of those who come to game development and full-stack development, as well as to marketing, more than half are still studying.

In sales and administration, the highest proportion of newcomers who do not have higher education and who do not study at universities, and in analytics and management, it is the smallest. In sales, the highest share of schoolchildren.

In administration, game development, and design, the average median age of joining IT is 20 years; in management, 23; and in HR, 25. In other specialties - 21-22 years.

Has your specialization changed since your first job in IT?

We compared the answers to two independent questions - "what is your current specialization" and "what is your first specialization" in IT - and got an interesting chart. It can be seen that over time, the share of those working in back-end and full-stack development noticeably increases, and the share of those who initially worked in desktop development, administration and support decreases.

This reflects the process of retraining newcomers within the IT industry.

On average, every second person changes his first specialization in IT.

If we look at each specialization separately, we will see that more often than others, more than two-thirds, change their specialization if they initially came to desktop development, telecommunications, support, marketing, sales or content. Less often than others, less than a third, change their specialization if they initially came to HR or mobile development, as well as to management or front-end development.

In what city and in what specialty was your first job in IT?

As in the case of a change of specialization, we also see a change in the region from the moment of the first job in IT. Over time, the share of people working in Moscow and St. Petersburg noticeably increases, and the share of people working in a city with more than a million people falls. The capital cities take away some of the specialists grown by the latter.

This shows the internal migration of IT professionals.

For each specialty, we see a more interesting picture separately. Moscow and St. Petersburg give the largest shares among newcomers in analytics, HR and sales; and the smallest ones in game development, administration, full stack and mobile development. In non-million cities, the picture is quite the opposite: the largest shares among newcomers here are precisely in administration, full stack and mobile development; and the smallest - in analytics, HR and sales. Cities with a population of one million newcomers make the biggest contribution in marketing, management and sales.

There is a division of labor between capitals and regions: technical specialists in the regions, managers in the capital.

In what company and in what position did you start working in IT?

As in cases with a change in specialization or city from the moment of the first job, we observe a similar picture with a change in company. Over time, the share of employees in large private companies increases markedly and the share of employees in small private and public companies falls. Large private companies take away some of the specialists whom the latter have raised.

58% of newcomers start in IT from the position of a novice specialist (junior), 34% - from the position of an intern. There are almost twice as many paid internships as unpaid ones.

The higher the starting qualification of a newcomer, the longer, on average, he works before his first promotion. 66% of unpaid interns, 52% of paid interns and only 26% of juniors work less than six months before their first promotion.
Approximately half of each group stays at their first company for more than six months.

How long and in what ways did you look for your first job in IT?

50% of beginners find their first job in IT in less than a month, another 25% spend no more than three months on it. Approximately 50% find work through job sites, 30% through friends and acquaintances.

62% of novice professionals are interviewed in 1-2 companies and find their first job. Another 19% are interviewed by no more than 5 companies.

What qualities do you think you need to be hired?

The vast majority of both novice applicants and their employers consider basic technical knowledge, soft skills and the ability to pass a test task as the most significant when applying for a job.

However, beginners somewhat underestimate the role of soft skills: for the employer, their significance is even slightly higher than technical skills. Beginners should also pay more attention to their educational and personal achievements: employers value such achievements much more than the ability to solve logical problems.

It is curious that the presence of specialized education is not very important for both parties.

How was the adaptation process arranged, what difficulties did you encounter?

66% of newcomers signal that they have not seen any adaptation process in the company. Only 27% had a personal mentor, and another 3% had courses. Accordingly, newcomers see the lack of proper attention to them as the main problem of adaptation.

However, despite the difficulties voiced, 61% of specialists rate their first experience in IT as positive and only 8% as negative.

Do you have an interesting story about your first IT job?

- It was the first job in my life, and I was so afraid of everything that for the first month I did not go to lunch during the working day (although I wanted to eat), because I thought that I should always be at the workplace and work tirelessly 🙂

— Yes, the teacher thought that I was developing mobile applications, and I was developing desktop ones, they called me for practice, they gave me a difficult task, after which I really had to master mobile development.

- The first day of work and the first project on the front - 10 days, 20 pages of online store layouts - and I don't know how div differs from span. I did it, I'm generally great, the project is still online, and its code is better than some of the large projects that I met in Moscow.

— My first order was from a foreigner, and I wrote him a crooked blog post for $200 😀

- I slept at work, instead of a pillow there was a system unit. I also literally dropped the server, it was fun to call and explain to the authorities: the server has crashed, but it works 😉

- In the first working week, I accidentally deleted ~ 400GB of data! Then everything was restored.

- After leaving the largest (in its industry) enterprise in the region, a 40-year-old driver was put in my place (linux admin, oracle DBA).

- The director's phrase “write something that can be sold” is brilliant!

- I came for an interview, did not know the required PL, passed the test on another, they gave me 2 weeks to learn the required PL. On the first day I go to work, they ask me: “Where did we hire you Backend, or Frontend?” But I don’t remember and don’t really understand the difference, I answered - the backend, so now I’m writing.

- I saw the Macbook live for the first time at work 😀 (iOS developer).

- Once they gave out a bonus in the form of a 1GB flash drive for extracurricular work on New Year's Eve. Well, I found my wife at the first place of work, in the neighboring department.

- The shortest interview in my life: “Have you worked with COM ports? - No. — Will you? - Will".

- I came from the position of a journalist to the vacancy of a content manager in IT. A couple of months later, they offered to be a project while a colleague was on vacation. A year later, he was promoted to the head of the IT department, a year later to the commercial director. Rapid career growth 🙂

If you have a similar interesting story, share it in the comments!

You recruit interns and juniors, how do you work with them?

Next, we asked if the respondent participates in recruitment, and further questions were addressed only to those who participate.

It turned out that 18% of companies do not work with novice specialists at all. In other cases, juniors are accepted twice as often as trainees.

Almost 40% of companies do not have any special programs to attract and adapt newcomers. In 38% of cases, newcomers are adapted by mentors. In 31% of cases, companies cooperate with universities or they have an internship system. 15% of companies have their own training courses (schools).

The main risk of working with a novice specialist is the difficulty of assessing his potential, 55% noted this. In second place are the risks associated with trusting a beginner with tasks and the complexity of his adaptation, 40% and 39%, respectively. In third place is the risk of leaving a newly minted specialist to another company, 32%.

What age is an obstacle to take a candidate as a trainee or junior?

60% say they don't pay attention to the newbie's age. However, the other 20% say they don't recruit candidates over a certain age.

In 40% of cases, newcomers of age have the same expectations as other beginners. But in about 35-40% of cases, such specialists are expected to have good soft skills, independence and high motivation.

Half the time, older newbies are expected to take the same risks as other newbies. But in 30% of cases they believe that such specialists have an inflexible mind, in 24% they see a problem in the complexity of managing them, in about 15% of cases they believe that there will be problems with infusion into a young team and the overall speed of the team.

Despite the fact that the majority believe that age is not an obstacle for a beginner, 52% agree that it is more difficult for a person of age to find a job as a beginner than a university graduate.

Have there been successful cases of employment of a candidate over 35 years old as an intern or junior in your practice?

- One of the android developers at my first job was just a 35+ junior, although before that he worked in a printing house, i.e. in an area far from development. Now he has moved to Europe for permanent residence, successfully settled down and is one of the frequent participants in various conferences on android development.

— The man studied chemistry all his life and taught other students, at 40+ he began to write code, at almost 65 he still works as a senior developer.

— In a nearby department, an assistant professor of mathematics began his career as a junior 3D game developer at the age of 40+.

- Now a man is sitting opposite me, over 40. He came to us like me, from the admins. Started as a junior. He quickly joined the general flow. Now such a strong middle developer.

- A guy came, about 35-40, who independently studied Java, Android at home and wrote a training project. I wrote first under the guidance, then independently an application for the Car Sharing service.

— Our average age in the company is 27 years. Somehow I came across a test task (for some reason, out of the general queue, that is, without a resume) and it turned out to be very soundly done. They called without looking - it stood out so much from the rest for the position of junior. It was a surprise to meet and interview a 40-year-old man for such a position, given that he knew PHP for a month, and the general IT background for no more than 1 year. Got accustomed.

- Our tester is 40+, they took him because he is a science fiction writer and a good visionary, and on top of that, he caught fire in IT and testing, and besides that, he has a huge expertise in construction, and this is our market.

- I came as a newcomer from another company, at the age of 40, after six months I rose to the middle front-end developer, and after another half a year I advanced to the team lead.

- Working at a tractor factory, a man made games on Flash and successfully sold them. Nobody taught him, because of his age it was hard for him to join, but as a specialist he showed himself with dignity.

If you have a similar interesting story, share it in the comments!

Source: habr.com