In HR, the opinion has long been established that a successful career in IT is impossible without constant education. Some generally recommend choosing an employer that has strong training programs for its employees. In recent years, a huge number of schools of additional professional education have also appeared in the IT field. The trend is individual development plans and coaching of employees.
Watching such trends, we are on "My Circle" indicate the courses you have completed in your profile. And they conducted a study: they organized a survey and collected answers from 3700 users of My Circle and Habr about their education experience:
- In the first part of the study, we understand how the presence of higher and additional education affects employment and career, based on what considerations IT specialists receive additional education and in what areas, what they eventually get from it in practice, by what criteria they choose courses.
- In the second part of the study, which will be released a little later, we will deal with the educational institutions of additional education that exist on the market today, find out which of them are the most famous and which are the most in demand, and as a result, we will build their rating.
1. The role of basic and additional education in employment and career
85% of specialists working in IT have a higher education: 70% have already graduated, 15% are still finishing. At the same time, only 60% have an IT-specific education. Among specialists with non-core higher education, there are twice as many "technicians" as "humanities".
Despite the fact that two-thirds of the respondents had their basic education related to programming, only one in five had an internship with future employers.
And no more than a third say that the theoretical training and practical programming skills gained during this education turned out to be useful to them.
As you can see, today higher education does not adequately meet the needs of the labor market in IT: for the majority, it does not provide sufficient theory and practice to feel comfortable in their professional activities.
This is also why today almost every IT specialist in the process of his professional activity is engaged in self-education: with the help of books, videos, blogs; two out of three take courses of additional vocational education, and most of them pay for them; every second attends seminars, meetups, conferences.
In spite of everything, IT-specific higher education in 50% of cases helps job seekers with employment and in 25% of cases in career advancement, non-IT higher education - in 35% and 20% of cases, respectively.
Asking a question about whether additional education helps in finding employment and career, we formulated it as follows: “Did having a certificate help you in career growth in a company?”. And they got that 20% helps in finding a job and 15% in a career.
However, elsewhere in the survey, we asked the question in a different way: “Did the additional education courses you completed help you find a job?” And we got completely different numbers: 43% answered that the school in one way or another helped with employment (in the form of the experience necessary for work, replenishment of the portfolio or direct acquaintance with the employer).
As you can see, higher education still plays the biggest role in mastering IT professions. But additional education is already a strong competitor to him, even overtaking higher education, which is not specialized for IT.
Now let's see how the employer looks at higher and additional education.
It turns out that every second IT specialist participates in the assessment of new employees when they are hired. 50% of them are interested in higher and 45% additional education. In 10-15% of cases, information about a candidate's education significantly influences the decision to hire him.
60% of specialists in their companies have an HR department or a separate HR specialist: in large private companies almost always, in small private or public companies - in half of the cases.
Companies that have HR are much more sensitive to the education of their staff. Such companies in 45% of cases themselves take the initiative to educate their employees and only in 14% of cases do not help with education at all. Companies that do not have a dedicated HR function show initiative in only 17% of cases, and in 30% of cases they do not help at all.
When educating employees, employers pay almost equal attention to such formats as events, educational courses, and meetups.
2. Why do they receive additional education
If you look at the whole, then most often they receive additional education for: general development - 63%, solving current problems - 47% and obtaining a new profession - 40%. But if you look closely at the details, you will see some differences in goal-setting, depending on the existing basic education.
Among specialists with a basic IT-related education, about 70% receive additional education for general development, 30% - to acquire a new profession, 15% - to change their field of activity.
And among specialists with non-IT education, 50% - for general development, 50% - to get a new profession, 30% - to change the field of activity.
There are also differences in the sense of obtaining additional education, depending on the current field of activity of a specialist.
With the help of additional education, current tasks are solved more often than others (50-66%) in management and marketing, as well as in HR, administration, testing and support.
Get a new profession more often than others (50-67%) in content, front-end and mobile development.
For the sake of general interest, more often than others (46-48%) take courses in mobile and game development.
To get a promotion at work more often than others (30-36%) take courses in sales, management and HR.
Most of all (29-31%) specialists in front-end, game development and marketing are studying to change their field of activity.
3. In what areas do they receive additional education
It is logical that most specialists practice additional education in their current specialization. However, in reality, many practice additional education not only in the area where they currently work.
So, if we compare the number of specialists in each area with the number of those practicing education in this area, we will see that the latter are many times more than the former.
So, for example, if 24% of respondents are back-end developers, then 53% of respondents were engaged in education in the back-end. There are 1.2 of those who studied backend for one backender working in their specialty, but at the moment they are working in another specialty.
It is interesting to see how much each of the educational areas is widely and deeply in demand by specialists from other areas.
The most popular in this sense are back-end and front-end development: 20% or more of specialists from 9 other areas noted that they studied in these specializations (highlighted in green, yellow and red). In second place is administration - there was an equally significant share of specialists from 6 other areas. The third is management - experts from 5 other areas were noted here.
Specializations that are least popular in other fields of activity are HR and support. There are no such areas at all in which 20% or more of specialists would note that they studied in these areas.
4. What qualifications does additional education provide?
In general, in 60% of cases, educational courses do not provide any new qualification. Which is not surprising, if we remember that the main motives for obtaining additional education are the general development and the solution of current problems.
After additional education, most of all there are juniors (18%), interns (10%) and middles (7%). However, if we look in more detail, we will see rather large differences in the acquisition of new qualifications, depending on the areas of activity of IT specialists.
After the courses, most juniors appear in front-end and mobile development (33%), as well as in testing, marketing and game development (20-25%).
Most interns are in sales (27%) and front-end (17%).
Most middles are in mobile development (11%) and administration (11%).
Most of the leads are in design (10%) and HR (10%).
Most top managers are in marketing (13%) and management (6%).
It is curious that seniors - in more or less noticeable quantities - are not trained in educational courses in any specialties.
5. A little about additional education schools
More than half took courses in more than one school of additional education. The most important criteria for choosing courses are the training program (74% noted this criterion) and the training format (54%).
As we saw above, 65% of those who took additional education courses paid for them at least once. Two thirds of those who took paid courses and one third of those who took free courses received a course certificate. Most people think that the main thing for such a certificate is to be recognized by the employer.
Although the majority say that the school of additional education did not help them in any way with employment, 23% of those who took free courses and 32% of those who took paid ones say that the school provides the experience they need for work. The school also provides an opportunity to replenish the portfolio with projects or even directly employs its graduates.
In the second part of our study, we will take a close look at all currently existing schools of additional education in IT, see which of them help graduates in employment and career better than others, and build their rating.
PS Who took part in the survey
About 3700 people took part in the survey:
- 87% men, 13% women, average age 27, half of the respondents aged 23 to 30 years.
- 26% from Moscow, 13% from St. Petersburg, 20% from million-plus cities, 29% from other Russian cities.
- 67% are developers, 8% are system administrators, 5% are testers, 4% are managers, 4% are analysts, and 3% are designers.
- 35% middle specialists (middle), 17% junior specialists (junior), 17% senior specialists (senior), 12% leading specialists (lead), 7% students, 4% interns, middle and top managers.
- 42% work in a small private company, 34% in a large private company, 6% in a state-owned company, 6% are freelancers, 2% have their own business, 10% are temporarily unemployed.
Source: habr.com