It seems like what IT really wants is trade school graduates.
No. What IT really wants is "problem solvers".
It doesn't matter what technologies you learned at college, high school, trade school, or from books. Whatever it is, it won't be enough anyway. You'll be expected to get to work, use what you know, and pick up what you have to. For the rest of your life.
More importantly, you will be expected to understand abstract ideas (people and tech), break down complex issues, develop effective work habits, and communicate intellegently with many different types of people. Aren't these exactly the type of things that college is for?
That's simply not true. I agree that that is how it should be. But the vast majority of companies hire by key/buzzwords on a resume. You could be the greatest coder in the world but if you don't have "10 years Visual X+#" you won't even get past the HR screen. Everyone loses in that scenario, you don't have a job, the company doesn't have a worker. Sucks, but there it is.
Jobsite/Jobserve are just shopping lists of skills. Even our own ads, by the time they've made it from us (actual technical people) through whatever means to actual ads (on the web/in the press), are like that. It's how things are done in the industry, at least for the kind of company that hires people its people don't already know (i.e. above a certain size).
So, it is the responsibility of the companies to make sure that they hire competent people and not only by the key/buzzwords. The ones who know how to hire will be more competitive.
It doesn't matter what technologies you learned at college, high school, trade school, or from books. Whatever it is, it won't be enough anyway. You'll be expected to get to work, use what you know, and pick up what you have to. For the rest of your life.
That applies to everyone in any field, whether you went to school or not.
My point was that while IT (which to me, means IT department, not software companies) may want those things, what they hire for are the tech skills primarily. And by tech skills, I mean a laundry list of frameworks and APIs.
The skills you mention seem to be reserved for the managers at the places I've worked.
No. What IT really wants is "problem solvers".
It doesn't matter what technologies you learned at college, high school, trade school, or from books. Whatever it is, it won't be enough anyway. You'll be expected to get to work, use what you know, and pick up what you have to. For the rest of your life.
More importantly, you will be expected to understand abstract ideas (people and tech), break down complex issues, develop effective work habits, and communicate intellegently with many different types of people. Aren't these exactly the type of things that college is for?