MIS Recruiting Crisis
by Sandie Taylor

In a recent chat with a group of McCombs MBAs, Gary Kusin, CEO of FedEx Kinko’s, told students that information technology is a burgeoning industry, and his company can’t bring in new IT employees fast enough.

FedEx Kinko’s, which offers 3,000 jobs in the IT area alone, is not the only company experiencing a shortage of prospective employees in this sector. PricewaterhouseCoopers recruited half as many McCombs students as they had hoped for last year. Others, including Citigroup, Ernst & Young, ExxonMobil, Microsoft, National Instruments, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance and USAA—all major companies that recruit IT students at McCombs—have had a hard time finding entry-level candidates, which affects the companies’ day-to-day operations.

“When we have job openings in IT, we need to fill them quickly to fully staff and deliver on our projects,” says Joel Knight, National Instruments senior programmer analyst and BBA ’02. “Lately, the pool of IT candidates coming right out of school is shrinking considerably, leading to longer periods when we’re understaffed.”

At McCombs, undergraduate management information systems (MIS) class sizes have fallen drastically over the last five years. While in fall 2000, 237 students completed MIS 304 (“Introduction to Business Programming”), the course enrolled only 83 students in fall 2005. Nationally, student interest in IT has declined, mostly because of misconceptions about the marketability of an IT degree.

“The media keeps repeating that offshoring is killing U.S. jobs in IT,” says Elota Patton, lecturer in the Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management at McCombs. “The truth is that offshoring enables innovation, and the more creative and exciting jobs in IT stay in the U.S.”

Some students also think that an MIS degree condemns them to a career of programming, confined within cubicle walls.

“Students have the perception that the opportunities within IT are limited and less exciting, which is simply not true,” says Anne Cheng, a recruiter for Microsoft. “The skills that MIS students attain are transferable to so many areas, and every company is in need of strong technically minded employees who are creative, innovative and eager to make an impact on customers.”

As MIS majors, students learn more than basic IT skills. They also acquire problem-solving techniques and the ability to think strategically. From the highly technical to the entrepreneurial and managerial, MIS majors can pursue the CTO track, the CIO track or start their own businesses. Opportunities across disciplines are also abundant.

According to Patton, many of the MIS graduating seniors last May received four to five job offers each. And since 2003, MIS entry-level salaries have increased 8 percent, up to about $50,500, which is greater than any other major.

McCombs MBAs with a concentration in information management are seeing changes, too. “We’re noticing a nice up-tick in the number of recruiters coming to McCombs for information technology students,” says Sean Desmond, MBA ’06. “This year has been overwhelming; it’s a packed house.”

Stacey Rudnick, director of MBA Career Services, reports that only 3 percent of the 2005 MBA class pursued a concentration in information management—despite an average salary for these post-graduation positions of $84,500 (up from about $76,000 in 2004). Again, IM had the highest salary than any other MBA concentration.

“Technology is a critical component to any large business, and it’s specifically important for managers to have a background in IM,” Rudnick explains. “Nobody wants MBAs to write computer programs. Companies are paying them to leverage technology to make their business better and make good decisions about technology infrastructure.”

To generate more enthusiasm among students, corporations have taken it upon themselves to head up IT marketing campaigns. Last year, Bill Gates visited several universities, spreading the word that IT is far from dead, and he plans to continue the college tour this year. National Instruments also offers a scholarship to McCombs MIS students, and Procter & Gamble helped the business school fund a marketing campaign—complete with promotional posters, brochures and events—which they hope will catch the eyes of undergraduates still deliberating their choice of majors.

And while recruiters and business schools keep chanting that IT jobs are here to stay, bigwigs such as Vinton Cerf, senior vice president of Technology Strategies for MCI—and widely known as a “father of the Internet”—underline those statements. He recently said he believes 99 percent of all the applications in the Internet have not yet been invented.

“These jobs aren’t going anywhere,” says Knight of National Instruments. “We’re just waiting for the students to wake up and come calling.”