Non-technical or soft skills are nearly universally
agreed upon as a primary factor for employing a
graduate in an IT profession by industry managers.
To evaluate the skill requirements for agile
personnel in the IT sectors of Germany and the
United States, [15], analyzed job postings of online
job portals and discovered that non-technical skills
are more common in the United States than in
Germany. Further, both countries considered test
and requirements management the most essential
concept in management. Project management,
business domain expertise, and interpersonal skills
are relevant because they allow IT departments to
collaborate successfully with other departments,
internal users, external customers, and suppliers,
[10]. The increased emphasis on having more
business content in educational institutions' IT
courses has resulted in a reorientation of Hong
Kong's computing courses, with fewer technical
subjects included in their curriculum to meet the
industry's business skills demands, [8]. Previous
research has found that college graduates lack the
required soft skills, [16], [17], and struggle with
communication skills, implying that colleges or
universities should teach students how to develop
these skills, [18], [19]. Therefore, academic
institutions must improve their curriculum by giving
students access to the extended practice of these
abilities for them to obtain a position in the IT
industry.
In terms of technical skills, the industry assumes
that an IT graduate will have the fundamental IT
knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for
industry employment. However, it is impossible to
foresee the specific technology students will use
after graduation and the competencies needed due to
the rapid evolution of computing technologies. The
top skills identified in 2005 include Web
programming, Unix, C++, Java, SQL programming,
and Oracle DB, [10], while, [19], identified
operating systems, security, hardware, networking,
and database as the top five skills in 2010. These
skills have been part of the IT core curriculum for a
long time. The development of skills in wireless
communication and applications, security, online
applications, and data management is also growing,
[20]. However, the top competencies required of IT
workers in 2020 have shifted. Security, cloud
computing, data analytics and data science,
networking and wireless, software development, AI
and machine learning, project management,
programming, IT service management, and
virtualization are among the top 10 skills, [21]. The
changes in the list of top skills indicate that IT
technical skills evolve with time, and academic
institutions should regularly review their curriculum
to ensure that their graduates possess the technical
skills required to navigate and succeed in an ever-
changing IT industry.
Despite efforts to address the problem of keeping
up with new and emerging technological
advancements in the field, the gap between the skill
sets required for IT employees and the competencies
gained in the academic environment by IT graduates
continues to widen, [21]. A global IT skills gap has
resulted from the increasing demand for IT workers,
which is projected to persist and potentially increase
in the future, [22]. To effectively bridge the IT skills
gap and increase the employability of graduates,
there is a need to evaluate the IT core competencies
from time to time because technology does not
remain constant and must be aligned with
significant developments in the industry. The IT
competency model published by the United States
Department of Labor (Figure 1) defines the
competencies required for people to succeed in their
chosen career in IT, [23]. Tiers 1-3 represent “soft
skills” and work readiness skills that most
employers need, and tiers 4 and 5 represent
industry-wide technical competencies required to
develop career paths within the IT industry. These
competencies are cross-cutting since they enable an
employee to switch between industry sub-sectors.
Regardless of the sector in which they operate, Tier
4 covers the competencies to wherein employees
across the industry can benefit. Tier 5 covers a sub-
set of industry technical competencies specific to an
industry sector. The ACM Committee for
Computing Education in Community Colleges
(ACM CCECC) used this competency model to
identify the technical competency areas of an
associate degree in information technology. These
IT competencies are client computing and user
support, database and information management,
digital media and immersive technology,
networking and convergence, programming and
application development, and competency in
servers, storage, and virtualization, [24]. Further, the
Minnesota Dual-Training Pipeline identified
industry-sector technical competencies for IT
Infrastructure Administration using the model of,
[23]. These competencies include network/system
architecture, configuration and management,
storage/data/backup/disaster recovery, cloud,
network support and security, telecommunications
and collaboration, systems analysis, hardware
devices/platforms, virtualization, and monitoring,
[25].
WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on INFORMATION SCIENCE and APPLICATIONS
DOI: 10.37394/23209.2023.20.36
Christine Lourrine S. Tablatin