IT grad student Terry Rozmus is having trouble finding internships despite opportunities in his industry being painted as plentiful.

Students are being warned a computing degree is no easy pass to a good job, with about 100 students applying for each graduate internship opportunity.

Ruth McDavitt, who sits on the advisory board of Victoria University's School of Engineering and Computer Science, said finding a first job in the industry hadn't necessarily become harder over the past 10 years.

But media reports quoting employers' concerns about "skills shortages" meant the gap between students' expectations and the reality of getting a job had never been wider.

McDavitt manages the "Summer of Tech" programme which aims to match tertiary students nationwide with summer internships.

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This year, 1700 students applied for the 250 summer internships on offer, not all of which would be filled because some were not entry-level positions, she said.

"The odds are about 8:1 which is very good. If you are applying for a standard IT graduate programme with anyone from IBM to Xero, the odds will be about 100:1."

Terry Rozmus, a graduate student in computer science at Massey University in Auckland, was one of the disappointed Summer of Tech internship candidates.

Comments from employers' groups and careers advice from the Government were painting a misleading picture of the opportunities in the sector, he said.

SUPPLIED Ruth McDavitt (above) says some international students are exploited and desperate.

"There are almost no entry-level positions. My experience with graduate internships is similar. There are only a few dozen of those at most and they each have hundreds of applicants.

"There may be a shortage in the market but there is a bottleneck at the bottom-end that is difficult to get through."

Rozmus, who did his first degree in earth sciences and worked as a web developer for a few years before undertaking his graduate diploma, said he was not sure if he would make the same study choices again.

"I do have a passion for this kind of work, but I'd probably be asking a lot more questions about what the right way to get into the market is, because I'm beginning to suspect university is not exclusively the right answer."

His experience was by no means unique, he said. Many students who had applied for Summer of Tech internships were "suffering through a process that makes them feel unemployable", he said.

"I am averaging in the 'A' range in my current computer science qualification, so I would say I am more than capable as a programmer.

"Even so, I'm not sure that matters. If the Government claims that software development graduates are, 'highly sought after', then surely even 'B' level students should be able to get entry-level jobs without the need to compete with hundreds of other applicants on every job they apply for."

Rozmus said he wanted government officials to at least acknowledge there was a problem that needed to be addressed.

"I also want companies to realise they are helping to perpetuate the problem they say exists in the market.

"Despite a few exceptions, companies generally don't want the trouble of hiring a new graduate and training them so their skills become more market-ready."

Rozmus was considering applying for summer work on a helpdesk before he resumed further studies next year, or working for free on open source software projects to build his experience.

McDavitt agreed the latter was an option for students who had the "time and ability to work for free", but that had to be set against the fact that expectations and time commitments in tertiary education had "gone crazy".

Some open source communities could be "quite toxic", she said.

She estimated that only about 30 per cent of tertiary students and no more than 2 per cent of high school students were "work ready".

"Everyone wants seniors but no-one wants to grow them. The 'skills shortage' is for those 'niche unicorns' with 20 years' experience in a brand new technology.

"It is perceived as a large investment to train someone on the job, and the tertiary institutions are just not able to keep up with the practical needs of industry – they are falling more and more behind."

Despite that, employers were using tertiary qualifications as a "filter" because they "can't be bothered looking through CVs", she said.

"The other filter they will use is 'you must be a New Zealand citizen', which is completely discriminatory."

SUPPLIED There are good outcomes - two students from this team attending a Summer of Tech "Hackathon" in Auckland went on to get internships with Xero.

McDavitt said she was keen on increasing diversity in the industry but only did limited outreach work outside the areas where she had roles available.

That was because of the "anxiety and stress of coming though with a massive student loan and high expectations, versus the reality", she said.

International students were "desperate" and being exploited, and immigration settings should be looked at, she said.

"Every week I meet someone who has been working for months unpaid in the IT sector in New Zealand and that is called slavery.

"International students have got high mental health risks because of the stress associated with their extremely high fees and their extremely low chances of employment."

Anyone who hired a skilled migrant should also be required to hire a local graduate, she suggested.

Programmes such as the high-profile "LookSee" initiative run by the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency to attract IT workers from around the world to Wellington should have had an internship clause, she said.

"Because what is the point of bringing in a skilled migrant if you are not getting the benefits of their seniority?"

Some students do get a leg-up finding work in the industry.

In addition to Summer of Tech, there are a smattering of competitions and initiatives that can bridge the gap between education and work, or help students stand out.

These include the Cyber Security Challenge run by Waikato University, Google's Code-In open source competition and Wellington firm Catalyst IT's Open Source Academy that gives about 20 high school students each year the opportunity to work on programming projects in an employment-like environment.

SUPPLIED Contributing to open source software projects, either independently or through competitions such as Google Code-In, can provide experience but doesn't pay the bills.

Catalyst IT director Don Christie, who also co-chairs industry body NZRise, also suggests volunteering for kids coding club Code Club Aotearoa as a possible way to increase employability.

Overall in the industry, salaries are going up and are predicted to keep rising, he said.

"Once candidates get on the ladder they do seem to progress quite quickly."

But the downbeat picture painted by McDavitt and Rozmus is one reality.

"The difficulty is always getting that first foot on the ladder," Christie said. "It does feel like some companies complain about shortages and then don't put the effort into internships.

"We are probably all sometimes guilty of being mistakenly prescriptive in our job descriptions."

Victoria MacLennan chairs the government-backed Digital Skills Forum which published a report last year that said New Zealand needed to educate or import thousands more IT workers each year if it was to close a growing skills gap in the industry.

But she described her experience recruiting a junior consultant for her software business, OptimalBI, as "heartbreaking" in a blog last month.

MacLennan had 93 applicants for the role, which required someone with two to three years' experience.

Two-thirds were immigrants to New Zealand, about half of whom were participating in an internship or a work-conversion study programme while looking for work, she said.

"My assessment of the CVs we received demonstrated to me there is not a tangible shortage of talent out there — either locally qualified or imported," she wrote in her blog.

"The heartbreaking stories indicated a bias and a lack of compassionate process implementation on the part of employers."

MacLennan – who is also a member of the Ministerial Advisory Group on the Digital Economy and Digital Inclusion, and chairman of Code Club Aotearoa – questioned whether it might be employers' skills that were falling short, rather than there being a skills shortage among applicants.

"The poor behaviour experienced by candidates, including no acknowledgement of applications, no response to queries, bias comments, terrible interview experiences, are often attributed to recruiters – as often as they are attributed to employers themselves.

"This behaviour is pretty appalling and reflects badly on the industry as a whole."

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