Holiday homework: The extra credit is passing IT on

Homework assignments over the holidays are despised. Nevertheless, I have an assignment for you. It’s one you can carry out whenever you are talking with a career-minded young person who has a business interest and a technical acumen.
Talk about careers in information systems.
 

By Michael Goul  |  Chairman, Department of Information Systems

Yes, I know – Homework assignments over the holidays are despised. Nevertheless, I have an assignment for you. It’s one you can carry out whenever you are speaking with a career-minded young person who has a business interest and a technical acumen. Did you have mentors who helped you see the world in a different way? It’s hard to pay them back — but one way is to pass IT on. Tell the young people you see and meet this December what a career in information systems is all about. Help them examine the job growth statistics.

Talk to them about starting salaries, what is meant by terms and phrases in the job listings on Dice.com and other sites and explain where they can go and what they can do with a strong business education backed up by solid technical, project management and development methodology skills and knowledge. Show them where to find internships. Explain the importance of internships and work experience being listed on their first resume. Tout that the field of big data will be all about delivering business value.

Encourage them to explore the field. Join them in visiting some university information systems program web sites — check out our video. At the W. P. Carey School of Business, our entering first-year students and transfer students have general knowledge about the traditional business disciplines – marketing, accounting, finance, management – but they often don’t know what information systems is all about. Take the word information: It conveys a very broad context, a general notion — and most students won’t know what the important business information even is, yet.

For systems — well, the not so straightforward definition is: a group of interacting, interrelated or independent elements forming a complex whole. So taken together, the two terms, information systems, are just down right confusing. Be ready for some tough questions. Why is HealthCare.gov having so many issues? Won’t my job be outsourced if I take that career path? What are people who are working in information systems doing about sustainability and our environment? Will I be a programmer working in a cubicle all of my life? Be prepared with answers.

In the movie, "The Graduate," Hoffman’s character is told that the next big thing is, in one word: Plastics. Aren’t information systems and big data analytics today’s plastics? And you can ask them — do the other business areas have a whole day each year dedicated to their legitimacy? Information systems does – it’s Cyber Monday – and this last one was the biggest ever. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t reach them with the first try. I recently leveraged the apparent insatiable appetite for reality TV among potential students to explain the field.

Make the wrong career choice, and the result is even worse than an episode of "Tattoo Nightmares." What are the attitudes and interests of information systems majors? Innovation, disruption, transformation, obliterating boundaries, winning — like the best of the best on "Top Chef." For students who show more interest in the development side: they want to build the future, design value from chaos and solve problems others just talk about. They like to push the limits to envision what can be done, like those amazing problem solvers on "Cake Boss." A focus on analytics and big data? More of the discoverer type, the one who wants to predict the future, rather than wait for it to happen. This one takes the road less traveled, and seeks the message in the noise.

The reality show analogue? "The Amazing Race." Our Executive Advisory Board has helped us immensely in designing curriculum so our students can land great jobs. Just this past month, they helped us revitalize our messaging and refocus our recruiting for the two undergraduate bachelor of science degrees we offer in the Department. They’ve been working with new hires, and they are seeing firsthand the impact of high-quality information systems graduates — even if that cadre is smaller than needed. The Arizona Chapter of the Society for Information Management even has a special board position for helping to build interest in STEM.

Yes — an information systems student is classified as a STEM student by the Department of Homeland Security. Most everyone has heard of the issues surrounding the need for more national STEM graduates. Bottom line, we are all in this together: recruiters, high school counselors, faculty, current students, alums, university advisors, parents, organizations like SIM and the Association for Information Systems, etc. It is a hard assignment, but you probably remember when somebody made that effort to talk with you very early on about your career choices. It was a special day. Pass IT on.