Are you one of us?: How Employers Prioritize among IT Graduates

When we are designing IT education and degree programs, knowledge about what graduates need to succeed is important. One source of such knowledge are employers. This paper presents a survey of Norwegian employers asking what they are looking for in a recently graduated IT candidate. We confirm that the so called soft skills are highly prized. Among these, we identify a less reported concept of fitting into company or team culture as the most important. Another somewhat unexpected result is that employers do not expect to see a portfolio from graduates. Among technologies mentioned, Java is at the top followed closely by C# and .NET. Python and JavaScript are also mentioned often. Our study suggests that soft skills should be a focus throughout IT education programs.