Meeting the demand for IT employees: can career choice be managed?

Abstract

Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that the demand for IT workers will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, the supply of IT graduates, as measured through a sample of universities in the southeastern U.S suggest that the number of IT majors appears to have leveled off at level that will not meet the demand. This paper presents one organization's efforts at designing an innovative student internship program that will hopefully both entice students to major in IT, but also serve as the conduit to place these IT majors into IT positions. Social Cognitive Career Theory, a variant of Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, is enlisted to help explain how such a program can serve both as a recruiting tool as well as a retention tool.