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From...
Sky-high pay for IT grads blows ceiling
June 24, 1998
Web posted at: 9:30 AM EDT
by Barb Cole-Gomolski
(IDG) -- Last winter, while a senior at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., Han Yi was fielding multiple job offers with salaries at about $47,000.
Now a software developer at Bellcore in Parsippany, N.J., Yi is like a lot of computer science majors who easily secured lucrative jobs long before their recent graduations.
But soaring salaries for college graduates have forced companies to re-examine their information systems pay scales to placate IS veterans who resent the highly paid recruits.
"Kids just out of school making $50,000 to $60,000 a year is unbelievable to me," said Joan Jennerjahn, director of business systems at Fleet Credit Card Services in Horsham, Pa.
Jennerjahn started her career as a bank teller 20 years ago, earning about $6,000 per year. "It took me years to make $50,000," she said.
A salary survey in April by the National Association of Colleges and Employers in Bethlehem, Pa., showed that the average salary for a computer science graduate was about $41,000 this year, up from $36,000 last year. And offers in the $50,000 to $60,000 range aren't uncommon, especially in the Northeast.
Unsettling news
Inflated starting salaries get noticed, particularly by IS professionals who were hired in the past three to five years, said Paul Kostek, president-elect of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. in Washington.
"If people were hired during [the mid-1990s] -- when salaries were relatively flat -- they may find that they are making less than some of these recent college graduates," Kostek said.
That was the case at Computer Task Group, Inc., a Dallas-based information technology consultancy with 5,500 employees. The company has had to re-evaluate salaries across the board and is giving what it calls "competitive advantage" raises to many employees, according to Cathy Peterson, director of corporate recruiting.
Peterson said the company has little choice if it wants to hold on to its IS talent.
"You get a ripple effect throughout the entire IS organization," said Tom Samson, national director of IT staffing services at Pro Staff Personnel Services in Irving, Texas.
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"If organizations don't adjust the salaries of experienced IS staffers, recruiters will come in and strip them dry," he said.
Hiring companies attributed the stellar salaries for graduates to the strength of the economy and the IS labor shortage.
"This has been the toughest year we've had in recent memory," said Al Jones, manager of college recruiting at American Management Systems, Inc., an IT consultancy in Fairfax, Va., that will hire about 780 college graduates this year.
As a result of the competitive market for college graduates, American Management Systems has had to widen its recruiting net to include non-computer science students who have an interest in a technical job, Jones said. For example, a liberal arts major who worked in the college computer center or stumbled upon information technology in an internship could possibly land a job with the company, he said.
The job market is so good for young graduates with computer science backgrounds that hiring managers said they worry about no-shows -- applicants who accepted jobs last winter but fail to report for work on their starting date because they received a better offer.
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