Educational system in Romania should adjust its curriculum to the labor market needs, not just in terms of IT degrees, where demand is much higher than supply, but also in terms of communication and teamwork within a company, Andreea Stanescu says.
“Education, education, education – universities in Romania must to adjust their curricula to the market needs and get the entire industry involved, not just some companies, in a constant dialog. There’s a fierce competition on the IT work force market, as companies need people familiar with various technologies but have trouble finding them, because most of those technologies are not taught in schools.”
Stefanini Romania, for instance, has trouble finding people for project management positions, as well as for supplier, services and risk management positions. IT colleges turn out about 7,000 graduates a year but the market needs twice more than that.
The Brazilian company has been operating in Romania since 2004 and last year the number of employees in this country stood at more than 1,000 in its two centers in Bucharest and Sibiu. The two centers provide IT support services, as well as software development services for companies in 50 countries, including USA, Germany and France.
Stefanini seeks mostly people with foreign language skills, because its two local offices provide support in 12 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Hungarian, Russian, Greek, Bulgarian and Hebrew.
Romania’s educational system has always provided well-trained students in terms of foreign language communication skills, but lately employers have noticed a decline in the level of knowledge. There are a great deal of IT support centers working with foreign clients in Romania so demand is higher than the number of candidates.
Besides the lack of IT specialization in universities’ curricula and the foreign language communication skills of graduates, the students are not ready to start working in a company because they lack the necessary competencies to do so.
“We’re talking knowledge or skills without which one can hardly find a job in a multinational company or a large local company – communication, teamwork.”
Employers have to compensate for this by training the employees themselves and a different approach to education would give higher education graduates more chances for success.
One of the things the educational system should do is put mandatory internships in the curriculum, so students could see what it means to work in the business sector. “This is easier said than done, considering how much work education institutions have to do to implement this,” Stanescu concluded.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)