Why juniors should be given a chance - column

Over the past 20 years, IT education in Ukraine has brought more than 600 new specialists to the market. Most of them are juniors, he writes ain.ua.

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They are the first to experience every crisis in the labor market. Last year, on average, it was necessary to send 270 job reviews, go through processing at 2 to 6 companies, in order to finally receive an offer. The path is difficult, but for 1,189 employed graduates of ours in 2023, on the basis of which the above data were derived, it is quite real. Detailed analytics about the start of a career in IT are available by link.

Based on his own experience of matching employers and graduates, Vladyslav Solovei, B2B Partnerships Manager at Mate academy, argues in an author's column for AIN.UA why companies should not be afraid to hire juniors, even in turbulent periods.

Stereotype No. 1. Juniors don't know anything and need to be taught everything

Over the course of eight months, our team helped recruiters of partner companies close 189 junior and trainee vacancies. I have studied the requirements for each in detail and can tell you how high a level of training is usually required to get into the position. Juniors already confidently possess a knowledge base of algorithms, principles of OOP and syntax of a certain programming language - therefore, they can immediately start performing simple tasks and bring benefit to the team. And in fact, companies that have a pretty good track record of hiring juniors continue this practice. For example, among our partners there is an IT company that has hired 15 students in the same eight months and is satisfied with closing vacancies.

Indeed, they still need a mentor among more experienced colleagues, but this only helps the professional development of both developers. First of all, because of the main principle of effective learning using the technique of Nobel laureate in physics Richard Feynman: if you want to understand something well and consolidate it, then try to teach it.

In addition, juniors often do not hesitate to ask "stupid" questions, which, upon closer analysis, may turn out not to be stupid at all and point to deep systemic errors in the product and development approach. To this, you can add a fresh perspective and the constant generation of new ideas from new specialists who have not yet had time to get infected with the established thinking of the team.

Stereotype #2: Juniors take up all the time and attention of more experienced team members, causing productivity to drop

Now in the Western IT-community there is a widespread opinion that juniors paired with more experienced specialists, on the contrary, speed up the development process. When I got to my first position as a full-stack developer, it allowed the company to gradually reduce the backlog of features and deliver solutions that seniors simply did not have time for, because the latter focused on higher priority tasks.

It all depends on the right hiring and building a quality code review and mentoring process. The enthusiasm and flexibility of juniors combined with the experience and decision-making skills of seniors creates a productive synergy that accelerates the development of quality products.

Stereotype No. 3. It is important for a junior developer to have a higher technical education

I myself am a former developer with an IPSA diploma from KPI, so I understand how this stereotype was formed. The university program has many specific in-depth details that give a broader understanding of how different components of information systems interact: the same OSI model, low-level programming languages ​​like Assembler, in-depth study of algorithms, etc. However, a strong theoretical base can be acquired in other ways, and it is not the only guarantee for becoming a class engineer. An important role is played by practice and high-quality feedback, which, unfortunately, are currently far from the strong point of ZVO. After university, most graduates additionally take practical online courses or look for an unpaid internship, which you still cannot get without at least minimal practical experience with your pet projects.

In addition, the attitude of employers to online education as an alternative to traditional education is already changing around the world. Northeastern University's latest online education perception study [Page 9] found that 61% of HR leaders trusted the quality of online education and believed it was equal to traditional education when considering candidates. And 71% of HR leaders actually hired people with online degrees or diplomas.

This trend is also being followed in the Ukrainian market — in 2023, 60% of our employed graduates previously had a diploma in non-technical specialties. It is noteworthy that specialists with such a background, thanks to their experience and knowledge, can significantly strengthen teams that develop products in narrowly focused domains - edtech, biotech, fintech. On the other hand, 7% of graduates did not have a higher education at the time of starting work, which indicates the tolerant attitude of employers towards specialists with only online diplomas.

Stereotype No. 4. Junior specialists quickly leave the first company

According to data before the start of the full-scale war, 61% of our June graduates worked in the first company for more than a year. The sample consisted of 1622 students. Data were taken until February 24, 2022 due to layoffs in the IT sphere, which do not allow providing objective statistics.

From the psychology of the employer-employee relationship, we can say that people tend to stay in companies where they have growth opportunities commensurate with their success. Especially sweaters who, with high probability, made a conscious decision to change jobs and are highly motivated to learn, gain experience and be top performers.

Visnovok

It is common for companies to assess the hiring error rate when they hire a specialist who is quickly dismissed for various reasons. There is another side — the lost opportunity to strengthen the team with a talented specialist due to, for example, prejudice. Juniors often fall into the second category.

The market situation, according to various studies from DOU and Djinni, shows a significant decrease in junior vacancies since the beginning of the war. This cautious attitude and the current priority of hiring developers with experience may lead to another problem - a shortage of qualified seniors in the market in the future. Simply because without a sufficient number of new junior specialists, no one will gain experience and become middlemen and seniors, which will significantly heat up the hiring market.

In summary, Juns can be a huge boost to your team and can be useful right away. They can relieve seniors from routine and simple tasks and bring a fresh perspective to development processes and approaches. Therefore, it is always useful to give a chance to a candidate who suits you objectively in terms of practical skills and software skills, and he will already catch up with years of development experience with cool mentorship.

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