Why Most North American CS Graduates are Unemployable

Information Week has an interesting article based on comments from HCL Technologies’ CEO, Vineet Nayar. HCL is a $2.5B company with over 3,000 staff across the US and was recently asked why he didn’t employ more US graduates with Computer Science degrees. His simple answer is that they’re unemployable. They feel that they’re entitled to a high salary straight out of college, have limited real world knowledge and ultimately are not just as valuable as they think they are. In the end, he chooses to employ graduates from other countries where their skills are more applicable, they’re willing to work and understand that it takes time to build up your employment value.

This is a subject that is close to my own heart as I often wonder where is the guy that’s going to replace going to come from. It probably won’t be a US, or Canadian graduate but is more likely to be somebody from a developing country and somebody that has probably educated themselves outside of the academic bubble.