Executive search consultancy HAGER and IT career platform gotoitcareer enter into strategic partnership – Free academic IT lateral entry with job guarantee
‘Anyone with talent and passion for IT should have the opportunity to work in the most modern and exciting industry of our decade as a career changer,’ is how gotoitcareer founder Christopher Pilz formulates his vision, which is taking shape with the young career platform. Together with Martin Krill, Managing Partner of HAGER Executive Consulting GmbH, Christopher Pilz, former Managing Director of the IT system house Bechtle Frankfurt / Rhein-Main for many years, developed the idea and complex structure for a free dual academic certification programme with a secure start. Something that did not yet exist in Germany or Europe – and could thus seriously compete with the IT boot camps and coding schools modelled on the American model, which promise applicants a lot.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
What makes gotoitcareer new and different? From application to completion of the certification programme, there are no costs for IT career changers. Applicants are placed with a company from the tech sector before the start of the programme. The employment contract begins on day one of the training programme at the cooperating Provadis University Frankfurt (School of International Management & Technology). The company already pays a monthly salary during the practical, three to eight-month modular degree programme.
The costs of the training and all fees are also covered by the company. For any company that is constantly looking for IT specialists, this is a win-win situation for securing the future: gotoitcareer suggests to companies applicants who are filtered according to talent and suitability, whose motivation is high and who have already successfully mastered their career path. This ensures suitable matches. Many applicants have already completed an academic degree in another, often IT-related field. They take a much more mature and organised approach to the tasks they are given. The IT newcomers commit to staying with the company for two years.
Another pioneering achievement
Martin Krill emphasises HAGER’s role as a partnership insider: ’Historically, our DNA lies in the technology and IT sector. For more than 25 years, HAGER has been a leading specialist in IT recruiting with the best industry contacts; we have always been among the pioneers. Today, the IT sector is the fastest growing and most promising of all – and is facing its greatest challenge to date, as the shortage of IT specialists has now reached enormous proportions. All sectors will be facing further changes in the near future; they are all united by the pressure to innovate, automate and digitise. Some companies have already started to retrain employees to become software developers and data scientists in their own qualification programmes, as the regular market is practically empty.
Against this background, we see our joint work with gotoitcareer as a highly innovative and useful addition to our portfolio that is independent of our core services. This partnership enables HAGER to provide its customers with even more complex support and services. This means that HAGER is not just talking about the executive level or other key positions, but about all personnel measures. Together with gotoitcareer, we want to bring candidates into an industry that will secure their personal and financial future.’
‘Lateral entrants as cheap labour is not the point. We want to offer motivated people lucrative career opportunities in IT.’
Christopher Pilz, founder and CEO of gotoitcareer
‘Rethinking education’
For many years, Christopher Pilz experienced the challenge of recruiting suitable IT personnel on the German market from a company’s perspective. He was a customer of HAGER at the time and got to know Martin Krill. ‘I’m an IT career changer myself and I’m familiar with transitions. And today I’m amazed that no one had previously come up with the idea for a platform that we can now offer applicants with gotoitcareer: no costs for university studies, a job guarantee, a salary and the best prospects – and everything is organised right from the start. Now that we are fully up and running after a year of development and the recruitment, evaluation and selection processes have been tested and are stable, gotoitcareer is already receiving up to 3,000 digital applications a day. These include masters in chemistry or psychology, for example, as well as mathematicians.
Quite a few have a migration background. Overall, we see an average age of 35 years. We hear about exciting life stories. Many have already worked abroad after studying, some want to switch to IT after parental leave. They all see IT as a foreign language that they want to learn. If you want to get good at it quickly, you have to be prepared to learn a lot and be committed. Training is not a comfort zone, but it is rewarded with a secure position in an exciting industry. We have developed two certificate programmes with Provadis University. One is designed precisely to meet the needs of the future company. The second programme is more tech-specialised and also suitable for smaller companies.
Specialisation here takes place on a dual basis in the companies. Rethinking education was the incentive for Martin Krill and me to set up gotoitcareer. Together with IT companies, we have built study programmes that focus on the central modules of the subject. This enables us to offer graduates an academic foundation in a short space of time, so that they can start a career in IT. This has never been done before in Germany’ , so Christopher Pilz.
Already high demand for IT specialists
Over 300 applicants are currently going through the shortlisting and diagnostic process. They are first invited to qualification interviews by gotoitcareer and then have to complete tests. Among other things, they also have to record a video to give potential future companies an idea of who they are. Christopher Pilz: ‘Companies receive extensive diagnostics from us, which provides a reliable, very objective basis for recruitment. We competently assess cognitive abilities, imagination and communication skills, determination and much more. We also do things differently: we do not present candidates to several companies at the same time, but only one after the other. This way, we avoid outbidding the competition.’
‘The gotoitcareer career platform can make a big difference. Germany’s economic future is at stake when it comes to the shortage of IT specialists.’
Martin Krill, Managing Partner of HAGER Unternehmensberatung and co-founder of gotoitcareer
Part of a social responsibility
‘IT is a classic industry for career changers. As a rule, 60 per cent of management staff have not studied computer science,’ says Martin Krill from HAGER. The demand for specialists has always been high here, he explains, but there has been a lack of study places and sufficient training opportunities.
‘Industrial companies tell us that the average age of their employees in IT departments is currently often around 50 and that their retirement is therefore foreseeable.’ The shortage is exacerbated by Germany’s position in the ranking of attractive countries to work in – not very high up. Krill sees the overall consequences as dramatic: ‘We will see deindustrialisation in many sectors in Germany over the next ten years, and not just in the chemical and automotive industries. People who are highly specialised in these areas will then find it difficult to find a job. Other career paths will have to be opened up for them. If you don’t change, you lose. To put it bluntly: otherwise there is no chance for Germany as a business location. The people we can recruit for gotoitcareer are the managers of tomorrow. This means that gotoitcareer is not just a model, but also a social responsibility that we are taking on.’
