The most tempting are salaries and development opportunities. Soft skills as a ticket to a career in IT
What makes women want to work in IT? As the No FluffJobs survey showed, female IT candidates are mainly attracted by the opportunity to broaden their skills and develop in a particular field (71%), but also by the salary (71%). For many of them, however, the entry into the industry is difficult – this is the opinion of as many as 75% of female candidates for IT jobs. 40% of women indicate that they do not know where to start, a similar percentage is unable to find a job offer that suits them, and every third respondent admits that she has a problem with choosing the right specialization.
And in turn, what skill do female IT professionals already working in the industry find most useful in working in the industry? As it turns out, it is largely the ability to work in a group (as much as 92 percent of indications). The ability to solve problems, in turn, was indicated by 86 percent of women surveyed, while analytical skills – 82 percent.
– Eurostat data for the years 2013-2019 shows that Poland leads the European Union in terms of the number of female graduates in science (STEM) per one thousand inhabitants (future specialists aged 20-29 is more than 320 thousand). This is positive and encouraging data, but the IT world is open not only to women with technical education – says Magdalena Gawłowska-Bujok, co-founder and COO of No FluffJobs. – According to our survey, 46 percent of women working in this sector hold positions not directly related to programming, such as project manager. This may be a motivation for women who would like to enter the IT sector, do not have specialized education and do not necessarily want to program, but have developed soft skills. And these, as it turns out, are according to female IT specialists the most useful in working in the industry.
Specializations and technologies popular among female IT specialists and candidates
A survey conducted by No FluffJobs found that more than half of women working in IT are involved in coding. And in this case, the largest percentage of them specialize in Backend (15%), Frontend and Fullstack (5.4%). Some respondents indicated DevOps and Big Data – 4 percent each, as well as Security (2.8 percent), AI and Mobile – 2.4 and 2.6 percent, respectively. When asked what technologies they work with on a daily basis, nearly 30 percent, indicated SQL, just over 20 percent JavaScript, 19.3 HTML and CSS, and 15 percent Java.
However, the largest number of respondents in this question (46 percent) answered that programming skills are not required for the position they currently hold. Among the most popular specializations in this case among women turned out to be Testing (18.6 percent), Project Management (16 percent), Business Analysis (11.1 percent) and UX (9.3 percent).
– All these data show how versatile Polish female IT specialists are and how wide is the spectrum of specializations they represent – says Paulina Król, Head of People & Operations at No FluffJobs. – In the “female” IT there is no single dominant branch, which gives a lot of chances to get into the industry to representatives of different professions. Looking at this picture from the perspective of the challenges that IT companies have today, the emergence of more women in the industry can quickly help to fill the current staffing gap and a new look at recruitment processes.
No FluffJobs also decided to find out which of the specializations in IT are most in demand among female candidates for jobs in the sector. The most frequently indicated areas by women aspiring to work in the industry were as follows: UX/UI (29.4 percent), Testing (21.2 percent), Frontend (16.3 percent), Project Management (14.7 percent), Design (13.6 percent) and Business Analysis (13 percent).
Job satisfaction, promotion opportunities and pay rises according to female IT professionals
Polish female IT professionals praise their work in the technology sector and recommend it to others. 68 percent of women in the industry have received a raise in 2021, and 3/4 indicate that they have a chance for promotion at their current company.
Working in IT brings satisfaction to the vast majority of female professionals participating in the survey. Nearly 71 percent of respondents indicated that they feel fulfilled at work. In addition, 67% of professionals indicated that they would recommend their current employer to their colleagues.
The most important factors that shape the positive perception of the industry, female IT professionals surveyed indicated the possibility of development (88.4%), high salaries (89.9%) and the openness of companies to allow remote working (77.7%).
– The IT industry offers women great opportunities for development, so it is no wonder that they are increasingly willing to decide to enter it. As our survey has shown, working in this sector brings a lot of satisfaction to female IT professionals, which is certainly influenced not only by exposure to new technologies, but also issues such as the possibility of promotion to a higher position and acquiring new skills – says Magdalena Gawłowska-Bujok, co-founder and COO at No FluffJobs.
