IT Students Career Confidence and Career Identity During COVID-19

COVID-19 disrupted the professional preparation of university students, with less opportunity to engage in professional practice due to a reduced employment market. Little is known about how this period impacted upon the career confidence and career identity of university students. This research paper explores the career confidence and identity of university students in Information Technology (IT) prior and during the COVID-19 period. Using a survey method and quantitative analysis, ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis tests with different sensitivity and variance standards were used during analysis to present mean and mean rank of data collected during 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. 1349 IT students from an Australian University reported their career confidence. The results indicate IT students' career confidence maintained during the period. In 2021, the results indicate increased career commitment of IT students showing higher professional expectations to work in IT along with greater self-awareness regarding their professional development needs. Even with increased career confidence as observed in this study, supporting university students to explore their career options and build upon their career identity, and more broadly their employability, remains an important activity for universities to curate in their graduates.