AUGUST 16, 2011Intellicom featured in Kearney Hub article about technology jobs in Kearney Nearby jobs plentiful in one UNK field
By Lacey McPhillips
Hub Intern
KEARNEY — Growing opportunities in Nebraska are keeping management information systems students at home.
A May survey showed that 90 percent of the University of Nebraska at Kearney’s graduating MIS students stay in Nebraska.
“The main reason they’re staying in Nebraska is there’s just so much opportunity right now,” said Ross Taylor of the marketing and MIS department. “Companies like Intellicom and Xpanxion are growing really rapidly. They need tech people, and MIS is positioning students to go into these jobs really well.”
Intellicom and Xpanxion both have offices in Kearney. Taylor often hears from companies looking to hire students from UNK and always emails the job listings to his students.
“I have more employers asking me to refer students to them than I have students looking for jobs,” Taylor said. On average, he sends out four to five job postings a month and sometimes sends 10 or 12.
Charlie Pitkin, who graduated in May with a degree in business administration with an MIS emphasis, got a job with Xpanxion, a software company.
“I like Nebraska. It is ‘the good life,’ after all,” he said. Pitkin didn’t like the idea of having to move to a big city somewhere. Even Omaha is too big for him, he said.
Business administration majors can choose an emphasis area in marketing or management information systems.
Both are part of the same department, but MIS is the smaller of the two areas, Taylor said.
In addition to learning the business trade, MIS students get a background on the technology side of things. Career paths for MIS students include sales, software development, systems analysis and careers that any business major could get.
While many companies are outsourcing and developing offices overseas where expenses are less, these positions are staying in America because they require a lot of interaction with clients, Taylor said.
The Midwest offers an ideal location for many businesses, Taylor said. Although the cost of hiring employees is greater than foreign labor, the Midwest has cheaper labor than on the coasts, and companies can avoid problems of drastically different time zones and misunderstanding accents.
Taylor estimated that the starting salary for quality assurance personnel or software analysts is about $38,000 for someone with little experience, but that number would grow with an applicant’s experience.
“Our students get jobs, and they get them very quickly,” Taylor said. “To the best of my knowledge, every single graduate I’ve had has found a job within months of graduating — found a job or gotten into graduate school.”
Emails of job postings sent to MIS students and the Career Fair, which offered students a chance to speak with employers, made looking for a job easy, Pitkin said.
Pitkin had three other potential jobs when he accepted his position at Xpanxion.
The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business recognized UNK’s business schools as being among “the best business schools in the world,” according to the department’s website.
UNK’s school of Business and Technology is an internationally accredited AACSB school.
“The faculty really cares about you. They get to know you on a first-name basis,” Pitkin said. “They really go out of their way to make sure you get internships and job experience, that you’re keeping up your grades so you can go out in the job force when you’re done and make a good career out of your business degree.”
e-mail to:
sara.giboney@kearneyhub.com
©Kearney Hub 2011
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