New Zealand's next generation of IT graduates can't simply rely on technical aptitude to get jobs.
In the rapidly evolving world of technology, what businesses are looking for in university graduates has changed in the past decade, says Adam Ferguson, general manager of engineering and experience at accounting software provider MYOB.
As the working environment has transformed, companies are seeking a different kind of person, he says: "Hiring graduates has really evolved from looking for technical competency, to looking for the ability to collaborate and work as a team.
"Technology is a team game - you can't operate working in a silo," he says. "If an individual can't work in a team, they invariably fail."
Over the next decade, Ferguson also hopes there will be more diversity in the technology industry, especially increasing the number of women in the IT sector.
To give New Zealand university students "real-life experience" of a team environment, MYOB has created a nationwide IT Challenge with the Management Consulting Club at the University of Auckland Business School. The national final will be held this week; groups of students will take a business problem and together design and build a software solution.
"In the competition they have to work as a team, understand the problem they're trying to solve and build a prototype where you can see the path to solving the client's problem. Their ability to work as a group can be the difference between winning and losing," Ferguson says.
That reflects the business world, where the way software products are built today is vastly different from 10 years ago. Back then, "the waterfall process" of development would take around 18 months to design, build and test a product - but could miss the mark by the time it was released.
"Today, we try to get the minimum viable product [MVP] to market as lean and as skinny as we possibly can, to validate we're actually solving the client problem; then we go through another stage of testing," Ferguson says. "It's far more effective but, to do it, teams need to collaborate and work together in a way that didn't exist before."
The working environment has also changed. Where development used to take place behind partitioned desks in a "very quiet environment", typical days at MYOB now begin with a stand-up meeting at a wall peppered with post-it notes where team members talk through the process.
"The IT industry has a lot of introverts so we need to create an environment, structures and processes to drive the collaboration required," says Ferguson.
Improving diversity in the industry - in gender, race and age - is a key focus of his company. Young graduates bring fresh perspectives into business and adopt new technology faster than the existing workforce.
This year, MYOB began the "Develop Her" programme in its Melbourne office, teaching women with no formal IT qualifications how to code.
"We really want to lift the female representation in IT," Ferguson says. "It's typically a male-dominated industry;females bring a different perspective on design and different team dynamics. We see the difference in teamwork when we have a better gender balance.
"In five to 10 years, my hope is that we will see more diversity. But having those core skills will remain constant."
MYOB and the Management Consulting Club launched the first IT Challenge last year as a trial event at the University of Auckland. Last year's winning team created a cloud-based "shift trading floor", an application allowing employees to swap their work shifts with colleagues easily. The same University of Auckland team won its regional competition this year and will defend the title this weekend.
The team's key developer, Roman Amor, says the challenge opened his eyes to business IT: "I loved the freedom the challenge offered us and the chance to innovate."
As a leading technology supplier in New Zealand and Australia, MYOB believes it has an obligation to put back into the technology community, working with universities to help develop technology specialists who will build the next generation of start-ups.
Ferguson sees the technology opportunities for businesses and graduates only growing: "The cloud is the driving force but when you peel underneath it - to find things like machine learning, big data and the internet of things - technology is getting more pervasive," he says.
"There's an incredible appetite for IT skills. They are skills that can be transferred and taken global. A lot of traditional companies now talk about having digital strategies and how they transform their business into a digital business that has relevance today. For IT graduates, the world is their oyster."
The MYOB IT Challenge national final takes place at the University of Auckland on 1-2 July. For more information, visit www.myobitchallenge.co.nz.