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Women needed to fill IT jobs

Staffing experts say there’s a shortage of candidates for IT jobs, and women could be ideally suited to fill those positions.

Staffing experts say there's a shortage of candidates for IT jobs, and women could be ideally suited to fill those positions.

Although women make up roughly half of the workforce, men currently outnumber women 3 to 1 in the information technology industry.

Courtney McFate has seen those numbers firsthand.

As the lead hardware technician for UnityPoint Health, McFate works in the Quad Cities' hospitals and clinics as the "boots on the ground," fixing what's broken. McFate says her supervisor is male, along with her entire team.

"If you don't have the self-confidence of working with just males, it can be a little intimidating. But most of the males that I work with, they're great. They see me as an equal; they see me as just as good as they are, and so I don't personally have that problem where I work. But I've seen it," said McFate.

Staffing experts say they're looking for more candidates like McFate.

"We have a huge shortage right now from an IT talent perspective, where women, specifically, have a great opportunity," said Jennetta Williams, division director at Robert Half Technology.

She expects jobs in cybersecurity and mobile applications to take off -- and says women already have many of the skills needed to break into this male-dominated field.

"Definitely someone who has a strong analytic background. Somebody who is creative, and creative thinking. Somebody who has excellent customer service skills, who's interested in taking technology to the next level," said Williams.

McFate says it was a college professor who encouraged her to make the leap into the IT field. Now, she hopes more women will make the same decision.

"My teacher just saw the knack that I had for computers, and she gave me the push to do it, and said, 'If anybody could do it, you could.' And so I did," said McFate.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the IT industry will add more than 1.1 million job openings by 2024.

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