Software Engineering Fresh Graduates Career Choices and Software Industry Demands: An Empirical Analysis

Software Engineering is one of the modern engineering disciplines. The efficiency, novelty, creativity, and excellence of the products and services of the software industry significantly depend on the education being provided in universities. Bearing in mind the petition for experienced software engineers in the market and the software industry's emergent demands and trends, empirical analysis has been done by collecting the data from fresh software engineering graduates, professionals in the field of software engineering and online job portals. The main focus behind this study is basically to guide final year software engineering students to start a career in the specific areas (requirements engineering, software analysis, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance) of software engineering, identified by mapping the interest of fresh graduates, professional software engineers, and software industry demand. Our results show that professionals' feedback is similar to the jobs available on portals, which means our professionals provided more realistic feedback. Also, results show that more people are interested in requirement engineering but jobs are very limited in requirement engineering, software design, and testing. As far as software analysis, software implementation and software maintenance are concerned, professionals suggest that more people should select these areas as there are more job opportunities here. To summaries, there is a positive relationship between professionals' feedback and industry job openings. Both suggest software implementation is the richest job area. The state-of-the-art syllabus can be planned for software engineering program by keeping in mind the trends and demands of the software industry.