Trainee programs - A source of success? : An explorative study of companies in the Swedish IT-Industry

Abstract: Background: Firms are today competing for educated and qualified people within the IT-industry, due to the high business activity. Firms require new employees to have both a formal education and relevant work expe-riences. Newspaper articles state that IT-companies have difficulties finding qualified employees and that they also see this shortage of competencies as the most prominent hinder to economic growth. To handle this shortage are an increased amount of companies starting structured training activities for their new employees, which by general terms is called trainee programs. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to do an explorative study of compa-nies in the Swedish IT-industry, to see if and why a trainee program could be a source of competitive advantage. Method: A qualitative approach has been applied when collecting data. Four small case studies were made by interviewing top managers and col-lecting company related information. The companies had diverse sizes and different experiences from trainee programs. The data was analyzed with the Resource-based view as a guiding theory applying the VRIN framework. Conclusion: By doing the studies three value adding aspects was found. They were staffing/recruitment, marketing and, organizational learning and development. Within the resource-based views boundaries were: recruitment and staffing found to be a source of at best tem-porary competitive advantage, the same conclusion applies for trai-nee program as a marketing tool. Organizational learning and de-velopment could be seen as a source of competitive advantage due to the complex impact a trainee program has to an organization. To summarize the above mentioned; trainee program could be a source of sustainable competitive advantage. Three obstacles for implementing trainee programs were found; feeling of being to small, short-term thinking and the lack of time.