Jobs of data administrators are the most in demand in the country's ICT industry as it offers handsome salaries compared to other ICT professions, finds a new study.

An experienced data administrator, responsible for running data systems of an office, gets as much as Tk 6 lakh as monthly salary, albeit if the person is quite capable and has over three years' experience.

Sequentially, jobs of animators, business analysts and programmers are the next most sought-after from the freshers' point of view, according to the first “survey on ICT job market in Bangladesh”.

However, most of the newcomers in the ICT job market seek to be sales and marketing executives while data administration stands as the second best choice.

Daffodil International University (DIU) revealed the report in a ceremony on their Mirpur Road campus yesterday.

Of the total ICT workforce, 44.31 percent are undergraduate degree holders and 37.79 percent postgraduate, according to the survey.

Only 16 percent of the ICT jobholders are women, finds the new study of the private educational institution specialised in information and communication technology which surveyed 17,000 ICT professionals.

Unveiling the report, State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak said such surveys would create a huge impact in the industry.

He said though it was very unfortunate that the percentage of women in the ICT workforce was very low in Bangladesh, the country was not lagging behind in context to global trends.

The government has set a target to increase human resources in ICT, especially women, said Palak. “Currently, there are about a million ICT related workforce in the country and our target is to add another two million by 2021,” he said.

Attending the event, Hosne Ara Begum, managing director of Bangladesh Hi-Tech Park Authority, said usually they have to meet a huge number of investors but in every case they cannot present any survey report that represent the market.

“Now we can present this before them and this will be helpful for us to convince them on the potential of Bangladesh,” she said.

The survey was conducted from January to September last year. It incorporated interviews of 384 ICT organisations in the country alongside those that have ICT-related departments.

The survey also found that 39.97 percent of ICT managers got their jobs through online job portals, 19.41 percent contacting the companies' internal website while only 6.39 percent through educational institutions, meaning universities. When it comes to the nature of the job tenure, 87.9 percent were permanent while 12.1 percent contractual, the survey found.

With regard to demographic data, youths dominated the market with 34.54 percent of them aged between 26 to 30 years. Another 26.68 percent of the professionals were aged between 31 to 35 percent which 15.56 percent of 21 to 25 years.

This kind of survey should be run every alternative year encompassing a wider range so that educational institutions can get an idea about the trends of the ICT industry, said the speakers.

This data can also be placed before foreign investors so that they could get an idea about the country's human resources, they said.

DIU Board Chairman Md Sabur Khan and Director of Global Entrepreneurship Network Accelerates Susan Amat spoke while faculty members and students were also present.