Why aren't Scotland's IT graduates interested in working in its financial services industry?

Scotland's IT graduates could be missing a trick by overlooking all the technology jobs in Scotland's financial services sector.

Computer science graduates are highly sought after by banks in Scotland - especially Glasgow - and the City. So what's putting them off?

With investment banks in the City increasing their pay offering to new graduates by an average or 5 per cent to £45k-£50k, and rates for IT graduates in Scotland's banks reaching £35,000 why don't they take the bait?

It seems that banking's reputation is deterring some IT graduates.

"They know they can earn more money by working for a bank but feel that it means selling their souls," says one Scotsman with a masters in computer science who has just accepted a £37k associate software developer job with a bank in Scotland.

"I regularly get calls from head-hunters asking me to consider banking jobs, and so do many of my friends," he says.

But some do not take up the offers. "Most computer science graduates know there are jobs in banking but they consider the work less interesting than in other sectors, where jobs are just as easy to get," he adds. He has chosen to settle in Scotland because he has a home here, rather than to move to London for higher salaries.

The IT skills most in demand in Scotland are developers with experience in either ASP.NET, C# and C++ or JavaScript, HTML, CSS or Java.

Chris Cater from the Graduate Recruitment Bureau says: "Those are the skills that are used to develop and support black box trading systems. Maths, physics and computer science graduates with strong statistics and software development skills in these languages are in high demand among investment banks."

Cater says IT graduates can command salaries of up to £50k even for first jobs - although these vacancies are in London.

Mike Leeman, head of Scotland for recruiter FreshMinds, says: "There is high demand in Scotland for these skills in investment banks and support companies too, but pay rates are more like £25k-£35k."

Jon Goss, at Bright Purple in Edinburgh, says: "We are seeing rates of up to £40k, for IT specialists with the right skills, in investment and retail banks, but banking is not an area that IT graduates favour. In some cases I think they just do not know about it."

Companies are attracted to Scotland because of the high calibre of IT skills available at lower than London salaries.

Avaloq, which produces software for private banks such as Coutts and Adam & Co, opened up an office in Scotland six months ago and is looking for 500 graduates by 2014-15.

Retail banks are also looking for programmers for business intelligence systems.

"There is plenty of demand for good candidates from banks but many prefer to work for companies such as Sky or Amazon," says Leeman.

It could be that by passing over banking jobs, Scotland's IT specialists are missing out.