My question is - does having the word "IT" in a job description raise red-flags for a non-trivial number of potential recruits?
We are currently recruiting for software engineering roles spanning front-end type work (angular) through full stack & infrastructure (django, docker, database driven apps). In previous instances it has been roles that involved vision and machine learning applications.
Background:
I work for a semiconductor manufacturer. As such, we don't primarily ship software. Software is however (rather obviously) critical to ~every part of our process. The organization is structured with most software under the CIO / IT organization (there are reasons beyond the fact that we're not technically 'shipping' the deliverables; a semi mfg with N fabs is a lot like N companies in one; if software wasn't centralized somehow, each fab would be ~required to duplicate the work. Bad for efficiency, means work can't be load-balanced across fabs, etc)
The organization universally adds "IT" prominently to job reqs. Eg "Engineering Apps Developer" becomes IT Engineering Apps Developer". The work itself, and the phrasing of rest of the req, are "normal" and "compelling" for an engineer interested in the relevant areas.
This strikes me as needlessly limiting who the reqs may appeal to.
I have raised this internally, but get a lot of "Meh...". I haven't been in the org long, coming from a little different background than many (other companies that have more customer-facing software; roles under "R&D" orgs). My education background is CS ugrad at a well regarded school. The work I'm responsible for is similar in scope and details to my previous orgs; given the business structure it makes some sense how we're structured. So I'm asking about our external recruiting efforts, not whether i should like my org's title.
Clearly it's a small issue among many, but after poling my network, the reactions are somewhat strong that "IT" has distinct connotations from "software engineering" - in a similar sense as "tester" is often distinct from "developer".
Is this valid? Should I continue to try to get the org to stop advertising 'software engineer' roles as "IT" (or with much less emphasis)