Sure, unemployment in this sector has stabilized, and economic indicators and recovering stock prices suggest a technical end to the recession. And the tech industry will likely once again lead our nation out of this recession as it has the last few. But hiring is a trailing indicator, and this time the trail looks long and rough.
Count on the length of this staffing lag tail being much longer than previous economic recoveries, stretching well into 2011. Our firm tracks this stuff with both hard and soft research involving 2,000 employer/research partners and their 90,000 IT professionals. At the moment, we’re seeing the most volatility in staffing, skills demand, and pay levels since 2001.
We believe this volatility will continue to punctuate IT human capital investments throughout 2010, as employers focus not so much on filling jobs but on acquisition of critical IT skill specializations. Their frantic search for skills will continue as they struggle to recalibrate their IT workforces and strike the right balance among costs, agility, and intense competitive market pressures — which is a moving target, of course.
The good news is something we discovered in our latest trend data: Among a handful of hot areas for jobs and skills next year are Web development, e-commerce applications and systems, and social media. Let’s look at these in more detail.
Social media may have started out as a fad, but it is quickly winning serious corporate converts. The search will intensify in 2010 for IT specialists who can engage audiences in their company’s messages, products, and services. The skills sets in demand will be technical but also heavily business- and consumer-focused, with many industry- and situation-specific flavors.
In other words, you won’t necessarily need eight years of Java programming experience with toolsets up the ying yang to attract interest: You can simply be a superb marketer and communications wizard with a knack for connecting new customers with a business via social media.
If recessions have taught employers anything, it’s how to do a lot with a little. Immense levels of investment in new products that marked the boom years have been diluted. This year, companies turned to finding better and cheaper ways of doing what they were doing before the axe fell, which is precisely what has focused attention on improving delivery of products and services via the Internet. This, and innovating e-business, created demand for Web development and a variety of e-commerce skills that will extend into the new year.
Related in-demand skills and clusters identified in both our data surveys and extensive interviews include information security; open source OS; Microsoft Commerce Server; Java; SOAP; Python, Microsoft Sharepoint; SQL; Sybase Adaptive Server; business intelligence; business process improvement; architecting; and a variety of IP networking areas, including VPN, Metro Ethernet, and IP telephony.
My advice is not to be too hung up on pestering employers for a full-time job next year. They have many options for filling critical skill gaps — from the inside (hiring, training); from the outside (contractors, consultants); “renting” via outsourcing and offshoring; or “giving over” by purchasing any number of managed services, which is a market building momentum fast.
If you’re job-seeking, your best bet may be contract or independent consulting, but you still might get lucky. According to the latest Department of Labor employment data, the Management and Technical Consulting Services job segment has shown three straight months of job gains in four out of the last five months.
Also keep this in mind: Eighty percent of employers are using or plan to use social media to fill vacancies, while 59 percent of recruiters use Facebook and 42 percent use Twitter. Your ability to build your network, your personal brand, and advertise your status using various social-networking tools may be what separates the haves from the have nots in 2010. It will be all about connecting plentiful supply with narrowly focused demand.
Source:http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=798&doc_id=186256&f_src=internetevolution_gnews
