Job Outlook Is Bright for IT Pros

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Originally published at Internet.com

It's an IT employee's market - even if employers haven't realized it yet.

A new survey from IT pro recruiter Robert Half Technology shows that 17% of more than 1,400 CIOs plan to add IT staff in the third quarter this year, while only 2% envision cutbacks.

The net 15% increase in hiring expectations is the highest since the fourth quarter of 2001, the firm says - and is up three percentage points from the previous quarter's projection. That's great news for job seekers - sort of.

"This is weird coming out of the downturn," says Robert Half Vice President John Estes. "This is obviously an employee-driven market, but so many aspects of it are like an employer-driven one."

A lot of companies are still acting as if it were earlier in the decade, when there was a plethora of IT professionals seeking employment, and employers could afford to have very rigorous interview processes and stringent skills requirements and offer less competitive salaries.

Driving Staffing Needs

So, when employers say they feel frustrated about there being a lack of IT talent in the market, Estes asks them to consider whether they've adapted to current labor market conditions.

"It's not that there's a lack of talent, but how do you attract that talent into your company?" he says, whether it's with more competitive salaries or packages with other perks that IT pros are looking for. In another recent survey, Robert Half found that the top two factors for staff retention are offering flexible work schedules and providing good training and professional development programs.

The new survey finds that business growth remains the top reason companies are adding IT staff. While there is competition for individuals with the skill sets you'd associate with business-technology alignment, such as business systems analysis, the job category experiencing the most growth is actually lower down on the scale: help desk/end user support.

The support category was cited by 21% of CIOs surveyed. That tracks with the fact that business growth translates into new employees throughout the company, and to deploying new enterprisewide applications to support that growth. Twelve percent of respondents said that the installation or development of new enterprisewide applications is driving the need for more staff.

"One thing a lot of people don't think about is with all this hiring going on, everyone gets a computer and someone has to physically get that computer on the desk, configure it, give that person a password," Estes says. "Certainly, too, with application development being down for so long and now up again, that's created a ripple effect of other positions."

That includes those that don't always require the most sexy skill sets, such as help desk support. "You have more and more situations where you need to support the application efforts," Estes says.

Given what has been a trend toward outsourcing such positions, as well as the growing movement toward IT service management best practices that potentially could reduce IT support calls and IT firefighting, do support positions remain a wise career choice for IT staff? Estes won't discount the impact outsourcing has had on people's careers, but he also notes that a lot of IT work is being brought back in house these days, and that overall, offshore outsourcing is still a small percentage of IT work. Even if your job is outsourced, he says, in a labor market like this, talented IT workers will still be in demand by other companies.

At the same time, Robert Half hasn't yet seen efforts like ITIL have a big effect. "It can impact it over time, but it's not going to get rid of the need for support professionals," he says.