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Industry observers are expecting a hot IT job market this year with
companies clamoring to hire experienced tech professionals with several
stand-out skill sets.
See Workers in Driver’s Seat in 2006 Job Market.
”There’s going to be fantastic opportunities for people who heeded the
warnings about diversifying their skill sets and understanding the
business,” says Kevin Knaul, executive vice president of the Hudson
Highland Group, a professional staffing and outsourcing company based in
New York City. ”Those folks will put themselves in a great situation.
But those folks focused on a specific technology run the risk of finding
themselves in a tighter market and tighter circumstances.”
Becoming business focused is the main piece of advice for IT
professionals these days. It’s no longer enough to be a skilled
technician. It’s no longer enough to be a specialist. Today, the
professionals who companies are looking to hire will not only have a
wide-ranging skill set, they’ll also understand how the business works
and they’ll have participated in business-side projects and teams.
”They need to get out of the server room and spend more time
understanding the business aspects and the ramifications of technology
decisions that are being made,” says Knaul. ”Those skill sets and
experiences are becoming more in demand. Go beyond the technology and
involve yourself in committees, organizations and the whole business
operation.”
Another hiring theme for 2006 is project management, according to Scott
Melland, president and chief executive officer of New York-based Dice Inc., an online
recruiting service for IT professionals. With business picking up over
the last year, the time is ripe for companies to begin upgrading their
systems and taking on new IT projects. That means they’ll be needing some
new project managers to run the show.
And a third theme for the new year is open source. ”Last year, we saw a
90 percent increase in that skill set,” says Melland. ”We still see a
lot of companies out there switching to an open source platform. This
trend will continue well into 2006.”
Here’s what Melland and John Challenger, chief executive officer of
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement company, say
will be the hot jobs — and skills — for 2006:
year, according to Dice. People with experience in managing teams and
projects, along with business knowledge, still will be in big demand;
dealing with zero-day exploits, insider attacks and high-profile data
loss. Melland says people with network security experience and Cisco
engineers with security experience will be in hot demand;
core skill set who has top-secret security clearance is going to have an
easier time finding work. The key attribute is the active government
security clearance;
in wide-ranging projects or specifically in .Net or SAP should be looking
at a good year. The call for SAP-oriented developer positions was up 86
percent last year, and those with .Net skills were up 84 percent,
according to Dice. Overall, developer jobs were up about 40 percent to 45
percent;
move toward open source and that means they’ll need IT professionals with
a background in open source technology to help them do that;
companies go wireless, job demand in this sector will continue to rise;
been involved with business projects and working on teams with the
business side, should find herself in a powerful position this year;
workers to learn new technology and smarten up about security, so the
need for educators will continue.
