Gartner: IT hiring on the rise again

CNET News.com quotes a Gartner survey where Gartner says the IT sector should see a hiring rebound in the later part of this year. The sectors which are expecting the largest growth are financial services and the public sector. Getting past these numbers a full two-thirds of the organizations who responded to Gartner's survey say they are increasing their IT staff to some degree later this year.

The skills in most demand are PeopleSoft, Oracle and SAP systems, XML, J2EE, Microsoft .Net, Java and Visual C# programming. This list corresponds fairly well with the positions which are in highest demand. I know one of the companies I work for has hired a number of new people for a new contract that the company picked up. I know a lot of people having been waiting for something like this to happen. Hopefully this projected rebound in the job market will be here to stay for a time.

14 year old passing the RHCE?

Sargun's site has a recap of him completing his RHCT. Keep in mind this guy has admined his father's system for the past five years, so he should have come into the exam with a good background in the industry. I like his list of things to do next: get CCNA, be a teenager, get a girlfriend. I know two of those three things were on my list of things to do when I was fourteen.

IT wages tick up on tight labor market

Computerworld Is carrying a story about how the strengthening economy is fueling moderate pay gains for IT workers. Some of the factors fueling the increase are 1) decrese in teh supply of available IT workers, 2) maturation of offshore outsourcing - labor costs are rising there too 3) hiring requests are getting more specific. The article also references an article I commented on earlier.

Does Certification Really Matter?

The SANS InfoSec Reading Room has a series of interviews that try to answer the question: Does Certification Really Matter? The series of articles are focused on answering this question in relation to becoming certified in information security. The answers to this question can be applied to almost any viable certification that is out there. The interview series spans from Jan 2002 to the present. It is interesting to see the range of topics that are covered in these interviews.

Tech skills pulling in more pay

Foote Partners has a new report out which shows the pay for certain tech skills has improved in the past 12 months. From what I've seen in the report thepay for non-certified tech skills grew at a 3.8% rate while the pay for certified skills only grew at a 1.3% rate.

Some of the factors that the Foote Partners has looked at are:
1. a return to hiring as teh economy strengthens
2. Concerns about retention of qualified people
3. employers are demanding more industry-specific experience to go with tech skills
4. populartity of offshoring has had mixed results
5. government regulation
6. recent mergers and acquisition activities

Their list of "cooling" non-certified skills are interesting in that it includes Linux and Novell. One of their reasons for this is that they believe the supply of Linux skilled IT professionsal has caught up with teh demand for those skills.

The report as a whole is a good report to go through and get a snapshot of what the industry looks like at this moment.

How Google Maps Got Me Out Of A Traffic Ticket

Edwin over at the Gear Live web site has a cool story of how he beat a traffic ticket using Google Maps. I don't know if the courts were offering up a free wi-fo conneciton in the area but this was a good way of using technology to beat a traffic ticket.

Tech job postings up in Atlanta

CNET News.com covers changes in job postings on the Dice.com jobs site. As compared from the same time last year the number of postings on the site fell slightly, the largest drop came in the Chicago area where there was a 7.7% drop. As compared to the begining of the year job postings has actually increased about 26%.

An interesting study being put out by the US Dept of Labor shows actual jobs created in IT staying steady this year with a small exception during Apr and May. This study is called a Net Birth/Death model which looks at teh net gain or loss in jobs from an economist view point. This study confirms the perception that many have of this economic recovery not showing signs of a jobs recovery in the IT sector.

Study: Not all entry-level IT work headed offshore

CNET News.com covers a study by a UCB professorKaren Chapple who is looking at how some entry-level work is staying within the United States and not being sent offshore. One of the trends in recent years is companies who've moved jobs overseas to find a cheaper labor pool. This trend has been seen in help desk jobs on up to programming jobs. I know I have been effected by this trend on two different contracts I've been involved with. One company sent the whole division I was with over to Ireland, and the otehr sent the division over to Costa Rica.

One of the trends this study is pointing out is that entry-level help desk work is still staying within the United States. I think one of the primary reasons for this is that the help desk role is usually a customer service role and is one of the visual images customers get when tehy call for help. Another reason this role is staying within the US is many people feel if they are paying for First-Rate help they can't get it from a Third-World location.

It will be interesting to see what career path this will provide for individuals in the future.

Intelliforge Solutions

Intelliforge Solutions has an interesting site up that allows you to look at the past year on the Computerjobs.com site and get a visual representation of how well certain job categories and cities did.

Something to note is that when you compare multiple entries it will only look at this year only, but if you look at individual entries the graph starts on 8/15/2004.

Another interesting trend is that for most of this year there has been an increasing in the number of help wanted ads placed on the computerjobs.com web site. another trend I've noticed is that there is a flurry of hiring activity during Jan. I don't know if this is just a fluke or if there is any actual validity to it.

Tech jobs increase in June

CNET News.com has several stories out regarding IT employment trends. The first story focuses on the continued increase in hiring trends within the technology sector. Anyone who has been watching this trend has noticed that it hasn't been a steady trend but it has been an upward trend from the begining of the year. Job postings on Dice.com have increase by 26%, with the strongest gains showing up on the east coast. As the year progresses the trend should stay steady and show increases throughout the year.

The second article, IT worker confidence rebounds, looks at the Hudson survey of IT worker's confidence. The 12% rebound has been attributed to more hiring within the IT sector overall and an improvement in personal finances of IT workers. Gong into the end of the year this gauge should steadily improve also from last year's levels.

The final story, California tech job lead grows, covers a study by from job search service NimbleCat. The point the survey is making is that California has been garnering about 26.1% of all job postings. This story seems to fly in the face of an earlier story, Profits, not jobs, on the rebound in Silicon Valley. On nice item from the report is that they list the % increase each major area has seen from the previous month.

Profits, not jobs, on the rebound in Silicon Valley

CNET News.com is carrying a story focusing on the improved profits that the seven largest companies are seeing are not being transferred in an increase in job opportunities. A larger question is whether companies are keeping their main brain trust in Silicon Valley, but hiring the lower level positions elsewhere.

Compared to other economic cycles, Silicon Valley is losing jobs rather than increasing jobs. This brings up the question as to whether the jobs are moving elsewhere within the US or if they are being moved overseas. This is the first article I've seen that focuses on the IT job recovery taking place elsewhere than the US other than articles that focused solely on the outsourcing trend, which I've felt was on the down side.

This will be a trend that is worth watching closely.

Browster - Fastest Way to Browse

Browster - Fastest Way to Browse This is a cool download to play around with. It will allow you to get a preview of a web page from a google search without having to open the site. The utility actually prefetches the site and will make opening a site a little bit faster.