November 20th, 2009

Research paints ugly IT employment picture: Almost 2 million jobs gone in 14 years

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 2:45 am

Categories: General, IT Management, IT jobs

Tags:

The Hackett Group reports that 300,000 IT jobs have disappeared in 2009, a spike that will translate into nearly 2 million eliminated technology positions between 2000 and 2014.

In a report, Hackett notes that IT is taking the brunt as companies cut back-office jobs. In 2009, 630,000 back office jobs will be lost at the world’s largest companies. Overall, there’s an “extended jobless recovery” in “IT, finance, procurement, HR, and other general and administrative (G&A) areas.

Hackett reports:

Longer-term, Hackett’s research estimates that nearly 3.6 million G&A jobs in North America and Europe will have been eliminated between 2000 and 2014. More than half of these losses, or nearly 2 million of these jobs, are in IT, making it the largest back office area to be hit by a wide margin.

Hackett researched 4,000 global companies with $1 billion in revenue.

Also see: TechRepublic’s IT Training Directory · Career management blog · IT leadership blog

The underlying trends behind these job losses are well known. In a nutshell, companies need to keep improving profit losses, jobs are going offshore, outsourcing and process improvements. In a report, Hackett writes:

Hackett’s analysis of close to 4,000 large (over $1 billion in revenue), publicly held companies reveals that as a result of efficiency gains made through automation, process improvement, outsourcing and offshoring, G&A functions cost approximately $333 billion less to run in 2007 than in 2000 for this group of companies. However, these improvements have come at the cost of 1.4 million net back-office G&A jobs at these companies. This job loss occurred despite average annual economic growth of 2.2% during this period, which offset a portion of the jobs eliminated through efficiency gains. On balance, the pre-crisis years showed a healthy trend for an increasingly knowledge-based, industrialized economy, modest net declines in lower-value-added jobs, and net creation of higher-value-added jobs elsewhere in the economy. However, the current economic downturn has disrupted this trend. In order to protect margins in the face of declining revenue, companies have been forced to accelerate G&A cost take-outs.

Here’s a chart of the IT job losses in context of other positions:

November 20th, 2009

CIO Sanity Savers: Five ways to become a more effective executive

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 2:15 am

Categories: General, IT Management, IT jobs

Tags: CIO, Leadership, Management, Larry Dignan

This episode of CIO Sanity Savers looks at some time-tested tips that leaders can use to be more effective with their time.

November 6th, 2009

U.S. unemployment rate highest in 26 years, at 10.2%

Posted by Andrew Nusca @ 11:10 am

Categories: Economy, IT jobs

Tags: Job, Unemployment Rate, Recruitment & Selection, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Andrew Nusca

The unemployment rate in the United States reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October, up from 9.8 percent in September, the Department of Labor said Friday.

Americans lost 190,000 jobs in October, according to the department’s monthly report.

The good news? The pace of job losses has slowed significantly since the peak of the recession a year ago.

But the unemployment rate — the percentage of people actively seeking work — continues to rise.

The biggest losses came in construction, manufacturing and retail. Meanwhile, the healthcare industry grew by 29,000 jobs and added another 34,000 temporary positions.

So when will the unemployment rate start to decline? Some are guessing next spring.

But production and profits are on the rise, despite the job losses, indicating that we might be turning around.

For the tech sector, that means that it’s a slow (but upward) haul from here.

November 5th, 2009

Survey: IT workers eyeing security certifications

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 2:15 am

Categories: General, IT jobs, Security

Tags: Security, Certification, Information Technology, Security Certification, Survey, CompTIA, Information Technology Worker, Quality, Training And Certification, Business Operations

A tough economy and new technologies has led to some pretty substantial changes for IT departments. As the IT landscape continues to evolve, IT workers are also looking at their next moves.

A survey of more than 1,500 IT workers found that more than half are eyeing security-themed certifications over the next five years while others will pursue new certifications in green IT, healthcare IT, mobile and software-as-a service.

The survey, conducted by CompTIA, found that 37 percent of the respondents will be pursuing a security certification over the next five years, with 18 percent seeking ethical hacking certifications and 13 percent interested in forensics. From the CompTIA statement:

Economic advancement and personal growth are key drivers for seeking IT certifications, the CompTIA study also reveals. Eighty-eight percent of certification holders indicated they pursue a certification to enhance their resume. An identical 88 percent said personal growth they pursue a certification. IT workers are willing to invest the time and resources necessary to advance their career by adding new certifications to their credentials. On average, candidates for an IT certification spend 44.5 hours studying and preparing to sit for an exam; and approximately one in three individuals spend 60 or more hours preparing. Fifty percent of IT certification holders pay for the exams themselves, while 38 percent rely on an employer to cover the exam fee.

August 18th, 2009

IT skills top the in-demand list at online freelance marketplace

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 3:45 am

Categories: Economy, IT jobs

Tags: Google Inc., Skill, Information Technology, Site, Recruitment & Selection, Desktop Publishing, Strategy, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Software

When it comes to the tech job market, we’ll take good news where we can get it - even if it’s a big demand for IT skills in a booming online marketplace for freelancers.

Called elance.com, the site is seeing about 50 percent growth in the number of jobs its filling, roughly 157,000 in the past year. But what was interesting about the site’s trends is the demand for IT skills - especially among app developers. The site regularly tracks the top 10 skills in demand, based on the postings on the site. The top two were Graphic Design and PHP, with MySQL in third place and Joomla! in 8th place.

The site connects businesses and freelancers but does more than that. It also manages the relationship through the cloud - from the actual posting of the job to invoicing, payment and feedback. Currently, there are about 96,000 experts active on Elance and that more than 62,000 businesses are actively using the site.

Watch out if you’re trying to sell your social media skills, though. Demand for Twitter (#71) expertise dropped 25 slots and both Facebook (#63) and Social Networking (#45) also falling this month. As for those Google skills - Google Website Optimizer (#31) made a big leap this month while Google Analytics (#93) and Google AdSense (#68) making their debuts.

The company notes that some regulars on the site are working “full time” on freelance work obtained through the site.

August 17th, 2009

Five networking tips to advance your career [video]

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 2:20 am

Categories: General, IT Management, IT jobs

Tags: Job, Network, Video, Professional Development, Recruitment & Selection, Corporate Communications, Networking, Career, Human Resources, Workforce Management

Once you get to a certain level in your career, most of your new job opportunities come from your personal network of contacts and not your resume. So, if you don’t know how to network effectively, it can severely limit your job opportunities. This episode of CIO Sanity Savers shares five networking tips that have worked for many IT and business professionals.

For those of you who prefer text over video, you can read the original article from Jay Rollins that this episode was based on: Six tips for networking to success.

July 23rd, 2009

Four ways to recession-proof your IT group [video]

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 2:20 am

Categories: General, IT Management, IT jobs

Tags: Information Technology, Video, Strategy, Management, Larry Dignan

In a difficult economy, IT becomes invaluable for driving efficiency and cost savings. However, to become perpetually relevant, IT needs to be perceived as a value-generating, strategically active department. This episode of Sanity Savers for IT executives explains four key concepts that can help your IT department prove its worth and generate tangible business value.

July 21st, 2009

Silicon Valley's recession rebound: Optimism or Arrogance?

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 12:00 pm

Categories: Economy, IT jobs, Innovation, Layoffs

Tags: Silicon Valley, Optimism, Wired Inc., Recession, Arrogance, Unemployment Figure, Recruitment & Selection, Productivity, Smart Phones, Human Resources

The latest unemployment figures are in for Santa Clara County, California - aka Silicon Valley - and it doesn’t look good: 11.8 percent in the county is among the highest in the entire San Francisco Bay Area region.

Still, reporting from the front lines here, I can say that the doom-and-gloom is not filling the air. Instead, there’s a hint of Silicon Valley optimism in the air, the feeling that good things are in the future and that these tough times won’t last forever.

The latest example of this optimism comes from a Wired Magazine piece with the headline, “Laid Off? It’s Good for You and Good for the Tech Industry.” The piece correctly notes that foreclosures and bankruptcies are plaguing the region just the same as other parts of the country and that tech jobs have also taken a hit with the Valley losing nearly 10,000 tech jobs in the past year.

So why are northern Californians still smiling and telling everyone we meet to “Have a Nice Day?” It has to be more than just the near-perfect weather conditions. Consider this excerpt from the Wired piece:

Valley culture has an unwritten rule that if you don’t like a job, or if you think your company isn’t going anywhere, you leave. Instead of hanging around the office whining, you walk out the door and find something better and cooler to do. Because skilled tech workers are hard to find and interesting companies abound, employees, not employers, call the shots. This was true at Apple in 1984, and it’s still true at Facebook today.

At a recent tweet-up just outside San Francisco, I had a chance to mingle and talk to folks working in different areas of the tech industry. Yes, there were people who had been laid off and certainly they were concerned about it. But those same people were talking about the connections they had at startups scattered across the Valley.

They weren’t talking about the Facebook and Twitter-like startups, though. The startups they’re talking about are the ones that are still off-the-grid, ideas that found investors and are still in stealth mode building the technology and thinking about where to go when the companies outgrow a garage.

OK, maybe these startups don’t have the resources to do some massive hiring and bring that unemployment figure back down to a respectable level - yet. But this is Silicon Valley USA, a place where innovation is king. Just the idea that there are companies out there that are innovating and, eventually, will need people to help it grow is encouraging. Sure, times may be bad now - but imagine what’s brewing in the dorm rooms at Stanford, in the lofts of San Francisco’s SOMA District, in the garages of a San Jose neighborhood. Consider this other take-away from the Wired piece:

…there are still plenty of opportunities out there for Valley types: Facebook widgets, iPhone apps, Twitter tools, and cloud services are exploding. And getting in on that action doesn’t require a huge outlay of cash. If you can’t find a team to join, why not start your own? Individuals or small groups can make a good iPhone app; useful Web tools can be built with Amazon Web Services and user-generated content. Sure, financing is tight now, but these fields have oodles of potential, meaning the money will come as the economy rebounds. You’ll likely face lean times for a while, but there’s a good chance of making a bundle down the road.

For anyone who’s not from here, the Silicon Valley way of thinking is hard to grasp. A former colleague at the Washington Post once told me, “They speak a completely different language out there.” It sounds like optimism but wreaks of arrogance, he said.

Recalling that conversation with my former colleague, I went back and re-read the Wired piece. Oooh, maybe we do come across as arrogant - confident that, regardless of what’s happening in Detroit, Manhattan or other hard hit areas, Silicon Valley will rebound and rise again.

Is that arrogance? Or is it optimism? I’m tainted because I’ve been around this region my entire life. So, let me end this post with an invitation to chime in on Silicon Valley’s way of thinking. What’s your take? Chime in on the talkbacks.

June 29th, 2009

Report: IT salaries and benefits drop, IT job market over-saturated

Posted by Jason Hiner @ 9:18 am

Categories: IT jobs, Layoffs

Tags: Job, Layoff, Information Technology, Benefit, Salary, Recruitment & Selection, Strategy, Workforce Management, Human Resources, Management

Both salaries for IT professionals and overall IT job openings are down in the past 18 months, according to new data released by Janco on Monday as part of its 2009 Mid Year IT Salary Survey. The survey also contained some other residual bad news for IT pros, although there were a couple a few bright spots.

Victor Janulaitis, Janco CEO, said, “The current economic climate with its cost cutting mind sets, business closures, and extensive outsourcing has put such great pressure on the IT job market that overall pay has been impacted. Added to that many ‘baby-boomers’ who had planned on retiring in the next few years are not leaving the job market and you have more potential employees than positions available.”

Some of the highlights from the report include:

• In addition to layoffs, many companies are doing hiring freezes
• A lot of mid-sized companies have completely stopped hiring
• Bonuses are being reduced for many IT workers
• Flexible work schedules are becoming less common
• Some IT pros are paying a greater share of their health care costs
• There is an over-abundance of veteran IT pros in the market, with many retirements being put off and many retirees returning to the job market
• The meltdown of the financial industry is drastically hurting the New York IT market. The report states, “There are over 200 IT professionals in the Metro New York are who earned well into six figures that are looking for work due to mergers, bankruptcies, and layoffs”

And here are some interesting graphs as well. The first one shows which IT jobs are in demand and which ones have been most in danger of being cut. The second shows the change in average IT salaries over the past 18 months. The third shows the demand for IT leadership jobs.

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