Another Indicator Says the IT Job Market Is Improving

June 21, 2010 Dan Burger

At IT Jungle, we like to pass along as much good news as possible when it comes to the job market. So here’s a little something that should make you happier than a tick on a fat dog. Geez, I hope that doesn’t turn out to be an overstatement, because I’m going to stick with it. If you have an issue with it, voice your complaints to the people at Monster Worldwide. You probably know them as monster.com. They’re the ones who came up with the data. I’m just the messenger.

Technisource, a North American superpower in the technology services business, hired Monster to conduct this survey of 245 human resources managers and they are proud to announce that 78 percent of those surveyed “are looking to hire IT workers in the next six months.”

If you don’t think that’s “fat dog” status, then just get a load of these statistics:

78 percent of respondents plan to hire IT staff in the next six months.
76 percent of respondents have confidence that their company’s performance will improve in the next six months.
57 percent say they will hire less than 10 “technology oriented talent positions in the next six months and 36 percent say they’ll fill between 11 and 50 positions.

I don’t blame any of you who might be skeptical. I eat and sleep skeptical. So if you are already mumbling to yourself about what kind of pickle-packin’ IT jobs are these companies trying to fill, here’s the answer straight from the source.

Positions under the heading of applications and infrastructure topped the list, with 76 percent and 58 percent, respectively. Next on the popularity charts was project management at 53 percent and business analyst at 42 percent.

Those are the highlights. If you want to comb through more bar graphs and pie charts, there are more to be seen at this link.

If you skipped the link in the previous paragraph, I’m going to share one more set of statistics with you in the hope that this will leave you with a feeling of general happiness that the job market is expanding. According to the HR survey takers with hiring on their minds, 26 percent of the openings are considered new positions, 9 percent are considered replacement positions, and all the rest are in a category called “a combination of both.”

That sounds to me like a lot of these companies are still trying to figure out how many people they can do without. But that’s just me being skeptical.

For those of you looking for work, I’ll pass along some advice regarding the negotiation process. Remember that your true value depends on who you are being compared to.

Companies Look to Add Jobs in 2010, Inside IT and Out

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