6 Ways Enterprise IT Careers are Changing
March 28, 2013 12:09 PM
Hiring is Up (but Back Down to Earth)
In the categories that cover IT careers, hiring was once again up last month, with 9,800 jobs added to U.S. payrolls, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. That was down from a five-year-high seen in January. In the last 12 months, IT jobs analyst David Foote of Foote Partners counts 129,000 hires across tech and IT sectors. The big hiring area in recent months has been in computer systems design and related services, with 5,800 jobs new jobs in January and more than half of all U.S. IT hires, according to Foote.
A Shift in Data Use Priorities
Jobs that require a statistical background are growing drastically, with career resource site icrunchdata reporting 28,305 positions that specifically requested stats experience, compared with approximately 16,500 three years ago. In another realm, requests for jobs that include some range of skills tied to big data have increased 63 percent in the last 12 months.
Big Data, Big Pay
According to Dice.coms annual survey of more than 15,000 tech professionals, data hires who regularly use Hadoop, NoSQL and MongoDB are paid north of $100,000. Other hot trends get much less: cloud and virtualization positions get about $90,000 and mobile IT managers are closer to $80,000, according to the IT hiring firm.
Less Compensation for Certifications
While still receiving more money, skills with certification continued an overall decline since 2007, when a premium was paid for such skills, according to an analysis of IT certifications by Foote Partners. Segments bucking this trend were database certifications, systems administration and engineering certifications, and application development and programming certifications. On the other hand, non-certified IT skills have garnered increases in pay for 27 of the last 33 calendar quarters, the firm noted.
The One Soft Skill Always in Demand
When it comes to analytics careers, analytic department bosses and businesses are interested in one particular, ephemeral skill: curiosity. As Greta Roberts, faculty member for the International Institute for Analytics and VP at vendor Talent Analytics put it, finding curious and cutting-edge analytic team members means its important for business to move beyond being dazzled by software skills.
Different Gender, Different Positions?
In its annual tech salary survey, job placement site Dice.com found that the top five jobs for men and women come down along different roles. Project manager was the position reported as held most often by women, and ranked at number three for men. Top positions for men more often fell along technical lines: software engineer (1), systems administrator (2), IT management (4) and application developer (5). Other top roles for women were business analyst (2), QA tester (4) and technical recruiter (5).