Many businesses across a variety of sectors are already dealing with the repercussions of the IT skills shortage, with many companies having no choice but to leave essential vacancies unfilled while the search continues for the skilled and available IT professional.

In response to this, Computeach's recruitment service has partnered up with leading businesses, including Dell, Siemens, Virgin Media and Cable and Wireless, to provide staff who have already demonstrated an aptitude and enthusiasm for IT. Computeach now offers both the qualifications and experience necessary for career changers to get a foot in the door of the IT industry, whilst helping businesses take a pro-active approach to the skills shortage.

Katie Jansz from Siemens explains, "We have appointed a number of recently qualified IT staff to work across a variety of positions. Many of them have very diverse career backgrounds and have funded their own training to enable their career change. We find that these individuals have a real sense of motivation and accomplishment; some having raced through their training courses, such is their determination to succeed."

MaryAnne Clayton, Head of Recruitment and Careers at Computeach adds, "The majority of our students come from industrial backgrounds, many of whom have never written a CV, attended a formal interview or worked within an office environment. Yet they have demonstrated, through funding their own training courses with us, an ability and drive for IT. This, accompanied with the qualifications they're studying towards, makes them extremely attractive candidates for employers."

Computeach's recruitment team, which is made up of six consultants and two administrators, has just placed its 100th student so far this year. Last year, the team placed one student for every working day of the year and are on target to double that figure in 2008. With over 40 years of experience in the IT Training Industry, Computeach provides innovative and truly blended learning solutions to a wide range of customers. For more information visit www.computeach.co.uk.  

IT contractors have reason to be cautiously optimistic about surviving the current economic crisis. The financial services sector will create more jobs for them than any other sector over the next 12 months.

IT contractors may not have as much confidence in the sector as they used to, but they do believe that it will still be their dominant client by 2009, according to a research conducted by the Giant Group.

The IT hiring freeze and offshoring of IT jobs has left IT departments in big companies significantly thinner. Contractors tend to profit from economic uncertainty, as they are easier to let go than permanent IT employees if things go downhill.

"What we are seeing is a fairly measured response to the downturn," reads a statement from the Giant Group. "Some IT projects which will not yield a short-term return on investment are being given lower priority, but the market hasn’t fallen off a cliff by any means."

"Large organisations [will] strip the 'perm' workforce down, reduce fixed overheads, and look to opt for more project based or ad-hoc staffing solutions, using staff as and when required, in this case potentially contractors," says Nick Hardisty, managing director of Inspired Recruitment, an IT jobs agency.

Matthew Brown, director of the Giant Group, says that there is no sign of panic among contractors, adding: "Sentiment is on the wane, but few are expecting a repeat of the mass bloodletting we saw in the 2001/02 downturn... The general trend in [contractor] joblessness has been upwards. But the proportion of contractors out of work long-term (3 months or more) has remained relatively static at around 4% over the last year. To put this in perspective, 13% of contractors were jobless for three months or more in 2003, so the market is still in reasonable shape."

Despite a macroeconomic slowdown that has kept the threat of recession looming for the past eight months, pockets of job market growth continue to emerge in the technology, healthcare and defense sectors. According to TheLadders.com’s Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report for Q208, which tracks hiring patterns in 20 major cities and surveys in-the-trenches job seekers nationwide, 71 percent of $100,000+ job seekers said they have noticed a slow-down in interview opportunities this quarter. However, undeterred by the economic slow-down, 58 percent of those surveyed described the high-end job markets in their cities as stable and 59 percent said they expect to land a new job in six months or less.

This optimism is echoed in the hiring patterns among the large American corporations according to TheLadders.com Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report. While hiring in the financial and consumer discretionary sectors has clearly been impacted by the continued fall-out from the mortgage market collapse, the technology, healthcare and defense sectors are all adding to their executive-level ranks nationwide.

"There were 12,000 more $100,000+ jobs posted on TheLadders.com in the first quarter of 2008 than there were in the first quarter of 2007," said Marc Cenedella, president and CEO of TheLadders.com. "The recession is grabbing the headlines, but there are always countercyclical segments of the market that thrive in a down economy; we’re seeing a lot of reliance in this marketplace."

Regional Job Market Analysis

To get at the heart of hiring patterns in the $100,000+ job market, TheLadders.com’s Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report measured hiring activity across a variety of metrics and found the regional markets with the most favorable $100,000+ climates were San Francisco, San Diego, Washington DC, Seattle and Boston. The ratio of job seekers to job postings sits at a favorable 2:1 in San Francisco, 3.1 in San Diego and 4:1 in Washington DC, Seattle and Boston.

Job markets attracting the highest number of job seekers from other parts of the country are New York, San Francisco and Boston. Tampa and Detroit continue to be among the tightest markets in the 20 DMAs.

Across the nation, some of the top companies currently posting the most open positions are BAE Systems, Cisco Systems, Deloitte, General Dynamics, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, PayPal, and Sepracor.

Job Seeker Survey

As part of TheLadders.com Quarterly Executive Job Market Trends Report, active job seekers throughout the country were asked to weigh in with their own first-hand accounts on the status of the current job market in their cities. Job seekers were asked questions such as: Have you directly felt the impact of the recession on your job hunt? How long do you think it will take you to land a new job?

As noted above, when asked directly about the impact of the recession, 71 percent of job seekers said they have noticed a slow-down in interview opportunities. In describing the high-end job markets in their cities, a 58 percent majority cited overall stability and 59 percent said they expect to land a new job in six months or less. An upwardly mobile group, 64 percent of the job seekers surveyed said they were willing to move from their current cities for a new job opportunity. Another 42 percent said they are actively looking for new job opportunities in cities outside of their own.

Complete city-by-city data and survey results are available at the following link: http://www.theladders.com/static/boom/ Please contact John Roderick at 631-656-9736, or john@jroderick.com to receive more information.

About TheLadders.com

TheLadders.com is the world's largest online service catering exclusively to the $100k+ job market. Our job is to make the search for senior talent and senior positions quick and effective. With access to the most $100k+ job leads in one place, senior level professionals can get to the next step in their careers faster. Top recruiters value the ability to quickly and easily connect with so much qualified talent in the sales, marketing, finance, HR, legal, tech and operations industries. Founded in 2003 by Marc Cenedella, TheLadders.com has grown into the largest specialty employment website. In addition to traditional job search services, TheLadders.com also provides a host of specialized career development resources, including a proven, one-on-one resume service; advice from career experts; customized online profiles; and e-mail alerts. TheLadders.com is headquartered in New York with offices in London. For more information, please visit www.theladders.com or www.theladders.co.uk.  

With a troubling supply-demand ratio of high potential talent, recruiting and hiring managers must position themselves to achieve competitive recruiting advantages through improved planning and execution, according to a new white paper from Vangent.

"10 Megatrends Impacting Corporate Recruiting: A Strategic Perspective" summarizes the ten major trends that are reshaping the global landscape of corporate recruiting, highlights key strategies for responding to these trends, and presents three case studies focusing on talent acquisition best practices.

In this white paper, Dr. John W. Jones, a noted Industrial-Organizational Psychologist, breaks down the recruiting megatrends into two major categories. The first five trends deal with strategic positioning and the scarcity of relevant talent. Trends six through ten deal with new perspectives on the recruitment process along with new recruitment technologies. The ten megatrends as described in the white paper are:

Strategic Positioning & Talent Scarcity:

• Megatrend 1 – Strategic Alignment of All Recruiting Efforts
• Megatrend 2 – Conceptualizing Corporate Recruiters as Brand Managers
• Megatrend 3 – Intensifying Generational Shifts in U.S. Workforce
• Megatrend 4 – Embracing the "Free Agent" Talent Force
• Megatrend 5 – Tightening of the Global Labor Market

New Perspectives & Technologies:

• Megatrend 6 – The Retention Imperative for Internal Recruiting
• Megatrend 7 – Aligning Recruitment with Risk Management
• Megatrend 8 – Deploying the Next Generation of Applicant Tracking Systems
• Megatrend 9 – Web 2.0 Collaboration Technologies Infiltrating Recruiting
• Megatrend 10 – Managing Recruitment as a Decision Science

"Organizations are progressively transforming their human resource function into a strategically aligned Human Capital Management (HCM) environment that leverages highly talented workers as a major source of business success and competitive advantage," says Dr. John Jones, Vangent's Vice President and Chief Scientist. "Accordingly, it is important that talent acquisition leaders can identify, understand, and proactively confront the vital trends that impact their ability to attract and retain a premier workforce."

Click here to download a complimentary copy of this white paper.

About Vangent, Inc.

With over 5,500 employees worldwide, Vangent, Inc. is a leading global provider of Consulting, Systems Integration, Human Capital Management, and Business Process Outsourcing services to the U.S. federal and international governments, higher education institutions, and corporations. Through Vangent's Human Capital products and services, thousands of clients have successfully improved their workforce acquisition, development, and advancement. From industry-leading selection and hiring solutions, to best of breed learning, organizational development, and talent management solutions, Vangent helps clients achieve the greatest return from their human capital. For more information, please visit www.vangent-hcm.com.

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Leading staffing services firm Veritude has released a new report that shows that IT employees with specific skills are very much in demand and that the talent pool for such professionals is very limited.

The "2008 IT Hiring Trends" report confirms that, despite the recession, companies are aware of the need for highly skilled IT workers with strategic and cultural fits. These workers are now harder to find and keep, with the 2 percent unemployment rate among U.S. college graduates.  

More than half (53 percent) of the IT professionals who were included in the survey expact to raise the number of IT workers this year and 43 percent expect their IT staffing to hold steady. Only four percent of the respondents said that they expected their IT staffing to decrease,  

The survey also reveals that 77 percent of the expected new hires are permanent positions.

Veritude's senior vice president Kate Donovan says:

"Despite recent economic woes across many industries, we are finding that IT jobs are still in high demand with employers continuing to forecast steady growth of IT staffing levels. Many earlier advances in IT were in automating tasks and basic programming. Now employers need on-site IT professionals who can contribute at a strategic level in using IT to achieve and sustain competitive advantages."

As many as 73 percent of companies say that IT job candidates with higher-level business intelligence and enterprise solutions support are the most difficult to find. At the same time, 53 percent of the respondents say that the biggest challenge to IT hiring is finding qualified candidates, while 40 percent of them say that it is finding specific skills.

"In order to be competitive, it is critical that companies overcome the IT hiring challenges that our research has uncovered. In working with our clients to place IT professionals, we have found that cultural fit and flexible work conditions are often key tipping points to attracting and retaining the right candidates and becoming the employer of choice," Donovan says.

40 percent of the IT professionals who expect to increase the number of their IT staff also voiced willingness to work with an outside staffing services provider.The Veritude exec adds: 

"IT is a hot hiring segment now and employers routinely turn to external recruiters and staffing firms in these tight conditions."

To apply for the latest IT consulting jobs, visit out IT job board.  

Consulting and banking may be very popular career choices, but it was Google that was chosen as the most desirable company to work for by MBA students for the second year in a row. These are the results of a new survey by Universum Communications.

Almost a quarter of the 5,769 students who participated in the survey named Google among the top five most desirable companies to work for after graduation. The survey covered students at 52 business schools. Mc Kinsey and Co. and Goldman Sachs came in second and third.

Google's director of global university programs Yvonne Agyvei says that what attracts so many MBA students to Google is that they “really get a lot of responsibility right at the outset. MBAs are looking for the opportunity to make an impact.”

Even though competition for a job with Google is fierce, with MBA students applying in thousands, Google hired hundreds of new MBAs last year alone.

Claudia Tattanelli, CEO of Universum North America, says that the search engine has become a “worldwide name, it is global and it recruits only the best,” adding that the company also treats its employees very well and in fact “has revolutionized how employees are treated. They are famous for keeping employees happy.”

Here are the top 10 companies and percentages of MBA students who listed them: 

 

1. Google 23.65%

2. McKinsey and Co. 15.84%

3. Goldman Sachs 14.98%

4. Apple 13.68%

5. The Boston Consulting Group 12.12%

6. Bain & Company 10.81%

7. Walt Disney 8.83%

8. Nike 8.82%

9. Deloitte 8.11%

10. J.P. Morgan 7.94%

 

Consulting firms in the top 100 include Merrill Lynch (#18), Ernst & Young (#22), Booz Allen Hamilton (#25), PricewaterhouseCoopers (#35), Accenture (#38), KPMG (#51), Mercer Management Consulting (#83) and A.T. Kearney (#96).

 

To apply for the latest consultant roles, please visit our IT consulting job board.

IT security professional, network engineer, software tester and web designer are among the ten jobs most likely to survive the current economic slowdown, according to a study conducted by the Learning and Skills Council.

Employment expert Sarah Berry, author of Write a Perfect CV in a Weekend and How to Love the Job You Do, says that IT jobs look set to survive the credit crunch, explaining that IT professionals’ skills will keep being in demand. She points to the growing use of websites and e-commerce and says that these areas will keep needing  computer professionals.

Adding that IT jobs are “fairly secure at the moment," she advises IT employees to become proficient in these skills to safeguard their careers.

"Companies are going to be looking to their employees to have particular skills, rather than bringing in outside people or contractors to do it for them," she concludes.  

 

To browse the latest opportunities in IT consulting, please visit our job board.

CV Screen, a leading UK IT recruitment agency, has conducted a comprehensive study of the IT job market and found that salaries for permanent IT jobs have risen by 4.1 percent over the last 12 months. The average advertised salary for an IT professional is now ₤34,217.

For the purpose of the study, the recruitment agency monitored more than 11,000 IT jobs advertised in the UK in the first quarter of 2008.

CV Screen’s managing director Matthew Iveson said:

“The IT jobs market is holding up well in spite of the wider economic problems. It is likely that as a result of the rising costs of living in the UK that more candidates will seek to move for financial reasons, thus putting further upward pressure on IT salaries.”

He added that there was still a “considerable war for talent” for IT professionals with technical skills in areas such as .Net, C# and PHP and that the “continued high demand for IT professionals has continued to put upward pressure on IT salaries.”

You can get a free copy of the IT Salary Survey on the CV Screen site.

Indian software maker Infosys is weeks away from crossing the 100,000-employee mark and joining Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in the prestigious club.

Infosys currently employs 82,000 people and has made job offers in more than a thousand engineering colleges in India.

“We have given 18,000 offers. This shows our confidence in the business. We will soon employ in excess of one lakh people in India,” says T.V. Mohandas Pai, Director of Human Resources and former CFO at Infosys.

The company expects the conversion rate (number of candidates employed) to be between 70 and 80 percent.

Infosys has announced plans to hire a total of 25,000 employees this year in IT, business process outsourcing and consulting services. For comparison, Tata Consultancy Services has plans to hire between 30 and 35 thousand new employees, including 20,000 fresh hires from 200-250 colleges.

IT analyst Apurva Shah says: “Headcount addition is in line with their guidance and shows the business confidence despite question marks over the U.S. economy.”

The company is aggressively hiring, but also taking steps to fight off attrition. “We are tightening our assessment of top performers. We would also introduce variable pays for middle and senior-level management,” says Pai.

 

The company has a new performance-based pay structure that can make a difference between average and top employees’ salaries to vary up to 40 percent. “Our attrition is 13.4 percent and we want to get it in single digits,” comments Infosys’ head of human resources, Nandita Gurjar.

 

Companies in the IT and business management sector employ a total of about two million people in India. Local technology giants Tata Consultancy and Infosys have most of their staff based in India.

Global industry leaders IBM and Accenture employ 368,000 and 172,000 people worldwide respectively and, because of the lower costs in India, they are currently waging a war for talent in the country, for employees and staff in middle management.

This is not to say that Infosys does not recruit new employees abroad. This year, the company has hired more than 20 people from UK campuses and 145 from US campuses. 

 

 

IT consulting firm Bluewolf has launched the first video resume production service for those seeking a job in the information technology sector. 

The video resume production service comes as a response to job seekers and recruiters' growing use of the Internet and social media, as well as general popularity of online video sharing.

“We believe that video resumes are now taking off and we are providing this free service to enable job candidates to produce a professional-quality video resume. There has been a lot of buzz about companies like YouTube, Facebook and Monster as platforms for video resumes, but we are the first company to embrace the concept of helping people create a professional video profile to help them land a job,” says Wendy Duarte, Director of Permanent Placement at Bluewolf, adding that:

“Video resumes lend themselves well to IT positions, which is our expertise, as the potential employer has a high level of sophistication when it comes to technology. For those sorts of positions, we counsel candidates to develop a video resume that stresses technical capabilites as well as their technical expertise.”

Bluewolf, based in New York, provides placement services for hard-to-find experts in specific technologies and software deployment processes, software developers, project managers and business analysts.

The consultancy's experts coach and lead the job seekers through the whole process of video resume production and make sure they are thoroughly prepared for the video shoot. 

The company's permanent placement candidates will have the opportunity to have their video resume produced for free.  

 

To see the latest openings in IT consulting firms, please, visit out job board.