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Hot skills that get you ahead of the game in Canada's IT jobs market
What are the most sought-after skills in Canada's IT jobs market? Which non-technical skills are growing in importance and why? Are Canadian IT professionals a happy and stable bunch? IT World Canada's comprehensive 2008 IT Job Market & Salary Survey report offers answers to these and many more questions. INCLUDES VIDEO.7/28/2008 5:00:00 AM By: Joaquim P. Menezes
CIOs and hiring managers today are actively seeking IT professionals who also possess specific non-technical skills – such as writing, public speaking and business process mapping.
That fact clearly emerges from the 2008 IT Job Market & Salary Survey report published by IT World Canada.
Conducted in January-February this year, the survey polled IT World Canada's readers across the five core publications as well as its online audience. Of the 3,615 respondents to the salary survey, 3,246 were full-time IT professionals.
VIDEO: 2008 IT JOB MARKET & SALARY SURVEY
Highlights of the report were presented by John Pickett, vice-president and community advocate, IT World Canada at the 2008 CIO Assembly, a two-and-a-half day interactive retreat for C-Level executives. The event was held earlier this month at King City, Ont.
In demand skills
Pickett said a change in the distribution of IT staff within the industry is driving a need for certain non-technical skills.
Many Canadian companies, he said, are moving the hard core development work out of house, while retaining functions such as business analysis in house.
Little wonder then that "business analysis and project management are among the skills in highest demand."
And as applications become more complex, he said, another job function that's witnessed the fastest growth over the past few years is the Help Desk.
Among the core IT functions, application and database development (MCSD, SQL, Java, ASP, .net, Oracle) head the list. Pickett suggested that the Canadian computer industry – as a whole – was hiring more aggressively in these areas.
Networking (Cisco, VoIP, wireless, net management) is an "in demand" skill for 38 per cent of the hiring managers, while 15 per cent had plans to hire new networking staff.
Other sought after areas of expertise include: Windows administration, security, Web services and server virtualization.
For a very small group of companies, skills such as RAD/extreme programming are a high priority. But it doesn't emerge as a highly needed skill across the entire sample.
Highly sought after are technical qualifications in areas such as Active Server Pages, Linux, Systems Security, and Microsoft Solutions Development.
One interesting phenomenon – highlighted by Pickett – is the rise of new roles, in response to changing work distribution within the industry.
One of these, he said, is the role of Relationship Manager – of which there are quite a few flavours.
"The most prominent are vendor relationship managers, and [those] responsible for managing the relationship between dispersed project teams, whether they are part of their own company or of a vendor supported outsourcing arrangement."
2) "The "shortage" is in many ways is a skills mismatch. – Page 2
3) Larger companies tend to pay better than smaller companies. – Page 3
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