Strong first quarter leads to scramble for IT professionals
Jennifer Foreshew From: The Australian April 05, 2011 12:00AM
I
A FAVOURABLE first quarter saw demand surge for IT professionals and created hotspots in particular areas such as Microsoft-specialised skills, recruiters say.
The April-June Hays Quarterly Report released today finds companies are looking for skilled Windows and Windows Server engineers.
Hays IT Australia and New Zealand director Peter Noblet said there was a preference for recruiting permanent staff, but contracting was still in favour at larger organisations such as financial institutions, banks and the public sector.
"Certainly, February and the beginning of March, we started seeing a real upturn," he said.
"We have done a lot more permanent recruitment in the last six to eight weeks than at any time over the last year by about 30 or 35 per cent."
The report finds capital has been released for IT projects that were put on hold during the GFC, which has created a demand for program managers and business analysts.
As market confidence has grown, employers are investing in storage to catch up with new technologies, it says. "Another area we are seeing shortages in is the telecoms space because there is a lot going on outside of the NBN," Mr Noblet said.
He said that due to an increase in projects there were also shortages in the Microsoft area, including SharePoint, BizTalk, C# and .NET developers.
"Also in the mobile telecoms space there is a lot happening within the iPhone and iPad applications areas."
Mr Noblet said there had been strong activity in the Windows 7 space, but it had not quite hit the market.
However, Robert Half Technology senior manager Jon Chapman has seen a spike in demand for IT contractors as a result of the adoption of Windows 7 and SQL Server 2008.
"This time last year these kind of Microsoft-specialised roles represented probably 10 per cent of our job flow, whereas they now represent 40 to 50 per cent," Mr Chapman said.
With more budget now released to IT departments, a number of companies were also looking to make substantial changes and upgrades to their IT infrastructures, Mr Chapman said.
"Microsoft-specialised IT professionals are harder to come by and they often have multiple offers and they are demanding premium rates," he said.
He said rates for Microsoft-specialised roles had jumped by 20 per cent in a year.
"I think we are at the front end of the curve on this trend," Mr Chapman said. "We are dealing with APAC early adopters at the moment, given the bulk of our clients are running XP and older servers, but the upgrade path is inevitable."
Mr Chapman said the first quarter had seen a 50 per cent rise in job flow, compared with the corresponding period last year.
Spark Recruitment director Luke Singleton said the company had reported its strongest quarter to date, with an increase in demand for permanent staff.
"I do believe there is a stronger preference from clients for hiring permanents, but that candidates would prefer contracting as it becomes more lucrative," he said.
Mr Singleton said implementations of Windows 7 were becoming more commonplace.
"There is quite strong demand for architects to help set up the migration programs," he said.
"Windows 7 is seen as a step forward and can bring business benefits, and the project budgets are now back. There is also the software lifecycle aspect to take into consideration as XP starts to become comparatively dated."
The recently released Ambition Technology Market Trends Report Q1 2011 found banks were leading the way in technology spend, tipped to invest $30 billion-plus this year.
It found core banking upgrades topped the list of projects together with cloud computing, desktop virtualisation and unified communications as key areas of investment. The release of Microsoft's public cloud offering in Windows Azure was expected to drive demand for certified Azure specialists and integration specialists over the next year.
Jennifer Foreshew From: The Australian April 05, 2011 12:00AM
I
A FAVOURABLE first quarter saw demand surge for IT professionals and created hotspots in particular areas such as Microsoft-specialised skills, recruiters say.
The April-June Hays Quarterly Report released today finds companies are looking for skilled Windows and Windows Server engineers.
Hays IT Australia and New Zealand director Peter Noblet said there was a preference for recruiting permanent staff, but contracting was still in favour at larger organisations such as financial institutions, banks and the public sector.
"Certainly, February and the beginning of March, we started seeing a real upturn," he said.
"We have done a lot more permanent recruitment in the last six to eight weeks than at any time over the last year by about 30 or 35 per cent."
The report finds capital has been released for IT projects that were put on hold during the GFC, which has created a demand for program managers and business analysts.
As market confidence has grown, employers are investing in storage to catch up with new technologies, it says. "Another area we are seeing shortages in is the telecoms space because there is a lot going on outside of the NBN," Mr Noblet said.
He said that due to an increase in projects there were also shortages in the Microsoft area, including SharePoint, BizTalk, C# and .NET developers.
"Also in the mobile telecoms space there is a lot happening within the iPhone and iPad applications areas."
Mr Noblet said there had been strong activity in the Windows 7 space, but it had not quite hit the market.
However, Robert Half Technology senior manager Jon Chapman has seen a spike in demand for IT contractors as a result of the adoption of Windows 7 and SQL Server 2008.
"This time last year these kind of Microsoft-specialised roles represented probably 10 per cent of our job flow, whereas they now represent 40 to 50 per cent," Mr Chapman said.
With more budget now released to IT departments, a number of companies were also looking to make substantial changes and upgrades to their IT infrastructures, Mr Chapman said.
"Microsoft-specialised IT professionals are harder to come by and they often have multiple offers and they are demanding premium rates," he said.
He said rates for Microsoft-specialised roles had jumped by 20 per cent in a year.
"I think we are at the front end of the curve on this trend," Mr Chapman said. "We are dealing with APAC early adopters at the moment, given the bulk of our clients are running XP and older servers, but the upgrade path is inevitable."
Mr Chapman said the first quarter had seen a 50 per cent rise in job flow, compared with the corresponding period last year.
Spark Recruitment director Luke Singleton said the company had reported its strongest quarter to date, with an increase in demand for permanent staff.
"I do believe there is a stronger preference from clients for hiring permanents, but that candidates would prefer contracting as it becomes more lucrative," he said.
Mr Singleton said implementations of Windows 7 were becoming more commonplace.
"There is quite strong demand for architects to help set up the migration programs," he said.
"Windows 7 is seen as a step forward and can bring business benefits, and the project budgets are now back. There is also the software lifecycle aspect to take into consideration as XP starts to become comparatively dated."
The recently released Ambition Technology Market Trends Report Q1 2011 found banks were leading the way in technology spend, tipped to invest $30 billion-plus this year.
It found core banking upgrades topped the list of projects together with cloud computing, desktop virtualisation and unified communications as key areas of investment. The release of Microsoft's public cloud offering in Windows Azure was expected to drive demand for certified Azure specialists and integration specialists over the next year.
