Ted was recently speaking with a member that is in charge of development for a large organization. Â Six months ago, the company was struggling through budget cuts, and trying to determine what they could live without. Â Of course, personnel cuts were not off the table. Â Today, however, this VP says that the organization is incredibly busy. Â It seems to him that they have chosen to take a time of relative calm to push as many IT projects through the pipeline as possible. Â They are running at full capacity just to keep up.
The trend is interesting - this combined with an interesting article that came across my desk via Twitter today raises some interesting points. Â It seems as though IT is still running strong, and in general the IT workforce hasn’t taken the unemployment hit that many other specialties have.
This article talks about 5 IT recruitment trends, all of which run counter to the general sentiment of job market news today. Â In sum, the article discusses the following:
- The IT asset replacement cycle, in general, does not appear to have stopped. Â This means that IT demand is still there, and IT staff is still critical.
- The project flow has not decreased. Â If projects have been cancelled, they may have been ones that wouldn’t have made it through the queue anyway. Â Again, this means the demand for IT resources doesn’t drop.
- Smaller companies are snatching up good IT talent that has been laid off. Â For those expecting to find the talent when business picks back up, the market may be tight for those hiring.
- IT leaders are using these hard times to show how they can deliver value to the organization. Â For many companies, this means that the resources that are around will need to work harder for leaders to meet their goals.
- Contractors (staff augmenters) are taking a hit, while full-time resources are learning to be adaptive. Â This could lead to a stronger, more agile organization in the long run.
The points above are paraphrased from the article written by By Stuart Packham of silicon.com, posted on ZDNet News: May 27, 2009
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