Takeaway of the week is that it remains good to be in the IT job market, if one has to be in a job market at all. Choices abound, given the right skills and aptitude. This goes for anywhere in the globe, given the right skills.
Dice: Tech Job Market Rises Above
Despite economic woes, the job market for IT pros remains hot, a new Dice hiring survey indicates.
According to the survey, nearly three-quarters of IT-focused recruiters and hiring managers expected to build out tech staffs in the last half of this year, the technical staffing firm noted in a report on findings released this month.
That's an increase from an estimate of 65 percent for hiring expectations gathered by Dice six months back.
Technical professionals of all experience levels are being sought. As for existing IT staff, salary is trending upward, according to more than half of those who responded to the survey.
Findings are based on a survey done in mid-May of human resource managers, recruiters, consulting and staffing firms from across the country.
Want Women in Tech? Get Women Leaders in Tech
For more women to choose the technical career path, it'll take more women in leadership roles to help guide them.
That's the view of one such successful female executive in the industry in a recent VentureBeat opinion piece.
Karen Purcell, founder and president of PK Electrical, a Nevada-based engineering and design firm, said women are needed in leadership roles within the science, technology, engineering and math fields to help attract and mentor more women toward rewarding careers in these fields.
Noting the critical value of mentorship, Purcell said the role is necessary not only to teach technique and processes, but to ensure an outside interest is invested in another person's career advancement.
A woman's confidence, she said, is her lifeblood. Without it, women will second guess decisions, including career choices. Any lack of confidence on display will just feed the notion that women do not belong in these fields, Purcell said.
The lack of women in these fields needs to be addressed in school where not enough female students today are being encouraged to enter technology and related fields. As that changes and more women enter those career paths, young girls will begin to see those fields as viable career opportunities.
Purcell said young girls need to see older versions of themselves in technology to be able to visualize themselves in those careers in the future.
Skilled Workers Sought Across Globe
Whether it's IT workers in Ireland, engineers in Japan or sales reps in Taiwan, skilled workers are in demand the world over, according to a new survey.
More than one-third of the nearly 40,000 firms surveyed this year by Milwaukee-based ManpowerGroup report an inability to fill their open positions with qualified candidates, reported a recent item in Businessweek.
The greatest shortages resides in Asia with nearly half of employers surveyed citing difficulties in finding the right candidates to hire. That number was just above 40 percent in the Americas, up from 37 percent last year and 34 percent in 2010.
Ghost in the Hiring Machine
Maybe the problem in today's job market is the process itself?
That's the premise discussed in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, based on the more common use today of software in the early stages of the hiring process.
Human resource departments flooded with applications during this extended spike of unemployment have helped speed up the deployment of automatic services to take care of initial screening of potential job applicants. In many cases, this lack of human involvement in the early stage of the process has made it more rigid and specific, especially in terms of experience and skills.
Many times, software applications will seek out specific key words on applications. If those don't appear, tough luck.
Clearing the software hurdle is becoming a newly valued skill and almost as important as the other skills required to do the job for which the candidate is applying.
Those in the know say the trick is in parroting the words in the job description without just copying and pasting the text, which likely will cause the software to throw out the application.
