More and more employers may be turning to virtual job fairs in an attempt to broaden their candidate pool while saving travel and expenses.
In these online forums - in which both companies and job seekers can log in from across the globe - participants can access a variety of “booths” of such big-name firms including Procter & Gamble Co., Citigroup or Boeing Co. to learn details about the company as well as open positions, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.
These job applicants learn about these online programs through several channels including Facebook, Twitter and the company’s own websites.
However, HR experts note in the article that often these virtual events are geared toward building interest among quality candidates as opposed to landing an actual job offer. In this way, such online events may be more the realm for “passive job seekers” that want to learn more about what possibilities are out there.
Got SQL? Will Hire
Software programmers with a SQL background are considered most in demand, although the need for software skills as a whole is dropping rapidly in the public sector, a new survey indicates.
The survey, compiled by Salary Services Limited through the third quarter of 2011, shows cost-cutting measures are being reflected in depleted government IT departments, but skill-targeted jobs with software houses and retail firms have shown increases, reports Computer Weekly.
According to survey data, the 20,046 jobs for workers with SQL skills in Q3 of 2011 were nearly 10 percent more than the same time period one year ago. C programmers, the next most-sought after software skill, were the target of 15,131 new jobs over the same time period, a less than 1 percent increase from one year ago.
Skill Set Tug-of-Ware
More outsourcing of technical expertise means more CIOs these days are looking for job candidates with a business skill set rather than a technical skill set, a new survey reports.
A survey conducted by the Society of Information Management (SIM) indicates the key concerns of CIOs today weigh heavily on the business side, a good thing for job seekers with business degrees and not so good for those with technical certifications, reports Network World in an article on survey findings. Of the top ten concerns of CIOs, only two were of a technical nature - IT reliability, ranked sixth, and enterprise architecture/infrastructure capability, seventh, which likely coincides with more outsourcing of technical duties, survey findings indicate.
Does this mean we can expect to find IT staffs filled with MBAs over CCIEs? Maybe not just yet. “I’ve had bad luck with MBAs,” said Jon Green, vice president of IT for Den-Mat, a California-based dental products manufacturer. “I hired a Harvard MBA who did not understand the adoption process of IT and that you can’t just put a system in front of aa person and expect them to use it. But it really depends more on the person than the title.”
Those in the technical fields also counter that enrollment in technical certification programs continues to be on the rise as industry trends shift to new trends such as cloud computing. Consultants say staffers with both business and technical accreditations can be valuable for various reasons and roles.
