Room for change for IT workers
Jinfo Blog

By Jan Knight

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The last few weeks have seen a number of studies reporting on the growth of the IT industry and how demand for IT workers is growing. There are also stories of IT workers successfully taking their traditional skills and moving into other roles such as product development and cloud computing.  Small businesses and entrepreneurs are in a perfect place to connect, help grow the economy and create jobs.

Computer World announced that medium-sized IT firms (revenues of $20 million - $100 million) currently have the most aggressive hiring plans with 48% planning to expand staffing in the next few months. In larger companies, those with revenues above $100 million, only 44% said they plan staff expansion.  

Computerworld UK also reports a “positive bounce in IT jobs” and, in a report from KPMG and the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), they cite indications of an increased recent demand for IT workers especially in the area of business analysts and CAD operators.

An interesting trend – some traditional tech workers are reengineering their skills to reflect what’s happening in their companies and what’s needed most to help grow those companies. CIO magazine reports on a former traditional IT employee at Ford Motor company whose job is now focused in cloud computing. The employee is now less focused on traditional enterprise applications and more on product development opportunities – in this case helping to capture and deliver information that the end consumer, the driver, will benefit from.

According to a CIO article on IT jobs, employees need to be able to use technology for critical thinking, demonstrate the ability to analyse and solve problems, and then be able to communicate those solutions to others. Some of these skills are outside the traditional IT “tech guy” (or girl) role but those who can adapt and take on new skills will be in demand.

CompTIA, an IT Industry association predicts the Global IT industry to grow 4 percent in 2011 and identifies several key technology trends that will impact the IT industry in 2011: Cloud computing, creating actionable business insights from increasing amounts of data, mobile and wireless applications, increased adoption of mobile networks and social networking to drive “connections”, as well as automation to improve accuracy and generate better data.

Not all the demand is for permanent IT Staff. Many companies, especially small businesses are hiring freelance IT workers in order to allow them to respond to market conditions without taking the risks of over hiring and online teams are becoming a common model. Elance, an online community for online freelance opportunities, announced survey results indicating growing demand for freelance IT professionals, with much of the growth appearing in the areas of online marketing, Facebook developers and mobile app developers.

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