by Sean N. Henderson
Presented by : John Barry, Tuesday, January 6, 7:30 p.m., at the Danbury Hospital Auditorium.
Many were in attendance for the DACS January General Meeting on tech jobs. The presenter, John Barry, owner of ITech Consulting Partners, gave an informative talk and Q&A on the current job outlook and what skills are needed by industry.
John began his presentation with some statistics – such as 36% of employers looking to increase full-time employees (FTE) in 2015. He also indicated that permanent positions are increasing.
He further went on to list the industries looking to increase FTEs, including the technology, healthcare, and insurance sectors.
John also listed some technologies his company has determined to be in demand. This list included open source configuration management (E.g., Puppet), cyber security, handling and utilizing big data, SQL/RDBMS alternatives (NoSQL), SaaS-based customer relationship management (Salesforce), high availability and distributed computing (Hadoop), and even Python.
John was the bearer of good news in this tough economy – unemployment is just 2.7% for tech jobs, compared with 6.1% overall. His own company is seeing market improvement, including an increase in demand for FT versus contract, and companies exercising contract-to-hire.
The topic moved on to job boards – of which John cited Dice.com as the number one IT job board. According to research by Dice.com and ITech, emerging fields include cloud-and-mobile search, managing and interpreting big data, alternative energy, and anti-terrorism.
So what are the expectations of employers of job seekers? John indicated that a bachelor’s degree is required for most positions, and that certificates in project management (PMP), Scrum Master, and CISSP are desired. Also certificates in MSSE, CCNA, OCP, and Java.
Of the list of top 10 jobs requiring college degrees, 3 of the positions were tech related – software (app) developer, network-and-systems administrator, and Web developer.
Median hourly earnings for software developers are in the mid-$40-per-hour range, and 40% of software developer positions go unfilled.
Other good news for DACS members was that over 50% of employers are expecting to hire IT in 2015, and of those, financial services represented 42% of the firms.
One important aspect of job searches is the consideration of consulting versus a permanent position. Consulting offers the advantages of being able to work for different organizations, opportunities to learn new skills, and higher compensation. The drawbacks are lack of benefits, specialized skills required, and sporadic work. Additionally, someone who has had many consulting assignments may find it hard to transition to full-time. Permanent positions offer the opportunity to develop in-depth skills in a specific technology, additional training, additional compensation, paid time off, and unemployment compensation if laid off. The disadvantages of permanent positions were listed as skills possibly growing stale, and exposure to elevated office politics that exist in structured organizations.
John indicated that the presentation slides could be located from his LinkedIn profile. Regarding LinkedIn, John mentioned that it is important to have a profile on this professional social media networking site and, at the minimum, to fill in the summary area. Despite all the job boards and other automation, personal in-person networking remains the number one way to find a job.
Other ways to find a position include working with recruiters. When working with recruiters, John suggested that referrals go both ways, and one way to keep in touch with a recruiter is to provide them with leads and referrals as well.
Benefits of working with recruiters include their knowledge of jobs not yet listed on job boards, direct access to hiring managers, and more detailed knowledge about positions and companies than is listed on a job posting.
During the last few minutes of the presentation, John gave some reasons to consider ITech Consulting Partners as a potential recruiter – which included experienced individual recruiters with long careers, better understanding of critical qualifications, resume improvement, and long-term relationships with clients-and-past-candidates.
John introduced two recruiters from his firm, Amanda Blair (recently awarded Under 30 Rising Star) and Joi Naui, Sr. Technical Recruiter.
During the Q&A following John’s presentation, there were many questions. One attendee asked in which positions can one “write their own ticket?” John thought that positions related to security, NoSQL, and Python, were possibly such positions. Other questions from recent graduates, job changers and part-timers were about how to get their first tech job. The answers from John and other attendees centered on the theme of having demonstrable skills – and that volunteering, or having a side project, extra classes or demonstrations were valuable in this regard.
After the meeting, instead of the normal restaurant, attendees were invited to casual networking at the hospital’s café.