There is no doubt that the economy is in a downturn. Jobs are harder
to come by, and the Information Technology sector has not gone
unaffected. I have been closely involved with some IT
employment-related studies lately and have made a few observations
which may help job-seekers.
State of the Market
Although there has been an across the board downturn in the number
of IT jobs available, some areas have been harder hit than others. The
employment prospects of any given individual depend on a number of
factors: The kind of job they are seeking, qualifications, education,
and experience.
1. Programmers
One of the least hard-hit areas. Demand for programmers with
"old-world" skills (Fortran, COBOL, etc.) spiked in advance of Y2K as
managers realized the need to update systems that had been written and
forgotten about years or even decades earlier. The demand dropped off
significantly in 2001 and is not anticipated to rise again.
The most in demand skills are in C++, Visual Basic, and Unix
(including Mac OS X). In the last six months, I have seen more ads
for Mac programmers than in the previous six years. Demand for Windows
programmers remains steady. It is too early to tell for sure whether
increased development on the Unix and OS X platforms will come at
the expense of Linux.
2. Entry-level Technicians
This area has seen the largest drop-off in demand for new personnel.
As recently as a year ago, we were hiring entry level people with
little more than an interest and aptitude for IT. No longer. Getting a
foot in the door these days generally requires at least a couple of
certifications (A+, Net+, etc.) and some formal education and/or
experience in the field.
3. Hardware Technicians
Demand has remained steady here. Let's face it, for the foreseeable
future at least, computers will continue to break periodically. Skilled
hardware repair techs will be needed. On the PC side, the A+
certification is the standard. For Apple products, it is
AppleCare
Technician Training.
4. Network Engineers
As the huge dot-com companies shut down, a lot of network
infrastructure engineers found themselves out of work. This is one of
the hardest hit areas of the downturn, as not only did demand for new
personnel decrease, but for a while there was actually negative job
growth in this field. Exactly one year ago, I searched for a senior
level Network Engineer and received over 100 resumes. Of these, about
four were qualified.
Last week, I repeated the same search and received over 200 resumes,
with about 9 qualified applicants. The key to finding a job in this
area is to be willing to relocate and even accept a job at a level
below where you believe you should be in order to get in the door and
hopefully advance later.
5. Senior Management (IT Manager/Director, CIO, etc.)
Hundreds of these jobs were eliminated with the .com bust. However,
upon closer inspection, most of the .com jobs with these titles were
not in fact the jobs they claimed to be. Most of the e-companies may
have had someone with a title of Chief Information Officer or IT
Director, but the job description for the position was actually more
akin to that of a lead programmer. This is largely attributable to the
fact that most of these companies placed all of their hope for survival
in the elusive chase to develop some "killer application" - to the
almost total neglect of infrastructure.
Generally, only one of these positions exists at each company,
though very large corporations may have a separate senior IT management
position for various divisions or units. When an entire e-enterprise
goes bust, they may displace dozens or hundreds of programmers and
engineers, but only one IT Director, CIO, etc. Consequently, the market
has not been flooded without of work IT Managers. Demand has continued
to grow, albeit more slowly.
The .com Bubble Examined
A lot of the .coms were staffed by people who had not been working
previously. When many of these companies folded, a large number of the
staff did not attempt to reenter the work force and thus did not
compete for the decreasing pool of jobs. As one observer quipped,
"These people went from living in their parents' garage playing Doom to
Internet millionaire to living in their parents' garage playing
Doom."
Next week's column will look at ways to increase your chances of
success in your job search. 
Further Reading
