The Recruiter

Will Vista Equal Jobs?

Today marks the launch of Microsoft Corporation’s new operating system Vista – the first all new Windows operating system in five years.  The big question for IT consultants is what impact will the Redmond, WA-based company’s system have on jobs in the tech industry in the near future? 

If you try searching under the key word Vista on Monster or other job boards today, chances are that the majority of listings are jobs located in Chula Vista or similar named locales, and not Vista-related jobs.  However, considering that Windows runs on a large majority of the world’s computers, and most existing computers lack the capability to run premium versions of Vista, it is bound to have an affect. 

"What will this mean for corporate environments? What will the adoption rate be like? Will it be like XP, where it took nearly four years to pick up speed, or a lot sooner?" Jim Lanzalotto, Yoh’s vice president of strategy and marketing told eWeek.   

“Vista could help foster new business opportunities involving training, building new applications and redesigning the way other businesses work,” said Michael Ferreri, a Microsoft general manager quoted in Washington Technology.

However, according to Lanzalotto, Vista is not the only Microsoft release in 2007 that will have an impact on the IT job market.

"The second new product that will be interesting to watch is Microsoft's Duet, their SAP product which will integrate Outlook into ERP," said Lanzalotto.

Stay tuned, as it looks to be an exciting year in the IT industry. 

Posted by Janet F.

Managing Expectations

Now that we are in the season of performance reviews and new projects, it is a good time to think about how you will manage expectations on your projects and initiatives throughout the year so that you don’t hear the dreaded phrase, “you should have managed their expectations better.”

A recent article by Jared Sandberg from the Wall Street Journal’s Career Journal, should particularly be of interest to all you project managers out there.  The excellent title aside, “Why Preparing for Failure Can Bring You Success,” the idea of managing expectations by budgeting time delays for projects is nothing new; however, some of the reasons why people lower expectations are of interest.  It turns out that it’s not just procrastination - psychology is also involved. 

According to Sandberg’s article, “One explanation for why managing expectations downward works so well may be the psychological phenomenon of ‘anchoring,’ or the tendency to overvalue an early piece of information, such as an expectation set by an employee.” 

Even as new information surfaces, notes Max Bazerman, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, "We adjust insufficiently. Wherever we start from has a significant influence on our final estimate."

So while we at The Recruiter will never recommend padding excessive delays into your next project, make sure the expectations and estimates that you set early are accurate and can be measured.  This can be achieved by listening to your clients and making sure that you understand their expectations, not what you think they want. 

Posted by  Janet F.

Outsourcing Growth

While the U.S. technology industry salaries continue to remain robust as indicated in the recent Yoh Index of Technology Wages, the industry might be in for some big changes in 2007.

According to Paul McDougall’s blog in Information Week, although outsourcing of U.S. workers’ jobs to lower-cost countries has been a hot topic among the media and in tech circles, it has yet to make a large dent on the U.S. labor market. However, he expects this to change in 2007, based on Merrill Lynch’s 4th Quarter 06 CIO User Survey. 

One of the most interesting points of the survey is the large increase in CIOs who anticipate increasing their 2007 spend with external providers 72%, up from 58% last year; while only 2% expected to decrease spend, and 26% expect it to stay about the same.

While McDougall concedes, “outsourcing doesn’t yet automatically equate to offshoring,” he predicts that we are rapidly approaching that point mainly because U.S.-based outsourcers, such as IBM, CSC and EDS, and Bermuda-based Accenture, are rapidly increasing staff in India. 

This is definitely a trend that U.S. technology workers should keep an eye on in 2007.  Also of interest in the survey, is that CIOs in the 4th quarter named systems integration and consulting as their top spending priorities over the next 12 months. 

For more information on offshoring, and some of the myths involved, please click here.

Posted by Janet F.

A Surprising City for Techies

Yes, the usual suspects are all on wired.com’s very non-analytical summary of top cities across the US for technology.  Including, Seattle, San Francisco and New York City, but we (and our friends at slashdot.org) were pleasantly surprised to see a city like Raleigh make an appearance on the list. 

Raleigh has tons of potential in moving into the ranks of the tech world with Red Hat and SAS Institute’s geography alone.  Not to mention we at Yoh are projecting high-demand in the Raleigh-Durham area this 2007 in areas like:

• Java Developer
• MS Developer
• Project Manager
• QA Analyst
• Oracle DBA
• Systems Verification Engineer
• Systems Administrator
• BASIC Designer
• SAP Applications Developer

ACC basketball fans should get prepared for more and more technology buffs to invade their stomping grounds.   

Posted by Christy H.

Shallow Labor Pool Could Make You More Valuable in 2007

Hiring managers in technology markets are in a war for talent.  In an ideal world, they seek high-impact professionals with technical skills and practitioners with domain and industry skills. But in the reality of today’s tight job market, candidates with these skills are few, and the talent shortage has put increased pressure on wages to rise.

Professionals in technology know that this is a simple case of supply and demand. The lead factor driving the demand for talent is the relatively low unemployment rate in many industries and geographies. In fact, in 2006 the domestic unemployment rate was at a five-year low. 

To get a better idea of where the domestic technology talent market stands right now, let’s see where we stood in 2006.

In the United States, wages in the high-tech field grew steadily during mid-year when compared to the same months in 2005, according to the quarterly compensation index, Yoh Index of Technology Wages. Wages rose 0.1 percent in July and slightly higher (1.4 percent) in August. Wages increases in the high-tech sector then jumped another point to 2.4 percent in September, the most recent month for which there are statistics.  All these increases made careers in technology even more appealing to professionals across the US.   

If you are at the top of your industry, expect to receive increased compensation packages by companies that are serious about landing the best talent. The shortages of talent with expertise in specific fields give pros like you the ability leverage and negotiate wages.  There will be nationwide demand for candidates with specialized technical skills, specific domain and industry experience.

The need for higher compensation packages are going to be most prevalent in technology services and device manufacturers in the hardware space, occupational health and case management in the health care market and clinical research and R&D in the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech spaces.

With several new areas of expertise that have emerged in the technology space, employers are looking for experts with advanced SAP skills.  This is creating a niche in the market for the crème de la crème in SAP.  Other specialties that there will be a strong demand for in 2007 include:

• Biostatistician
• Business Objects Developer
• CRM Project Manager
• Firmware Engineer
• Hardware Engineer
• Java Developer
• Mechanical Designer
• MS Developer (.NET, C#)
• Oracle (Functional/Technical) Consultant
• Oracle DBA
• Project Manager
• SAP (Functional/Technical) Consultant
• SAS Programmer
• Systems Architect

Check out the complete list of hot skills in over fifteen US markets from Atlanta to Seattle on yoh.com. 

Posted by Jim L.