12 IT-kunskaper arbetsgivare inte kan tacka nej till
Har du pratat med en rekryterare i IT-branschen på
senaste tiden? Enligt flera bedömare på den amerikanska marknaden
är nu bristen på teknikkunskaper som experter talade om för ett år
sedan
nu en verklighet.
“Allt jag ser i Silicon Valley är helt emot antagandet att behovet
av programmerare dör ut” säger
Kevin Scott, senior ingenjör på Google och medlem i Association for
Computing Machinery. "Från små
till stora företag rekryteras det som aldrig förr.”
Många rekryterare säger att det finns fler öppna positioner än de
kan fylla och enligt Kate Kaiser,
IT-professor på Marquette University i Milwaukee, anställs
studenter redan innan de är klara med sina studier. I januari
frågade Kaiser 34 studenter i sin systemanalys och designklass hur
många som redan hade tackat ja till ett arbete efter studierna i
maj. Tjugofyra (24) studenter lyfte sin arm. "Jag är säker på att
de övriga 10 som då inte hade ett arbete klart har det nu,”
avslutar Kate.
Marknaden för IT specialister är het, men bara om du har de rätta
kunskaperna. Om du vill surfa på vågen se vad åtta experter –
inklusive rekryterare, IT-professorer och andra branschexperter –
anser vara de hetaste kunskaperna på den amerikanska marknaden den
närmaste framtiden.
1) Machine learning
As companies work to build software such as collaborative
filtering, spam filtering and fraud-detection applications that
seek patterns in jumbo-size data sets, some observers are seeing a
rapid increase in the need for people with machine-learning
knowledge, or the ability to design and develop algorithms and
techniques to improve computers' performance, Scott says.
"It's not just the case for Google," he says. "There are lots of
applications that have big, big, big data sizes, which creates a
fundamental problem of how you organize the data and present it to
users."
Demand for these applications is expanding the need for data
mining, statistical modeling and data structure skills, among
others, Scott says. "You can't just wave your hand at some of these
problems - there are subtle differences in how the data structures
or algorithms you choose impacts whether you get a reasonable
solution or not," he explains.
You can acquire machine-learning knowledge either through job
experience or advanced undergraduate or graduate coursework, Scott
says. But no matter how you do it, "companies are snapping up these
skills as fast as they can grab them," he says.
2) Mobilizing applications
The race to deliver content over mobile devices is akin to the wild
days of the Internet during the '90s, says Sean Ebner, vice
president of professional services at Spherion Pacific Enterprises,
a recruiter in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. And with devices like
BlackBerries and Treos becoming more important as business tools,
he says, companies will need people who are adept at extending
applications such as ERP, procurement and expense approval to these
devices. "They need people who can push applications onto mobile
devices," he says.
3) Wireless networking
With the proliferation of de facto wireless standards such as
Wi-Fi, WiMax and Bluetooth, securing wireless transmissions is
top-of-mind for employers seeking technology talent, says Neill
Hopkins, vice president of skills development for the Computing
Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).
"There's lots of wireless technologies taking hold, and companies
are concerned about how do these all fit together, and what are the
security risks, which are much bigger than on wired networks," he
says.
"If I were to hire a wireless specialist, I'd also want them to
understand the security implications of that and build in controls
from the front end," agrees Howard Schmidt, president of the
Information Systems Security Association and former chief
information security officer and chief security strategist at eBay
Inc.
But don't venture into the marketplace with only a wireless
certification, Hopkins warns. "No one gets hired as a wireless
technician -- you have to be a network administrator with a
specialization in wireless so you know how wireless plays with the
network," he says.
4) Human-computer interface
Another area that will see growing demand is human-computer
interaction or user interface design, Scott says, which is the
design of user interfaces for the Web or desktop applications.
"There's been more recognition over time that it's not OK for an
engineer to throw together a crappy interface," he says. Thanks to
companies like Apple Inc., he continues, "consumers are
increasingly seeing well-designed products, so why shouldn't they
demand that in every piece of software they use?"
5) Project management
Project managers have always been in high demand, but with growing
intolerance for over-budget or failed projects, the ones who can
prove that they know what they're doing are very much in demand,
says Grant Gordon, managing director at Kansas City-based staffing
firm Intronic Solutions Group. "Job reqs are coming in for 'true
project managers,' not just people who have that denotation on
their title," Gordon says. "Employers want people who can ride
herd, make sense of the project life cycle and truly
project-manage."
That's a big change from a year ago, he says, when it was easy to
fill project management slots. But now, with employers demanding
in-the-trenches experience, "the interview process has become much
tougher," Gordon says. "The right candidates are fewer and farther
between, and those that are there can be more picky on salaries and
perks."
The way Gordon screens candidates is by having on-staff
subject-matter experts conduct interviews that glean how the
candidate has handled various situations in the past, such as
conflicting team responsibilities or problem resolution. "It's easy
to regurgitate what you heard from PMBOK [the Project Management
Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge], but when it
comes to things like conflict management, you start seeing whether
they know what they're doing."
In one case, Gordon asked a candidate to describe how he'd go about
designing a golf ball that goes farther by changing the dimples on
the ball. "No one has the answer to questions like that, but it
shows how they think on their feet and how they can break down a
problem that's pretty ambiguous into smaller segments," he
says.
6) General networking skills
No matter where you work in IT, you can no longer escape the
network, and that has made it crucial for non-networking
professionals, such as software engineers, to have some basic
understanding of networking concepts, Scott says. At the very
least, they should brush up on networking basics, such as TCP/IP,
Ethernet and fiber optics, he says, and have a working knowledge of
distributed and networked computing.
"There's an acute need for people writing applications deployed in
data centers to be aware of how their applications are using the
network," Scott says. "They need to understand how to take
advantage of the network in their application design." For
instance, to split three-tier applications among multiple machines,
developers need to know how to build and coordinate that network.
"People who understand basic distributed systems principles are
very valuable," Scott says.
7) Network convergence technicians
With more
companies implementing voice over IP, there's a growing demand for
network administrators who understand all sorts of networks --
LANs, WANs, voice, the Internet -- and how they all converge
together, according to Hopkins.
"When something needs to be fixed, companies don't want the network
administrator to say, 'Oh, that's a phone problem,' and the phone
guy to say, 'Call the networking guy,' " Hopkins says. "Our
research has validated that there's a huge demand for people who've
been in the phone world and understand what the IT network is, or
someone managing the IT network who understands the voice network
and how it converges."
8) Open-source programming
There's been an uptick in employers interested in hiring open-
source talent, Ebner says. "Some people thought the sun was setting
on open source, but it's coming back in a big way, both at the
operating system level and in application development," he says.
People with experience in Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP,
collectively referred to as LAMP, will find themselves in high
demand, he says.
Scott Saunders, dean of career services at DeVry University in
Southern California, is seeing the same trend. "Customer
dissatisfaction and security concerns are driving this phenomenon,
especially in the operating system and database markets," he
says.
9) Business intelligence systems
Momentum is also building around business intelligence, Ebner says,
creating demand for people who are skilled in BI technologies such
as Cognos, Business Objects and Hyperion, and who can apply those
to the business.
"Clients are making significant investments in business
intelligence," Ebner says. "But they don't need pure technicians
creating scripts and queries. To be a skilled data miner, you need
hard-core functional knowledge of the business you're trying to
dissect." People who can do both "are some of the hottest talent in
the country right now," he says.
10) Embedded security
Security professionals have been in high demand in recent years,
but today, according to Schmidt, there's a surge in employers
looking for security skills and certifications in all their job
applicants, not just the ones for security positions.
"In virtually every job description I've seen in the last six
months, there's been some use of the word security in there," he
says. "Employers are asking for the ability to create a secure
environment, whether the person is running the e-mail server or
doing software development. It's becoming part of the job
description."
This, Schmidt says, mirrors the trend toward integrating security
into companies' day-to-day operations rather than considering it an
add-on role performed by a specialist. Companies will still need
security specialists and subject-matter experts, Schmidt says, but
more and more, every IT person a company hires will have to have an
understanding of the security ramifications of his area.
Hopkins echoes that sentiment. "Every single certification we do
now has an element of security built in," he says. "We keep getting
feedback from the market researchers that security touches
everything and everyone. Even an entry-level technician better
understand security."
Saunders says DeVry University has responded to this demand by
adding a security curriculum to some of its campuses throughout the
U.S. "Companies are increasingly interested in protecting their
assets against cyberterrorism and internal threats," he says.
11) Digital home technology integration
Homes are increasingly becoming high-tech havens, and there has
been enormous growth in the home video and audio markets, and in
home security and automated lighting systems. But who installs
these systems, and who fixes them when something goes wrong?
To answer that question, CompTIA developed a certification in
cooperation with the Consumer Electronics Association, called
Digital Home Technology Integrator. "It's the hottest and most
vibrant market we've seen in a long time," Hopkins says.
12) .Net, C #, C ++, Java - with an edge
Recruiters and curriculum developers are seeing job orders come in
for a range of application frameworks and languages, including
ASP.Net, VB.net, XML, PHP, Java, C#, and C++, but according to
Gordon, employers want more than just a coder. "Rarely do they want
people buried behind the computer who aren't part of a team," he
says. "They want someone with Java who can also be a team lead or a
project coordinator."
by Mary Brandel, Computerworld, 07/11/07
This article reprinted courtesy of www.networkworld.com