Industry hiring trend 2012-2018

According to an industry research, Information Technology (IT) hiring for the next five years will come predominantly from Asia because it can produce more IT skilled graduates to meet industry needs than the U.S. or Europe. It is estimated that in the next five years, the IT industry will create additional 4.5 million IT jobs, of these approximately 3 million workers will be hired from Asia. However, due to the limited immigration policy, software companies cannot bring all of them to the U.S. or Europe so many companies will have to open development facilities in those countries where IT skills are plentiful and most future works will be distributed among several teams in different time zones.

According to the research, every IT job in Asia will create employment for at least eight people outside of IT, a total of 24 additional million jobs could be created in Asia and there will be a competition among countries on where development centers will be established. The key determination of locations will be made based solely on the education system and the capabilities of their IT workers. A software executive said: “This is a time of accelerating educational change. Countries must determine if their current IT education could support the global need or not. Governments and educators must lead this change aggressively because we are quickly moving into the next phase of computing where cloud computing, mobile, social networks, and big data are the major elements.”

According to the research, cloud computing will be the foundation of most future IT work. With future workforce to use smart phone, software development will be concentrating on mobile and tablet platforms. Mobile will be the point of entry for all future applications. Social computing is also moving quickly to be the core of many business operations. It will change management from hierarchical structures and defined functional teams to flat structure that cross organizational boundary where developers, customers, users are using social computing to collaborate, exchange of information and provide feedback. With the extensively use of IT in almost every business, companies will have a better way to make decision quickly, and discover new opportunities to optimize the business. With so many data available (Big data) there will be a huge need for data analysis, data storage, and data organization to turn them into meaningful information. This will accelerate growth in the global economy and create more IT jobs.

Global software development by distributed teams is not new but with the increasing use of IT all over the world, more and more companies will have to move quickly into this approach. By develop software 24 hours and 7 days a week, companies can get software product to the market faster. In this information age, speed is the rule. The faster you can get to the market, the better you can capture it, and capturing the market is the main advantage in doing business in this global competitive market. Therefore, teamwork and foreign language (English) will be the key requirements for employment beside technical skills.

The research found that 65% of IT companies are planning to open offshore development centers with IBM, Microsoft and Google leading the pact with a combination of over hundred offshore development centers in the next five years. An executive said: “When you look at the market trend, IT is the top two or three industries that are still growing. IT drives most of what business does, from productivity to communication to improving speed to making better business decisions. As every company is investing more in IT, they need workers but currently they cannot find enough of them in the U.S or Europe so hiring IT workers in other countries and open development centers there is a logical solution. The basic skills that they are looking for is programming and application development. Since software development is getting larger and more complex, companies will need workers with at least college degrees in Computer Science, Software Engineering and Information System Managements.”

Currently software development is the most urgent needs because it is the foundation of all IT works. All companies need developers to create new applications using the latest technology. The basic skills are Java, C++, J2EE and Dot net. As more business are using of smartphones and tablets, global companies are looking to hire a lot of software developers who can also handle the demands related to these devices. The basic skills are Java, Objective C, C++, IOS, Android and Window 8. In addition to technical skills, soft-skills such as teamwork, communication in English language are required.

As software development will be done by distributing teams, the next important skill that companies need is software project management. An executive explained: “The ongoing need for more software developers also creates a need for local project management skills. More projects mean more project managers, and there is a big difference between a project manager and a software project managers so we will pay closely that the experience as well as qualification because projects are growing larger, more complex as the connectivity between applications increases. We are willing to pay much more for successful candidates that have proven track records. They must be a leader, have very good command of English and have strong technical skills.

As more companies are moving into the cloud, they all need cloud computing experts and service managers as it moves their data and works to external cloud service providers. The needed skills are focusing on the management aspect of technical works and knowledge on how to leverage company systems to work well with cloud computing companies. These best candidates must understand how to work well with external provider, negotiate contract, and service level agreements (SLAs), how to configure systems, how to negotiate contracts and to make sure that everything will work properly. The preferable degree would be someone who graduates in Information System management (ISM) with two years of experience in management of a data centers or a network system.

Since software works will be done all over the world, security has became another major concern and demand for security professionals is growing as the task of protecting and safeguarding systems and data becomes increasingly complex. Today system and network security are taught mostly at the graduate level so a MS in computing security is essential to get jobs with these global companies. A qualified security specialist must have at least five years of software experience and an advanced degree in security. They must have expertise in deploying firewalls, threat detection tools, encryption technology and other security systems.

Another key technical skills remain in high demand is database administrator, data analyst, data mining specialist and business intelligence specialist. These are the most sought after skills that are difficult to find as it requires a college degree in Information System Management, Compute Science and at least several years of working experiences in data center to manage the collection, storage backup and analyze data to turn into useful information.

With more companies using IT the amount of data will be increasing significantly (Big data). This is a wide open area and quickly evolving into one of the top priorities for global companies. However getting the expertise to analyze and organize data into useful information is challenging. Big data is a top job with the highest salary in the IT industry since it requires many years of experience. The candidates must have both technical and business knowledge and strong statistical and mathematical backgrounds. A majority of people working in big data came from people who work as Data analysts, Database administration and Business Intelligence analysts.

Sources

  • Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University

You may like