Where the tech jobs are now

The problem is the lack of ONE job board or data base that covers all IT openings in the USA. People say in Chandler AZ, may have perfect skills for a job advertized locally only in Atlanta. How to find? The same applies for the three million other job openings, just no way to match skills.

Of course as an American in bangalore, I know there are 300,000 IT / ITES jobs ae here.

I have been in IT for 25 years and have accumulated a MS degree with various certifications. It is certainly stagnant,especially depending on where you live. There are always ups and downs in the IT profession. There were years where an IT profession could leave a job and go somewhere else in a heartbeat and then there are times like now. I call it the Employers market but this always changes. In the current market the employer has the say what goes and you will see pay rates decrease. This also has to do with the current state of the economy. There are a variety of options for employers to choose from. That is why it is best to consider getting certified in specialty areas during the down side in IT. I have always taken the opportunity to go back to school and receive extra training. This makes me more marketable and keeps me on top of technology. If you are looking to get into the IT arena just realize that you are always educating yourself because technology constantly changes. The hot area now is: Security, Project management (PMP), Cisco, .Net, Java and VMware. I would even throw Data Base Administration (DBA) in the mix and becoming a MCSE or the new certification which is the MCITP.

You can’t judge how many actual openings there are by counting postings. Many postings are duplicates posted by contingent staffing firms. These firms only get paid if they fill the job, so they hear about a job and a bunch of them post the opening. This creates a lot of duplicate postings for the same job. Also, a lot of job ads are fake. One type is the PERM ad that companies must file when they decide to sponsor an H-1B for a green card. Theoretically, if a qualified American applies, they are supposed to be given the job and the H-1B is to be sent home, but companies don’t really do that. Also, some ads are posted by headhunting firms trying to develop a large database to impress companies with.

I worked in IT for 9 years and continually saw pay decreases and workload increases. Technology pushed onto IT staff and users with little or no training on how to use it. I have several certifications and have found them to be useless. Most positions in Minnesota are contract work with little to no benefits. I was laid off from my IT job in 2007 and I decided enough was enough. I worked with a career counselor, decided to make a career change and I am going back to school. I wouldn’t recommend working in IT unless you want stagnant wages, long hours, high stress and NO stability.

I happen to be an IT hiring manager, and every time I have an opening for a technican, it makes me sad to see how many fine local American candidates show it. Sad that I have only one job to offer, that is. At least half of them could hit the ground running and do a great job. All the American candidates I hired did just that. I also hire older candidates as well as young ones, and have restarted many careers as a result. Anyone who says there is a shortage of talent is full of it. America’s greatest decades of technological leadership, innovation, and prosperity were when we “grew our own” – trained our own people instead of bringing in foreign guestworkers or sending work offshore. Most people don’t realize that every job given to an H-1B or other visa category is a job that American workers have been BARRED from applying for. In most cases, even if the American somehow heard about the opening, they wouldn’t even have to consider him. And most job openings that are earmarked for foreign workers are never even posted where we can see or apply for them, because they go through layers of bodyshop (oftal also run by foreign workers here on guestworker visas). Most American job candidates are never even seen or interviewed for jobs that are open in America.

Agree with all the comments about the low paying entry level jobs (‘oil changers’) being available but for the seasoned professional (‘mechanic’) it is not the same since you compete with lower cost ‘supposedly’ experienced Off Shore Resources thanks to the Global Internet. Over a graduate’s 40+ year work life, what are the career opportunities for these graduates unless they happen to luck into getting Experience that stays in demand or a position that requires local support? A Medical Doctor with over 10 years of experience is regarded as still a Doctor when a new drug or procedure gets brought to market. An IT person with over 10 years of experience can be dumped should new software, hardware, databases be brought to market. He is only as valuable as the current demand for his experienced skill set. Little to no value is given to the prior experience he may have with computers. Go ask the WANG engineer that works night security at the local parking lot or the IBM mainframer driving a Car Parts Truck. Companies would not retrain them since it was easier and cheaper to get new younger staff out of college with the current skill set or to offshore it. So my experience is that companies may have a demand right now (and I have to say the demand is far less than 2007) for low cost technology staff or specific high cost skill sets but they are just as quick to throw their employees away when their skill need changes or someone else says they can do it for less. You can retrain all you want as an individual, however it is a roller coaster salary ride and you keep hoping you got on the right roller coaster.

Casey, Denver CO, if you’re an unemployed software architect right now, you probably don’t have money to spend on certs or travel.

You can still learn stuff… but then employers don’t care whether you “know stuff”, now. And they’d rather not invest in relocating able and willing US applicants. And they’d rather not make a good faith effort to recruit US workers, though they statistically consider them the most capable, dynamic and creative. Because they’d much rather play trivial pursuit to declare all US applicants unqualified and hire the cheap, easily brow-beaten guest-worker, or invest in lobbying for more of them… as they’ve repeatedly shown through public statements.

Anonymous IT Director in CA: You are correct. Head-hunters used to work as you suggest, via networking. Some of the best never used resumes.

Recruiters now merely fill data-bases with buzz-words parsed from resumes by software and play the odds. For the most part they don’t even understand the buzz-words, have no ideas which ones are equivalent, which ones indicate ability to cover a number of different circumstances, etc.

When the recruiters make at least a token effort to understand how people’s abilities work, they’ll start matching up people with appropriate work. Until then, the job markets will continue to be dysfunctional.

The other factor is the explosion in body shopping (temp, contingent, contract, consulting, “solutions”, services, out-sourcing, off-shoring… there are many euphemisms) and stagnancy in real, long-term employment developing software products.

Tens of thousands of US citizen CS majors have been graduating each year, while employment of production workers (software engineers, analysts, janitors, secretaries, clerks, SQA, tech support, receptionists…) by software publishers has been flat since 2001 at under 220K. Body shopping is huge by comparison, though also relatively flat since 2001.

I’ve worked with excellent software developers who were high school students, music majors, classics majors, etc. Degrees are irrelevant.

At the same time I know gifted US citizens with decades of experience with a dozen operating systems, a dozen programming languages, including Objective-C & Cocoa, Python, PHP, Java, data-base design and analysis, sys admin and analysis… who can’t get the time of day from recruiters.

To Barak, a listing on a web site does not a sincere effort to recruit make. Cohen and Grigsby and Fragomen et al. proved that. In scattered news reports we see that tech firms have been getting thousands of resumes each month since the late 1990s. There’s no lack of talent.

I’ll believe employers are trying hard when they include e-mail addresses (perhaps distorted a la CAPTCHA) rather than filtering through defective resume parsers, ditch the telephone trivial pursuit quizzes and other gimmicks aimed at declaring all US applicants “unqualified” whether they’re able and willing to work at local market compensation levels or not.

As to Annie’s question, the NSF stated in the 1980s that they knew that the flood of student visas and guest-workers would drive down compensation to the point that the time and expense for a US student to get an advanced degree would make it a net negative, while the extra benefit of a green card or citizenship makes the recompense to foreign students even higher, so US citizens would be displaced.

The jig is up ! No one can get a job that is satisfying, secure, and pays well in IT. It’s the economy stupid!

Well anyway, I quit IT in 1987 and never looked back. Even then the certifications were useless, the interviewers clueless, and the jobs hard to get.

I wish all you unemployed folks luck in finding a decent job and hope it won’t involve learning a new language, Hindi.

I recently got layoff from a high tech firm. I got all my IT certiciations just prior being layoff. IT certication is great on the resume. It gets you in the door for interview (passed the HR). You still need to perform well on the interviews. Employers are screening candiate very tough now. Even prior to the interviews, I have to take tests to prove that I am knowledgable. The tests are very real-life examples. Bottomline: IT certification get you an interview. You still need to prove that you know what you are doing.
Also, IT salary took a dive now. I took at 40% cut. Also, we are hiring 1 more person, I am getting tons of resume who took our IT test.

Yeah, there are jobs out there BUT employers are expected IT professionals to do 2 or more jobs. Example server and network administration. They are 2 separate disciplines. The best advice for the mother is for her son to find a job and then looking what the companies needs are. Then I would seek experience and certifications in those areas.

Annie,

Computer related occupations employment growth has been absorbed by nonimmigrants for the entire decade.

Please read…

Petition to remove Computer-related occupations from employment based immigration

http://immigration-weaver.blogspot.com/2009/03/petition-to-remove-computer-related.html

I’m a CEO of a small but national tech company. We have a constant stream of open positions that have been difficult to fill for a variety of reasons.

1. The hiring process in the US is completely broken. I have found that 99% of HR departments and line-of-business managers are completely unqualified to interview or make hiring decisions. What’s needed is a candid approach from both candidates and employers that allows for a hiring trial period where the candidate and the company can prove their value to the other – as well as accurately position the candidates skills within the business. This process takes weeks of hard work to determine and cannot be replaced by innovative questions from an untrained interviewer.

2. Certifications are worthless. I once hired a candidate with a perfect scores across a collection of .NET certifications that couldn’t perform the simplest tasks. It turns out he had never actually coded anything in any language before or after the test. Again, Tech positions should be certified on the job by a collection of real world tasks that they perform with their problem solving and technical skills. Then they can be evaluated and given the right position inside a business.

3. Candidates are completely unrealistic in the quality and value of their skill sets in interviews. I understand the reasoning behind skill inflation (i.e. use it to get the job), but it’s now made reading resumes a completely useless effort. Candidates also seem to be completely ignorant of common workplace policies, needs and compensation structures. The hiring process will go a lot smoother if both sides clearly explain (and publish) our expectations from the start.

4. A bad tech guy can instantly spoil the bunch. The risk of bringing someone onto a good team is incredibly high. The sense of entitlement of most new hires is astounding and damaging.

Our solutions…
1. Hire contractors
Work with people before they become permanent employees. It’s time consuming, but builds great teams.

2. Outsource the work
Outsourcing isn’t perfect, but neither are the local candidates. Outsourcing doesn’t show up late, steal money from a co-worker, hit on the receptionist or forget to shower for a week. And it costs a fourth the local candidate.

> “Walter, don’t Americans also benefit from Americans entering the IT field, or am I missing something?”

Hundreds of thousands of US IT workers have lost their jobs in recent months. The layoffs are still going on – Cisco just announced more layoffs, in spite of the fact that the company is doing well.

The crash of 2001 was even worse. IT work in the US never recovered from that, and now we in the middle of another crash.

For Americans, pursuing an IT career is the surest way to unemployment.

Walter, don’t Americans also benefit from Americans entering the IT field, or am I missing something?

The sources used in the article are hardly unbiased. All of the sources are corporate, or education, related. Every source cited directly benefits from Americans entering the IT field. The elephant in the living room is being ignored. That elephant is the aggressively offshoring of US IT jobs, and the equally aggressive replacement of US IT workers with cheaper guest workers.

I am getting Cisco certification out of pragmatism. I have experience, but when you look online at postings, they nearly all want certifications as well.

There are jobs available on FindAJobAlready.com.

I agree with this article. I work for a leading semi conductor company which still hires in highly specialized areas. While there are some layoffs, still people who perform well are safe.

My advice is to not only focus on the programming language (aka C#, C++) but the API’s and frameworks that are built on them. I landed my first job with a BS in Computer Science a decade ago not only because I knew C++ but I had some hands on experience with MFC and also had some SQL database experience at my internship. These days, I would suggest that an entry level graduate get an internship and if not then they should create some of their own projects to expand and demonstrate their skills. They could learn ASP.Net web development, database skills, or even try learning some cryptography. All of these will go far compared to most entry level graduates. Most know a programming language C# but couldn’t tell you how to open a queue, query a database, or encrypt a file.

My take on certification – Totally useless especially for an entry level CS major. I’ve never seen a resume where a certification impressed me and I’ve never wasted time getting one. I’ve known many colleagues that get them without any benefit whatsoever. It never meant more money or help them get hired.

Don’t let these posts fool you. Software engineers are still in demand and not everything is being outsourced. Customer support and testing are prime candidates but most software development is done in the US for US companies. Also, only so many H1-B visas are granted each year limiting the negative effect on software developer salaries.

And don’t forget H-P. Many of the layoffs are staff positions — HR, PR, etc., not tech people. (That doesn’t make them any less grim. It will be great to one day see an end to these seemingly interminable announcements that yet more thousands are out the door… just horrendous…)

So if IT jobs are available, why are places such as cisco and google announcing layoffs?

Here in the Sacramento area, the State pulls all of the strings, and since they are giving out IOU’s, hundreds of positions have been placed on hold.

In the bay area, unemployment is rampant. Skills and experience are irrelavant if you don’t know someone on the inside. New grads are preferred over experience.

Helpdesk positions do not require a BS degree, a 2 year degree will suffice.

I’d say that Anonymous IT Director, CA and those making comments about pay have hit it on the head. The hiring restrictions of a BS-only or an MS-only is often an indication the HR doesn’t have a clue as to what works and doesn’t. They get someone who doesn’t do well, so they now restrict to only BSCS or BSCE or such for a support job in hopes of getting “smarter” people. Well, if the guy has a BSCE and was any good at it, WHY would he want a low paying support job?
The reason is that the interviewer can’t interview, so they replace interviewing skills with requirements for higher and higher degrees and certifications, rather than finding out if the applying person actually has any brains. And if a guy who is qualified (on paper) for an $80,000 to $120,000 job is interviewing for a $40,000 job, you really need to ask why. Maybe he has the paper but really knows nothing?
As to Josh in Rural Ohio with “There are a few notable exceptions. RHCE (RedHat Certified Engineer) and Cisco certification are both hands-on, demanding certifications. It is near impossible to pass these exams without years of experience and training. These certs do give a good indication of the candidate’s quality.”
BULL! I used to work for Cisco and you can take a two week camp that will get you nearly any certification from Cisco. Then if you don’t keep fresh or you don’t get that tech job that uses those skills for another 6 months, you have forgotten most of it, yet you still have the paper.
And if you want to know why there are so few tech jobs here, ask Cisco. The guys you praise for certificates are one of the big reasons the jobs are gone. They laid off Americas by the thousands, and sent those jobs to India, EVEN AFTER SEVERAL DEPARTMENTS WERE ENDING our India connects because the cost of rework was exceeding the cost of doing it here. Cisco has sent thousands of jobs to India and China and has an open door for anyone from India and China to come to San Jose.
You should tell that lady with the kid getting a BSCS to learn to mow grass and start a lawn service. He will make more and have a job. Seriously.

It is all part of the cycle: now tech jobs are going to the people who have the most certifications. Earlier, specialization was the key. Tomorrow, specialization will again be the key. So for now, we will again see people who can test well and acquire certificates walking into jobs they are not qualified for. Troubleshooting is a specialized skill. You can teach people to use decision trees, but it is the person with the talent for troubleshooting that can do the work.
As for the individual who thinks IT personnel are overpaid, it is clear he lacks understanding about how crucial IT is. Ask the CEO of any of the companies who run websites that bring in billions in sales every year about the importance of skilled IT people.

Times like this show how broken the hiring process is and are reminders that, among other things, most managers are hardly professional interviewers. Now, many companies are seemingly trying to hire technologies instead of people, which in my mind certainly contributes to the perceived disconnect between necessary skills and what people have.

“28 years in the business and the last 18 at Microsoft” Here is what I see now that I am looking. Employers are looking for exact fits and not at the bigger picture. I have learned new stuff all my career and have skills at a level that alot of tech will never get to during their careers yet finding a job is taking along time. They should be looking at what you could bring to the game. We are hurt by our own success in IT. HR using resume scanning for keywords before a person looks at your resume. Cheap labor doing support from India and China with VOIP. Now everyone wants you on contract now so you have more down time at the end while you find another job. For all these reasons,I had my daugther go into the medical field instead of IT.

In 20 years of being in the tech industry I would say the most significant obstacle to filling all those open positions is the incompetency of companies in interviewing candidates.

Although job boards and company web sites invite resume submissions there are enormous volumes of electronic resumes that are never read. Because it refers to a a technical position HR departments typically rely on technical managers to handle the hiring; managers that often have a dearth of interview skills.

Various studies have shown that the percent of hires based on electronic resume submission are in the single digits. Most hires still rely on private introduction. As long as HR departments defer to individuals that cannot manage the interview process and rely instead on having candidates handed to them on a silver platter there will continue to be reports about a lack of candidates.

The same can be said for the ‘certifications’. I have them but I do not hire based on them. They are pieces of paper that neither employers nor employees should hide behind. You have to actually talk to people to find out what they know and more importantly, how fast they learn.

When the tech industry learns to address and master the human side of the equation they will start filling positions.

I’d like to know where Casey is located.

With a few exceptions, Certifications are meaningless without experience, and only of limited usefulness with experience. It’s too easy to cram for a week to pass an exam, only to forget the information a week later. Between myself and a few friends in corporate IT, we’ve had to clean up far too many messes created by people hired because of their certifications but who had no real knowledge or experience in the subject matter. A certification should not be the deciding factor in hiring, unless you are going for a low salary and low quality.

Certifications are useful when you have a tight group of excellent employees who need to upgrade their skills… for example, people on our team renew their MCSE’s to learn how to administer Windows 2008 Server.

There are a few notable exceptions. RHCE (RedHat Certified Engineer) and Cisco certification are both hands-on, demanding certifications. It is near impossible to pass these exams without years of experience and training. These certs do give a good indication of the candidate’s quality.

Your so busy talking about technical needs that you forgot about the most important thing. Who is going to sell all of this great IT stuff. Engineers don’t drive profits sales people do!

Your text offered some insight on why these numbers seem so non intuitive. You are calling low level helpdesk and desktop support “IT skills”. Most of us don’t think of desktop support as an IT position, but a support position. The 400k number makes more sense now. You don’t mean 400k Java/.Net/ColdFusion programmers, system analysts, or advanced netheads. Sorry, but I don’t think I want to make lower than minimum wage and work 12 hours a day with a headset. (As an aside, perhaps they wouldn’t need so many support people if they invested in the applications development staff so the systems worked well.)

Certifications are a joke to most professional IT people. They don’t mean anything and they are arbitrary in many cases. Many certifications are money making opportunities for the vendors like Microsoft rather than an unbiased assessment of skills and knowledge. Companies filling IT positions need to do a little work in hiring good workers and then spend the time to nurture those employees that they have. If it is so hard to replace them, why are so many IT people so unhappy with the way they are treated.

I have said many times that there are plenty of high-quality IT workers around. I know many of them and they can’t find permanent employment for their skills. They have to do contract work with few or no benefits. Why? It is because the companies don’t want the benefits expense and would rather get congress to allow in low cost foreign replacements that will work 24/7/365 as indentured servants. If there are other reasons, I would like to hear them.

Annie, please stop parroting those hiring managers who want something for nothing. You are damaging native IT workers.

I don’t work in IT, but have worked with people in IT for years.

While, I do think that international workers are bringing down salaries in the industry, I also believe that IT workers have been grossly overpaid for what they do.

I think a correction in salaries is long overdue for this sector, and I welcome it.

Cheap Indians with H-1B and L-1 visa have almost destroyed the American I.T. business. Wages have been decimated. Soon this legal discrimination of Americans will end with the passage of Senate Bill S.887

I didn’t know that tech support jobs paid enough to be able to pay back those student loans.

It’s not a scarcity of candidates with the skills, or combinations of skills and credentials, that employers want. They just don’t want to pay for those skills when they can hire non citizens for far less money. Or, when they look at what their paying an engineer in India or China.

The skill set you mentioned does not include algorithm, data structure or hard science. To me these ‘knowledge’ are far more important and fundamental than applicatonal ’skill’, Skills can be learned and even applied handy given the understanding of big picture.

I’d advise job seekers to look for jobs with their specialities. What makes one stand out than others? Everyone knows C/C++, how does one stand out from others? ACM programming competition? Open source project? Special libraries knowledge that applies to the job? The difference will help to get an interview opportunity, and the rest is how well the future co-workers like you.

No question, IT employers seem to be looking for an exact fit and place greater emphasis on role/job-specific certifications. With an apparent glut of applicants, “preferred” certifications are more likely now to be “required.” Even though most IT certifications are measurements of knowledge, rather than skill or experience, they do offer employers some potential for lowering risk in hiring. The point: if you’re an unemployed IT worker right now, you probably have at least an hour or two a day you can devote to studying for your next certification. Do it now.