CIOs face a tight IT job market

20,600 new IT jobs were created in the first three months of 2019.
8 April 2019

The pressure’s on the IT management. Source: Shutterstock

It’s a geek’s job market out there in job-seekers’ land right now in the US, according to Janco Associates, a NY-based IT management consultancy. With some firms’ projects failing to hit key way-points due to shortfalls in staff skills, companies are hiring fast, and wages and perks are on the up.

Most organizations already have c-suite and high managerial positions but there is growing need for hiring at the staff level, particularly for IT professionals with a talent for specific technological initiatives.

Permanent staff positions are set to be primarily filled by mid-summer, but contractors’ and freelancers’ roles will continue their demand uptick for the rest of the year.

“With 20,600 new IT jobs created in the first three months of 2019, the market is tight. There is a skills shortage, some projects are missing key early benchmark dates due to lack of staffing,” said Janco Associates’ CEO, Victor Janulaitis.

“Many blockchain and ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] positions remain unfilled, and some organizations are seeing an increase in attrition rates for those positions.” He added, “This shortage is not limited to these skill sets, programmers and business analysts of all stripes are also in high demand.”

Employers would do well to note, however, that higher starting salaries on their own are often a little draw for many IT grunts, who prefer companies to exhibit positive approaches to their staff maintaining healthy work-life balances.

Remote working, part-time roles, and family-friendly hours and attitudes may well score well with prospects— especially important if companies want to keep hold of their recent hires.

These pages have covered in the past the prevalent attitudes to work, life, pay, and self-development that IT types exhibit, and the most positive way to attract staff is to offer on-the-job training, in many instances. Going to work, in short, needs to be interesting.

The Janco CEO said, “With the current growth of the IT job market and most enterprises planning on expanding the impact of technology [on] external and internal operations, the outlook for IT professionals is bright.”

TechHQ‘s reading of industry pointers and press releases points to IT professionals being offered an increasing number of roles in the commercial blockchain, cryptography, IoT and – especially – all areas in artificial intelligence.

Seemingly less popular are “traditional” positions in IT security, systems administration, and pure database administration.

Janco’s data is compiled by reviewing public data, open and filled positions at its clients’ organizations, and interviews with various CIOs, recruiters and HR staff.

The company publishes a series of guides for employers that wish to take on IT staff, plus templates aimed at c-level executives laying out possible disaster recovery and business continuity plans.