Hays Information Technology - January 2008

Public Sector

Hotspots

The largest hotspot at present exists for graduates, with a groundswell of demand for qualified and capable diploma, and degree level candidates. Meanwhile the shortage of skilled Sharepoint professionals has placed them in high demand, from Sharepoint developers to pre-sales and implementation.

There is consistently high demand for candidates with Microsoft programming language experience. The anticipated release of the new Microsoft .NET framework makes this an area to watch in the next six months.

The demand for Cisco certified IT professionals will continue to grow in the next three to six months, while we expect the demand for project managers and business analysts to increase in late January as projects are given a new focus in the New Year.

As capacity constraints continue to impact the Australian economy on a macro and micro level, more companies are turning to their IT departments to deliver real-world efficiencies and productivity increases. This has led to a greater increase for experienced and qualified IT professionals in the public sector.

The coming quarter

We expect demand for both contract and permanent IT professionals to increase in the next quarter as many government projects kick off and require candidates at all levels - from project managers to support officers.

Executive recruitment

Highly qualified and experienced executives are always in demand, however there is also a healthy cohort of capable candidates that are looking for new opportunities in senior management roles.

Organisations are becoming more adept at making their roles attractive to executives by offering unique challenges and specific benefits. We expect the executive market will again be an area where demand will increase as we move into the New Year.

Salaries

We expect salaries to increase over the next 12 months. While we are not yet seeing widespread salary breakout for IT professionals, we expect that high demand and low supply areas of the market will enjoy above average salary increases.

The change of Federal Government now brings to the fore the issue of AWA's and Performance Pay and we await with interest to see what may replace these, since remaining competitive in the IT recruitment market is essential for the government in attracting and retaining their talent.

Candidate trends

Good candidates are getting snapped up very quickly, are counter offered and are often dealing with multiple offers at one time.