Hays Information Technology - April 2008

Public Sector

Hotspots

Business analysts (BPMN/UML), functional SAP consultants, SAP support, SAP BW, business intelligence/data warehousing and SQL BI developers and database administrators are the major hotspots across the public sector's IT recruitment market as there is little talent available to support the increasing demand.

The coming quarter

We are expecting recruitment activity to continue to increase across many of the IT specialist areas. There has been a noticeable increase in fixed-term contract positions paid directly by the government in preference to paying contractor rates.

Salaries

Contract rates should remain the same for project managers and business analysts in IT. Salaries should also remain stable, however some candidates with highly sought after skill sets are often demanding salaries well above the market rates.

In order to compete with private sector salaries, organisations are often starting candidates on a salary at the higher end of the appropriate salary band.

Candidate trends

Early in the January quarter we experienced an increase in candidate availability, however this has already fallen back to typical levels as projects heat up for the year.

With good candidates receiving multiple offers, the public sector is finally starting to speed up turnaround times between resume receipt and the offer stage.

Organisations are promoting from within to move people into executive levels as it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract people with the necessary skills.

Candidates are more open to contracting and will leave a permanent role for a contract role; some candidates are so sure of the buoyancy of the market that they are handing in their notice before finding other work.