IT Resource Trends

Robert Half Technology's new hiring survey shows slow growth and stagnant staffing for the next quarter. Meanwhile other studies show that enrollments in computer science majors declined by 50 percent since 2000.

Focal Points:

• Robert Half Technology' survey of more than 1,400 CIOs found 20 percent of surveyed firms were intending to increase their IT workforce in the next quarter while eight percent expected cuts, for a net gain of 12 percent. The remaining 80 percent of the companies expected no change in staffing levels. Companies with more than 1,000 employees were the most optimistic and expected a net increase of 19 percent. The industries with the highest expected hiring rates were business services (22 percent net increase), transportation (15 percent), and manufacturing and retail (13 percent).
• The survey also found that network administration jobs were the most soughtafter for IT departments, according to 72 percent of CIO respondents. The second most demanded position was Microsoft Corp. Windows administrators (69 percent), followed by desktop support personnel (68 percent) and database administrators and managers (66 percent). This is the third straight quarter that CIOs expect local-area and wide-area networking positions to grow faster than any other.
• The latest Taulbee Survey, due for release in May, conducted by the Computing Research Association (CRA), found that the number of newlydeclared computer science majors in the fall of 2007 was half of what it was in the fall of 2000 – 7,915 versus 15,958. The number of new computer science majors was flat in 2006 but increased slightly in 2007, which might indicate that interest is stabilizing, an official stated. CRA tracks PhD-granting North American computer science and engineering departments. This study is supported by a study by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. According to HERI, the percentage of incoming undergraduate students who indicated that they would major in computer science declined by 70 percent between the fall of 2000 and 2005.

Experton Group believes IT resources in the U.S. will remain tight over the next five years while computer science skills will grow overseas in major outsourcing countries such as China and India. To meet strategic and tactical resource requirements, IT executives will need to develop workforce balancing programs that include working with colleges and universities to train required skills as well
as restructuring functions horizontally across the enterprise's global business units.

This will enable executives to backfill and grow needed positions regardless of where the resources are located and greatly reduces the need for H1-B visas. Once the plan is developed, IT executives should communicate the direction and implications for staff, as the current market recessionary fears could negatively impact morale.