In the Contractor UK November Report, SAP remains in strong demand, appearing in more than one in ten advertised vacancies - bringing an average hourly rate of £70.
Jeff Brooks is Chair of the IT sector for the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC.) He says, “SAP and others have shrink wrapped their offerings and made them available to smaller organisations, which has made SAP a more appealing skill to have.”
SQL (£30) is the most in demand programming language, appearing in 10% of all advertised roles. This is followed by Java (£39,), which is requested by 8% of advertisers, and C++ (£39,) where demand falls to 4%.
Windows (12% of adverts / £20) remains the most popular skill for systems administrators. UNIX (11% / £31) and Windows NT (8% / £20) fill the number two and three slots.
For database and business intelligence roles, SQL Server (6% / £30) is most wanted. Oracle 9i (4% / £35) and generic data warehousing (2% / £38) experience are second and third most popular respectively.
As for the future, Brooks notes that recruiters are, “struggling to find C# and .NET skills. Having those will be a nice place to be for technicians over the coming months.”
For more information, visit:
http://www.contractoruk.com/news/001829.html
Permanent vacancies for IT staff in the public sector grew by 18% in the second quarter of this year and contract positions grew by 19%.
For permanent jobs only the electronics and communications industry saw a larger increase: job vacancies in this market grew 31% between April and June 2004.
Richard Nott, sales director at CWJobs, said: "Demand for IT jobs in the public sector remains strong. The IT industry is the healthiest it has been in eighteen months and we anticipate that demand for IT personnel will remain steady as the industry makes a full recovery."
The most popular skills demanded by the public sector were Oracle, Office, SQL and Java.
In terms of advertised salary Oracle Developers can expect £50k, SQL Developers £47k and Java Developers £43k, figures for Office Developers were not available. The rest of the Top Ten was: Unix (£51k), HTML (£48k), Prince (£NA), Windows 2000 (£NA), SQL Server (£54k) and Visual Basic (£49k).
The CWJobs/SSL survey takes information from all the jobs advertised in the UK's leading IT and multi-sector recruitment web sites along with press and trade magazine adverts.
22 Sept 2004
"I used to think certification did not mean much. I was a qualified software engineer with a lot of experience and I thought that was more important, but when you have certification as well, it puts you ahead.
I started on certification when I was made redundant more than two years ago. It took a real effort to invest the time and money - £3,000 - but getting just one certificate got my foot in the door.
I have a fair number now: Microsoft Database Administrator, Application Developer and Systems Administrator, as well as Cisco Network Professional.
Certification puts the structure on your technical knowledge. To gain the network support knowledge, doing the training was far more of a necessity to differentiate me in the job market."
.
"I started on certification because I had been a network administrator for a dotcom start-up. It was my first job out of university and after three years I had gone as far as I could in a small company. The job market was flat, so to give me an edge I got certification.
I found the job interview tests easier after I had done the courses. I am now third-line support at an IT company and I am very glad I moved. My first certification was a Cisco Certified Network Associate and then a MCSE.
I paid for the courses myself by taking out a £4,000 loan."
Six certificates in six months
"For me, certification was a way of starting my IT career. I left school at 19 with A-levels, but had seen too many jobless and low-paid graduates to want to go to university. I have always been interested in IT, and at school I helped out as an IT administrator.
I chose to do an MCSE course as the IT job sites showed the most results for Microsoft skills.
I did a course, sponsored by my father's company, where I then went to work. I had tried to get IT jobs in London, but even with the certificates, employers either wanted five years' experience, or would pay no more than £16,000 a year.
Now, after a year of working, I am getting job offers every week, the best paid of which was £36,000. But I wouldn't be employable without the certification. Certificates give your CV a fighting chance."
For more information, visit:
http://www.computerweekly.com/articles
14 Dec 2004
Britain is facing an IT skills gap in the workforce that threatens to damage global competitiveness within 10 years if not addressed, according to a new report from E-Skills.
Some 76 per cent of companies with hard-to fill IT vacancies have had to delay the development of new products and services while 42 per cent have suffered an increase in their operating costs.
Over a quarter of companies are suffering from a lack of everyday IT user skills within their organisations, with just under half reporting their staff were not proficient in using basic word-processing applications.
“Information Technology and IT skills lie at the heart of the UK’s future prosperity,” said Karen Price, CEO at E-Skills.
According to the study of more than 3,200 companies, finding skilled technical staff with valuable management experience was also a problem.
“The skills we are short of are way up the value chain, such as project management.”
The research, which draws on evidence from Gartner Consulting, also shows a declining level of potential new entrants to the industry.
The industry needs up to 179,000 entrants each year but only 18,000 students graduated in IT last year.
Women were also found to be in short supply in the industry, as only 20 per cent of the current workforce is female.
Across all age and gender groups, it is predicted 1.4m people need to upgrade their computer skills within the next three years.
For more information, visit:
http://www.contractoruk.com/news/001792.html
Nov 3, 2004
The Government has launched an innovative partnership with Cisco Systems to teach convicted criminals the latest IT skills, needed for future UK employment.
Inmates at 18 prisons nationwide can choose either basic or intermediate IT while the more ambitious can gain a Cisco-accredited qualification.
The deal has been made possible by a £2.6m grant, enabling the government and the US IT firm to pursue a set of objectives under one collaborative project.
Cisco said their contribution is partly to help their worldwide customers resolve problems from a shortage of staff and skills in the industry.
“In the past, our customers have asked us whether they can borrow our engineers, because of the shortage,” said Jane Lewis, who is fronting the scheme for the systems provider.
Meanwhile, the reported 70,000 unfilled positions in UK IT was cast a motivating factor for both parties.
One inmate working under the Prisons Information Computer Technology Academies Scheme (Pictas) said he wanted to become an IT contractor after he qualifies his CCNA.
“I'm now considering being self-employed, developing a network of clients,” said trainee, Naveed. “You can earn £75 an hour doing that sort of thing, I'm mapping it all out now,” he said.
Cisco said they are turning to UK prisons to combat an “acute shortage” of professionals skilled in ICT.
For more information, visit:
http://www.contractoruk.com/news/001825.html
Nov 22, 2004
IT vacancies in the finance sector have continued to rocket in Q3 2004 according to the latest statistics from the CWJobs/SSL quarterly IT skills survey.
Demand for IT personnel has continued to grow across the UK, but the finance sector has again seen the greatest boost with permanent vacancies rising by 53% and contractor vacancies up by 79% between July and September 2004.
The finance sector has also outperformed all other industry sectors between Q3 2003 and Q3 2004 in terms of both permanent and contractor IT vacancies.
Permanent vacancies have shot up by 121% compared to the national average of 97%, with the second highest number of vacancies within software houses/consultancies showing a 105% increase.
Contractor vacancies saw a massive hike of 164% compared to the UK average of 138%, with the retail sector following closely behind with a 163% rise.
Top Ten Skills demanded by Finance Sector for Contractors
1 MICROSOFT OFFICE
2 SQL
3 UNIX
4 JAVA
5 C++
6 SYBASE
7 ORACLE
8 C
9 WINDOWS NT
10 VISUAL BASIC
Commenting on the statistics, Richard Nott, Sales Director at CWJobs said: “When the market began to decline in 2001, many IT projects were put on hold or shelved altogether due to lack of finance.
With the market now picking up these projects have been reinstated and there has been an increased demand for skilled IT professionals.
Employers in the finance sector are clearly showing a renewed confidence in their recruitment of both permanent and contractor staff for the first time in a long while."
For more information, visit:
http://www.contractoruk.com/news/001826.html
Nov 23, 2004
Thinking about MCSE 2003?
You should be!
Rare things are considered valuable commodities. And a new report from Microsoft shows that MCSE 2003 certified IT pros are rare – therefore valuable!
According to Microsoft, there are over two million Microsoft Certified Professionals. But of those numbers, fewer than 11,000 hold the coveted MCSE 2003 title. This means there aren’t nearly enough MCSE 2003 certified pros to fill the current demand in the IT job market.
.
|
963,606 |
| MCSA 2000 |
104,703 |
| MCSA 2003 |
11,314 |
| MCSA:Messaging |
15,499 |
| MCSA:Security |
2,091 |
| MCSE-NT |
394,807 |
| MCSE-2000 |
244,153 |
| MCSE-W2003 |
5,604 |
| MCSE:Messaging |
3,082 |
| MCSE:Security |
2,505 |
| MCDBA |
122,586 |
| MCAD.NET |
15,769 |
| MCSD |
45,150 |
| MCSD |
7,744 |
| MCP+I |
229,139 |
| MCP+SB |
2,040 |
| MCSE+I |
12,456 |
| Total: 2,182,248 |
Numbers indicate total certifications per title as of April 14, 2004.
Courtesy of Microsoft Corp.
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