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IT Spending: Let your budget be free

If you were looking for some ammo to get your budget increased for the coming fiscal year, Forrester has got your back with arguments why CEOs should stop limiting their IT budget allocations.

The gist of the argument is that putting CIOs under budget pressure forces them to spend on maintaining current operations rather than helping to grow the business. This isn’t a particularly universal argument; there are a lot of shops where IT really doesn’t have any clear or positive ROI avenues to contribute to business growth. The idea that new initiatives can contribute to efficiency and stability, though, can be easily substituted.

But the real problem with the Forrester argument is that they are probably advancing ideas that CEOs are already familiar with, and have rejected. More than once I have come across CEOs that squeeze IT budgets explicitly to prevent growth… growth in IT, at least. That is, after all, what they most frequently get for their invested IT dollars… new systems, more ongoing maintenance costs. There is no faster way to exist the CEO’s office than to come to him presenting as a positive something he has already mentally adjusted to as a negative.

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Programming, Development Skills in Demand

Job opportunities for technology professionals are fluctuating in the United States, but programming and development skills are hot across the country–especially in Java/J2EE. In New York City, IT managers and networking analysts have also seen a sharp increase in demand.

If you can code, you can get work.

Demand for C#, Java/J2EE, .Net, Oracle, Sharepoint and SAP skills are very high, according to a July report from IT job board Dice, which surveyed recruiters and human resource professionals.

“Not only is demand strong for these professionals, but these positions as a group pay on average $10,000 more than the average national paycheck for tech professionals,” said Tom Silver, senior vice president of Dice, in a statement. “And confirming their coveted in-demand status, these IT pros are receiving double the pay raise this year, as compared to technology professionals as a whole.”

The No. 1 programming and development skill in demand is Java/J2EE with more than 14,000 open job positions nationally, according to Dice.

“Java/J2EE professionals are tough to recruit with one respondent noting there are just not enough developers on the market and too many openings,” said Silver. “For .Net programmers experience is key, as hiring managers are looking for IT professionals who’ve demonstrated their prowess in this framework. And for those with C# know-how, the average paycheck is $89,400 and there are open positions in 48 states including Alabama, Texas, New York and California.”

Other skills in demand include security analysts of all flavors and those with federal security clearances and database administrators. The single largest metropolitan area in the United States with IT job demand is New York City with more than 8,200 openings. In second place, Washington, D.C., with 7,400 which is followed by Silicon Valley at 4,400; Chicago and Los Angeles have more than 2,800 each; Atlanta, Seattle and Dallas have more than 2,000 each; And, lastly, Philadelphia has more than 1,600 openings.

In New York City, job openings have climbed mightily for IT management and network communication analysts, which have grown by more than 60 percent, according to government figures analyzed by Pace University, which published its quarterly Pace/Skillproof IT Index report in July.

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Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

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After Pay Cuts, IT Workers May Seek Payback in New Job

A Harris Interactive survey found that IT workers see an improving economy — and an opportunity to start looking for a better job.

Cross posted from Computerworld

Computerworld — It may be matter of debate whether the IT job market is improving.

Certainly, for Eli Lilly and Co.’s (LLY) IT workers who are facing a layoff, the state of the job market is clear. The pharmaceutical company last week said it plans to cut 340 IT jobs on top of 140 positions cut earlier this year.

Eli Lilly employs some 1,250 IT workers in the U.S. and said the IT cuts are part of an overall restructuring of more than 5,000 workers nationwide, a company spokesman said, confirming a report in the Indianapolis Star , hometown newspaper in the city where Eli Lilly is based.

Despite the woes in the Eli Lilly IT operation, national IT hiring indexes have been showing fluttering month-to-month increases , and a new survey conducted by Harris (HRS) Interactive found that confidence among tech workers in the economy is on the rise.

Harris surveyed 4,367 employed tech workers, including 241 in IT operations, in the second quarter of 2010 and found that 38% of the IT workers believe the economy is getting stronger, compared to 32% in the first quarter.

The survey, dubbed the IT Employee Confidence Index, was conducted by Harris on behalf of Technisource Inc., a national staffing and recruiting firm.

The breakout data from the survey could portent trouble for IT managers and companies now relying on fewer IT employees.

For example, the survey results provides evidence that many IT workers may already be preparing to look for new jobs over the next year.

Harris said that 61% of IT workers earning between $35,000 and $50,000 a year are "likely" to start looking for a new job over the next 12 months. Meanwhile, 27% of IT workers now making between $50,000 and $75,000 annually and 36% of those whose salaries exceed $75,000 are "likely" to begin a job search.

"In some areas, salaries were cut or certainly salary increases were suspended," said Sean Ebner, a regional vice president at Technisource. And, he added, "as cuts were made in IT, the remaining staff was asked to do significantly more without additional compensation. It really did create some pent-up animosity."

Ebner said the survey found more interest in seeking new jobs than ever before.

The willingness to look for new jobs doesn’t yet mean the job will be there. For instance, only 27% of IT workers earning between $35,000 and $50,000 indicated that they expect more jobs will be available to them.

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Mike Hanes
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2010 IT spending still looks strong, Forrester says

IDG News Service – Despite fears caused by the European debt crisis, spending on technology products and services is set to continue growing around the world, although the pace of growth in Europe overall will be lower, Forrester Research said in a report released Tuesday.

U.S. IT goods and services spending will jump 9.9% in 2010 to $564 billion, compared to 7.8% growth worldwide to $1.58 trillion, Forrester said.

Canada will experience the highest IT spending growth this year with a 16.2% rise, according to Forrester. IT spending in Latin America is set to grow 15.4%, followed by Asia-Pacific with 11%. Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa will see a 10.5% uptick.

But IT spending in Western and Central Europe is set to drop by 0.7% due to the debt crisis and the weak euro.

The US 2010 forecast represents a 1.5% increase over one Forrester gave in April, while the global growth rate remained roughly the same as the previous forecast of 7.7%.

Growth is being spurred partly by the fact that the U.S., and to a lesser extent, other nations, are entering an innovation cycle marked by adoption of new technologies, Forrester said.

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Executive Q&A: Citi’s Jon Beyman on IT Talent

By Greg MacSweeney

Read the Original Article at  Bank Systems & Technology

Jon Beyman, managing director of operations and technology for Citi’s global institutional client group, discusses the ongoing search for IT talent in financial services.

Jon Beyman, managing director of operations and technology for the global institutional client group at Citi, has a long track record of driving technology and financial innovation. Before joining Citi in 2008, he was CIO at Credit Suisse, and prior to that he was the long-time CIO at Lehman Brothers, so he has a pretty good perspective on the state of innovation in the U.S. financial services industry. Beyman discusses with Greg MacSweeney, editor-in-chief of Bank Systems & Technology sibling brand Wall Street & Technology, financial firms’ search for technology talent and the dangers of the United States falling behind other regions in the race to lead global technology development.

What is the state of technology development in financial services? Are you concerned with the pace and rate of innovation?

BEYMAN: I am most concerned with providing technology solutions that help drive the revenue generation, risk management, efficiency and productivity of the businesses that we support. The technology that I provide needs to be closely aligned with business goals and needs to be aimed at business goals.

A large part of the innovation equation is finding technology talent. Some experts say it is hard to find enough technology talent here in the United States. Are domestic firms having trouble finding qualified technologists?

It is an interesting question. The answer is “no” here at Citi. Honestly, because of the nature of these businesses that we are in and in particular, the trading businesses, it attracts smart people because it pays very well. But to meet my goals, I need great technologists, and I need these technologists to have a lot of domain expertise — they need financial services knowledge.

For a long time, people have said that the best and brightest technologists have been going to Wall Street in search of wealth rather than pursuing engineering or software development, fields in which their compensation would be lower. Given the struggles and bad publicity the financial industry has experienced in the past two years, will the best and brightest software developers and quants turn away from Wall Street?

I suspect it is too soon to tell. There are always people who are going to make as much money as they can. Wall Street doesn’t have the star attraction it had a few years ago, and a lot of what has gone wrong in the economy is being laid at the feet of Wall Street firms.

Certainly there are people who will refuse to work on Wall Street and will work in other industries for less money. But there are also people who are designing systems and technology who say, “I’m just working on technology; I’m not hurting the economy.”

If there is a sustained period of time when there is no compensation difference between financial services and a software developer in another industry, then it might become an issue. But that is not the case right now. Financial firms still pay more for technology talent, and I am in a war for talent with other firms. [For more on IT salary and compensation trends in banking and the capital markets, see this month’s Special Report for the results of the exclusive InformationWeek Analytics 2010 IT Salary Survey, page 28.]

Do you think the current state of education in the United States is preparing enough software developers/engineers/technologists to sustain technology innovation in the U.S.?

We don’t exist in isolation. There are an awful lot of technologists who work in the U.S. and they were not native born. The question is if the combination of people wanting to come to the country and the U.S. graduation rates are enough to sustain the level of innovation domestically. There is a certain level of technology job that can be done anywhere in the world.

My broad answer is, we will always be able to find talented people — as long as there is no societal restriction on the people getting into this country. But if there was no access to external talent available, I don’t think the U.S. schools are training enough qualified people.

What are some of the dangers if the U.S. falls behind in terms of financial innovation?

The only way that would happen would be if there were no way to attract talent to the places where the financial markets are located. But the jobs we are talking about in financial services need to be in certain areas — where the innovative companies are and where the innovative work is being done. Right now, that is happening in the U.S.

India is not a deep financial liquidity pool, though there is a lot of technology there. The advantage the U.S. has is that it is still the biggest and largest and deepest financial market in the world. As a practical matter, you need to be here both for the business and for certain types of technology development if you are a financial firm. I don’t see China or another country becoming a large financial center anytime soon. It could be that other markets grow faster because of regulatory constraints on trading activity or IPOs. But the regulators around the world have learned that the different liquidity centers need to adopt similar rules.

China does not have a deep and liquid capital market. Capitalism works on rewards, and stock markets grow up around where capital providers can build returns on capital. The fear that the financial markets have is not that we are going to lose all business to China. I have not ever heard that expressed. There is a lot of development in China, but there is a lot of Chinese financial investment here in the U.S. because the U.S. has the liquid market.

What are the dangers if the U.S. falls behind in terms of technology innovation?

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Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

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Dilemma: IT Staffing Solution- Staff Augmentation (part II)

Here’s a continuation of my previous post about staff augmentation. Another consulting client had a very short term project that required a specific skill set that no one on her staff possessed. The intricacy of the project required that our engineer become part of the IT team and interact regularly with marketing and senior management. Handling that as a fixed priced project would not have worked for us or them. We were able to provide an experienced engineer to become a temporary part of the staff and complete the development in just a few weeks. That engineer had at his disposal our entire team of engineers and project managers to offer advice and guidance as the project progressed. This is another significant advantage to the client. The staff augmenting engineer of a solid integrator has an impressive team on their staff and can access that team at any time. Compare that to a new hire coming into the company. He or she may have contacts from previous jobs, or a network of peers in the industry but it is not the same as having fellow employees who have a strong vested interest in the success of the engagement.

Just as the engineer has an opportunity to bond more closely with the client, a big plus for the integrator, the client gains significant visibility with the integrator. I am a huge fan of tight, loyal, long term relationships between integrators and their clients. It is much better for both businesses in the long term. The very process of staff augmentation goes a long way in strengthening the relationship.

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Dilemma: IT Staffing Solution- Staff Augmentation (part I)

“We interviewed for six months for this position, and then gave this guy six months to prove himself, but he just hasn’t worked out.” a frustrated client explained to me just last week. “Now the head of that team has given her notice, and will be gone in two weeks! It’s just extremely frustrating” she went on to say.

Unfortunately this type of problem is a regular occurrence for small to medium sized businesses trying to build and/or keep their IT staffs intact, happy, and motivated. This recession, which many IT managers had hoped would provide a much needed reprieve from the incredible challenge of finding the right IT talent, has brought little relief. It is just as difficult to recruit and keep exceptional IT talent as it has ever been. There is a solution however, that I have seen work well for many companies willing to think outside the box a bit. I refer to it as “staff augmentation, basically bringing in outside personnel to augment your current staff from time to time”.

You see, there are many solid IT integration companies that have talented IT engineers with a wealth of knowledge of a variety of networking solutions. These are very expensive people to keep on staff. For integrators, keeping these engineers busy on billable projects is crucial to their profitability. Utilizing this talent in staff augmentation roles on a regular basis has many advantages. The first and most obvious is that such an engagement is usually billed by the hour, making the engineer’s billable hours 100% percentage billable100%. The second is that it can provide a degree of stability for the engineer who can report to the same site, with the same hours, for a specific period of time. That can be a welcome break for an engineer who has been all over the map juggling a variety of projects. It also allows the engineer to form much tighter working relationships with key staff at a valuable client. From the integration company’s perspective it can be a real win.

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Mike Hanes
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IT Careers: Job, Revenue Growth Eyed by Some IT Firms

Sixty percent of IT firms expect to see revenues in the second half of 2010 exceed those in the first half, and 37 percent expect to increase hiring, a CompTIA survey says.

About one in six IT companies expect revenues in the second half of 2010 to come in higher than in the first six months of the year, according to a report released July 8 by CompTIA.

According to CompTIA’s IT Industry Business Confidence Index, 60 percent of tech firms surveyed expect third- and fourth-quarter revenues to be significantly or moderately better than those in the first and second quarters.

This despite what CompTIA termed “the slow and unsteady economic recovery” following the worldwide recession of last year.

IT industry executives remain relatively confident about the tech sector and about their firm’s prospects, but concern over the health of the U.S. economy persists,” Tim Herbert, vice president of research at CompTIA, said in a statement. “In some ways the results point to a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ mentality, where positive news and momentum are followed by unexpected bad news and a renewed sense of negativity about economic conditions.”

There also seems to be some positive movement on the job front, which has been a key weakness of the overall economic recovery. According to CompTIA, 37 percent of IT companies in its survey expect to ramp up their hiring in the next six months.

Of the other firms, 47 percent said that while they are fully staffed, they’d like to add workers to help grow their businesses. The other 53 percent said they are understaffed by 5 to 20 percent.

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Mike Hanes
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Job Tips – What Does the Ideal IT Resume Look Like?

Cross Posted from CIO Magazine

Everyone has an opinion on what information an IT resume should include and how it should be formatted. Please share yours.

Last week I interviewed Shana Westerman, a recruiting manager with IT staffing firm Sapphire Technologies, for an article on IT resumes. She has a fresh perspective on how to write an IT resume based on her experience matching IT professionals for contract and permanent positions with her IT line manager and IT executive clients.

Westerman’s thoughts on how to write an IT resume are informed by her need to know as much about a candidate as possible before presenting the candidate to a client. They’re also informed by her clients’ needs for detailed documentation on prospective employees. 

I found Westerman’s underlying message (be careful who you take resume advice from; make sure it’s tailored to IT jobs because not all resume writing advice is) refreshing, thought-provoking and sensible. But I knew some readers would consider her recommendation to write long, detailed resumes heresy, and indeed it stirred controversy (see the comments readers left.)

Who knew IT resumes could inspire as much debate and vitriol as President Barack Obama’s citizenship or Sarah Palin’s viability as a presidential candidate? Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on what an IT resume should look like, and often those opinions contradict each other.

For example, some professional resume writers and recruiters say the resume shouldn’t be more than two pages while others (including Westerman) say a three or four page resume is fine, especially for a high-level IT executive with several decades of experience. Some job search experts and career counselors recommend including fancy graphics, images or charts to make one’s resume stand out. Others say fancy formatting is unimpressive and irrelevant. 

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Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

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We Know IT and We Only Do IT Recruiting

We Know IT and We Only Do IT Recruiting

If you need to fill a qualified professional Dallas IT Position or if you’re an Dallas IT Professional looking to upgrade, doesn’t it just make sense to work with a company that actually has the background and expert, insider, knowledge of the IT Industry in the Dallas / Fort Worth Metroplex?

After over 10 years as a Dallas IT professional, Mike Hanes, president of ProVisionTech Group started the company after experiencing, first hand, just how big name and general recruiting firms were doing their clients a disservice.

He wasn’t going to play the “number’s game” that is all too common in the industry.

Instead he founded a company that is dedicated to providing the best possible match for both the organization and the candidate.

Based on over 10 years experience as a Dallas IT professional, project lead and holding an MBA in E-Business, he developed a pre-screening process that ensures Dallas-Fort Worth IT departments & organizations and Dallas-Fort Worth IT candidates find the right match, faster and with a lot less headaches.

When you work with us, you’ll find the right person or position faster than you ever imagined.

We Guarantee it!

“Mike is very knowledgeable about all facets of the technology sector. His depth of experience combined with his high integrity and true caring for his clients make him the right man to recruit the people you need to make your IT project a success. Whether you are one of his individual contractors or a corporate IT department contracting services from him, you will be highly satisfied with the results.”

Kevin Brockhoff, former ProVisionTech IT Consultant

“Mike Hanes and I share core values of integrity and Christian service. From our first meeting Mike impressed me with his ability to leverage those values as an asset in his business. Mike was instrumental in helping us find someone to fill our open IT position. ProVisionTech worked with us to determine our specific needs and then provided several candidates who met those requirements. We would definitely feel comfortable doing business with ProVisionTech again, should the need arise.”

Bill Herlin, Director, IT Strategy & Governance

Regards,

Mike Hanes
ProVisionTech

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