IT Jobs: Steady or down?

Since the ‘big’ IT slowdown started, recruitment ads have taken a plunge. Those of you who scan job supplements of newspapers for vacancies would’ve observed this. We, too, scanned job ads to deduce the job opportunities in the current market. We did this by fitting each recruitment ad into our IT Jobs’ Areas Matrix (page 26). From this sample we got an indication of the IT areas where there is a concentration of jobs. Here is what we found.

Hardware

This is the job area for professionals who create hardware–those who manufacture PCBs, ICs and other components. When there was a sudden splurge in the demand for PCs, these jobs were in great demand. Then the demand leveled out and the requirement was for people who specialized in specific areas of hardware integration. The current market has some requirements for highly experienced professionals in areas like VLSI, processor architecture, and DSP design. But these are for higher positions, with at least a professional degree and lots of experience. The same goes for DSP application developers, and embedded system developers. PC assemblers are also a part of this cell. A reduction in IT spending by corporate and households alike, has led to a reduced demand for staffing assembler operations.

A little further in the hardware market are people who manage and troubleshoot this infrastructure. These are people like network engineers, maintenance engineers and AMCs. The job market here is holding on. So, people armed with these skills, coupled with experience and a certification to complement can look forward to lucrative job prospects. The trend here, however, is on outsourcing such jobs. So look out for companies who manage IT infrastructure for others. A similar scenario exists for system administrators who have offers such as resident engineers. A point to mention here is that a lot of these jobs are being offered by companies specializing in services, like call centers and medical transcription companies.

Software

Parallel to the hardware market, are the software professionals. A large chunk of these IT professionals (as they are called in India), are software programmers. Emerging newer technologies render specialized coders worthless if they do not keep updating their skills. A fleeting glance at some of the job supplements and websites shows a drastic reduction in the number recruitment ads for them. But, despair not. There is still a sizable chunk of ads for them. But, simple coding is out. Such professionals need to learn newer software packages and skills, like XML and C#. However, core software programmers–people like network programmers (fluent in programming in VPN, firewalls, voice, and emerging connectivity technologies like USB, Bluetooth), embedded system and application programmers (RTOS, VxWorks, pSOS, eLinux), OS programmers (for server appliances)–still command job options. An interesting trend in this field is a slight increase in the requirement for SAP professionals.

For software maintenance professionals, the job market does not seem so strong, with only a couple of companies asking for troubleshooters in UNIX, Linux, and Windows NT, and that too again from the IT-enabled services sector. However, software system administrators seem to be faring better. These are people who administer Web servers, application servers, data warehousing and data mining. But again, existing professionals in this field should be fluent in the latest tools–IBM Websphere, Weblogic, iPlanet to name a few.

Content

Moving on to the content creators and managers, we did not come across a respectable number of recruitment ads for animators, graphics designers or documentation/white paper writers. The same goes for content creators for websites. This may be attributed to the fact that now there are customizable, menu-driven and easy-to-use tools for putting content on the Web.

IT-enabled services

This field still asks for recruitments, though not huge in numbers as some time back. Though still on the rising side of the normal curve, the slight reduction in requirements may be due to a general feeling of slowdown. An interesting and open prospect for a starter who has a flair for talking as they do not demand anything else!

Some interesting points worth a mention here are a whole lot of requirement ads for those in alternate IT segments. These include those in training and teaching professions. These are areas that need sizable years of experience in the respective specialized field and at least a post-graduate degree as a qualification. Another offshoot of the IT industry are techno-commercial function areas. These refer to specialized application functions in the area of banking, marketing, distribution, and the likes. This is another area that seems to have quite a number of demand for professionals.

So, going by a practical analysis of the IT job market, the situation doesn’t look too alarming. Though there might be a general feeling of slowdown, companies still demand to employ those who are good. You will, however, need to keep abreast of the latest technologies to keep yourself in the first few when it comes to the queue.

Ashish Sharma