A Bright and Positive 2012 for IT Professionals: Report

TEKsystems (News - Alert), a provider of IT staffing solutions, partnered with Inavero Institute to conduct its quarterly IT Executive Outlook survey. Findings indicated that the environment highly favored IT professionals.

More than 1,500 IT leaders across a wide spectrum of industry participated in the survey. IT managers and directors represented a large majority of those surveyed.

According to the report, while almost 50 percent of IT leaders didn't envisage any change in their IT headcount during 1Q 2012, more than a third expected to hire temporary and permanent IT workers during the same period.

However, more than 50 percent of IT leaders experienced difficulty in filling specialist positions and rated specialist skills high on a scale of one to 10.

Explaining why this was the case, Rachel Russell, systems director at TEK noted that businesses realizing the important role that IT professionals played in competitive success were simultaneously implementing major IT projects that included niche areas of business intelligence, security, mobile apps and virtualization. Hence, the market for relevant skills is very tight.

Suggesting a way to tackle this, Russell advocated the building of proactive and strategic recruiting programs that attracted necessary skills.

On the salary front, things did appear to be rosy, for the report indicated that 44 percent of the respondents favored raises ranging from one to five percent for IT staff in 2012. For specialists, the scene was even brighter with projected raises that exceeded 10 percent.

While emphasizing the importance of monetary compensation, Russell also underscored the fact that apart from this, IT professionals felt that other job attributes like opportunities for career advancement and skill development, location and commute and overall benefits' also contributed to overall job satisfaction.