While the hiring of temporary and permanent employees is expected to increase over the next six months, the survey reveals that hiring permanent employees will outpace temp hiring, another sign of a stabilizing economy.
The survey also reveals that 59% of IT leaders say project needs will increase in the next six months. Primary IT project undertakings are mobile applications, security, business intelligence, virtualization and unified communications. “Given the uptick we’re seeing in permanent hires, organizations are likely coming to the realization that the skill sets required in current projects will be needed in house to maintain new technologies longer term,” says TEKsystems Market Research Manager, Tania Lavin. In addition to making more permanent hires, 39% of organizations are also increasing their IT training services as a means to bring the necessary skills in house and leverage them into the future as new projects emerge.
The uptick in temporary and permanent hiring leads to increases in competition for talent. According to the survey, 11 of the 12 skill sets analyzed last quarter have increased in terms of difficulty to fill. Enterprise Architects remain the most difficult IT skill set to fill; Additional hard to fill skill sets include Security Specialists, Network Architects, Business Intelligence Specialists and Database Administrators. “Our internal data corroborates these findings,” says Lavin. “To meet project demands, our clients are increasingly competing for these skill sets in tandem with business acumen – i.e. Enterprise Architects who can also project manage IT initiatives.”
