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TEKsystems Research Finds Increase in IT Hiring Expectations

Apr 28, 2011 | HANOVER, MD | For media inquiries, please contact us at media@TEKsystems.com.

HANOVER, MD – April 28, 2011 – TEKsystems, the nation’s leading technology staffing and services company, today announced findings from its quarterly IT Executive Outlook survey, conducted in partnership with the Inavero Institute. With 36% of IT leaders planning to add contingent IT headcount, and 41% planning to add permanent IT headcount, IT leaders continue to feel optimistic about hiring personnel to support current and future IT needs.

At an industry level, the Finance (56% contingent / 61% permanent) and Healthcare (46% contingent / 46% permanent) sectors are significantly more likely to add contingent and full time staff during the second quarter. “This survey finding certainly corresponds to our internal data,” says TEKsystems Market Research Manager, Tania Lavin. “The high propensity to add headcount is likely related to recent government regulations affecting how data is gathered, secured, stored and shared in these industries.”

This quarter’s survey reveals that nearly half of those IT leaders surveyed (47%) plan to increase spend on infrastructure services, while slightly less (42%) are planning to increase budget allocations for applications services.  “The broad scope of IT initiatives being tackled showcase the varied needs of organizations as they ramp up IT projects,” continues Lavin. “Increased funding for infrastructure and applications services spending will be funneled toward priority initiatives like desktop virtualization, unified communications, mobile applications and business intelligence.”

As IT hiring and service spend continue to mount, the competition for top IT talent is also increasing. According to the survey, IT leaders say that it is more difficult this quarter compared to last quarter to fill 16 of the 17 skill sets questioned within the survey. Consistently, Enterprise Architects (69%) continue to be the hardest skill set to find. This quarter’s survey shows that the difficulty to find Cloud Architects is not far behind (67%). Other hard to fill skill sets include Business Intelligence Specialist (59%), Security Specialists (58%) and Network Architects (55%).

“These skill sets are in line with the business and IT initiatives that our clients speak to us about on a daily basis,” notes Lavin.

Interestingly, the survey shows that the competition for top talent might be convincing leaders to take another path toward finding the needed skill sets.  Thirty six percent of survey respondents indicate that they’re planning to increase their IT education/training budget over the next three months, which shows openness to training talent that is perhaps not readily available in the market.

Lavin continues, “This finding underscores the importance of a comprehensive workforce plan that details talent needs at the outset of a project, ensuring that regardless of method – hiring, outsourcing, training, etc. – all talent needs are met.”

About the IT Executive Outlook survey:

TEKsystems partners with the Inavero Institute to conduct a quarterly survey of more than 1,000 IT leaders in the U.S. and Canada. IT directors represented the majority of survey respondents at 49%, and IT executives made up 22% of responses. IT leaders represented all industries, regions and company sizes with 55% of responses from organizations that gross $1 billion or more annually.  

About TEKsystems

People are at the heart of every successful business initiative. At TEKsystems, an Allegis Group company, we understand people. Every year we deploy more than 80,000 IT professionals at 6,000 client sites across North America, Europe and Asia. Our deep insights into IT human capital management enable us to help our clients achieve their business goals–while optimizing their IT workforce strategies. We provide IT staffing solutions and IT services to help our clients plan, build and run their critical business initiatives. Through our range of quality-focused delivery models, we meet our clients where they are, and take them where they want to go, the way they want to get there.