Large financial services companies like Bank of America are scouring colleges and universities in search of skills needed to run the mainframe systems that are still widely used at their firms.

IBM has worked hard in recent years to keep its mainframe franchise attractive to IT managers. The company has made the high-end machines Linux and Java friendly and it has developed application-specific specialty processors. It’s also created a worldwide training program to increase the pool of students with mainframe skills.

Perhaps at least partially as a result of those efforts, the mainframe remains a core system for high volume, high transaction processes, particularly those used in large financial services companies like Bank of America Corp.

Kimberly Grim, senior vice president of mainframe engineering at Bank of America, describes mainframe systems, which handle the firm’s most critical applications, as “very safe.”

“We have been operating this platform for 40 years,” Grim said. “It’s changed a lot, and IBM has invested in keeping this platform state of the art.” She said the mainframe platform can still handle high-volume work better than non-mainframe systems.

The Charlotte-based company said hundreds of its IT workers are assigned to mainframe tasks. It wouldn’t be more specific on the number assigned to the platform.

IBM doesn’t track the number of available mainframe related jobs, but it isn’t hard to find advertisements seeking people with mainframe skills. For example, a search with the key word “mainframe” yesterday drew 97 help wanted ads on Monster.com. The jobs site said that 764 such jobs were advertised over the last 30 days. On Dice.com, a similar search produced 1,200 ads seeking mainframe experience over the past 30 days.

About four years ago, Grim said Bank of America saw a growing decline in the number of new college graduates with any mainframe training. That prompted the bank to become involved in IBM’s Academic Initiative, which works with colleges and universities to develop mainframe training programs.

IBM said this week that 600 colleges, universities and high schools around the world are participating in the mainframe training program, which began in 2004.

The training initiative provides interns and new hires to Bank of America, while some members of its IT staff audit the initiative’s courses and provide feedback to help tune the training to business needs.

IBM says it’s mainframe revenue has grown in eight of the last 13 quarters. It did note that mainframe revenue plunged by 39% in the second quarter, mirroring server revenue declines for most vendors.

Competing vendors have been arguing that distributed systems have become a strong alternative to mainframes.

However, IT researcher IDC says that MIPS (Million Instructions per Second), a measure of processing power capacity used by mainframes, is on the rise. The mainframe is continuing to grow in terms of the amount of work that processed on the mainframe, which reflects improvements to the platform, said Tim Grieser, an analyst at IDC.

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Even though the worst economic recessionin decades has compelled companies to spend less on outsourced security services and do more in-house, security budgets appear to be holding steady. And more of companies are employing a chief security officer.

That’s one of the big takeaways from the seventh-annual Global Information Security survey, which CSO and CIO magazines conducted with PricewaterhouseCoopers earlier this year. Some 7,200 business and technology executives worldwide responded from a variety of industries, including government, health care, financial services and retail.

“I have seen examples where companies are making bigger investments in training over time to make internal staff more security savvy,” says Miguel Lopez, a Los Angelas-based IT security practitioner who has worked for such companies as MSC Software and Stamps.com. Part of the reason is that regulatory compliance pressures have jolted open the eyes of top brass who may have been blind to their internal security needs previously. Lopez points to one of his friends in the industry for an example of how things have changed. “My friend, an information security manager, sits on an executive security committee with doctors and other non-IT personnel,” he says. “Security is being heard from and listened to more now than ever before.”

A New Corporate Commitment

Companies may still struggle with the quality of their data security, but the response to this year’s survey suggests their executive peers have agreed, finally, that security can’t be ignored.

Companies’ budget plans tell part of the story. Not only are more companies investing in security technologies, but overall security investments are largely intact, despite the economy.

Twelve percent of respondents expect their security spending to decline in the next 12 months. But 63 percent say their budgets will hold steady or increase (although fewer foresee increases than did last year).

For starters, more companies are hiring CSOs or chief information security officers (CISOs). Eighty-five percent of respondents said their companies now have a security executive, up from 56 percent last year and 43 percent in 2006. Just under one-third of security chiefs report to CIOs, 35 percent to CEOs and 28 percent to boards of directors.

Two factors are influencing companies to maintain security as a corporate priority: Seventy-six percent say the increased risk environment has elevated the importance of cybersecurity among the top brass, while 77 percent said the increasingly tangled web of regulations and industry standards has added to the sense of urgency.

Respondents were asked how important various security strategies had become in the context of harsher economic realities. Seventy percent cited the growing importance of data protection while 68 percent cited the need to strengthen the company’s governance, risk and compliance programs.

Notes Mauricio Angee, senior manager of IT security and compliance and CSO at Universal Orlando: “For segregation of duty purposes, it’s interesting to see how companies are being askedby compliance auditors, qualified security assessors and through legislationto hire IT security managers with a much-more-defined set of roles and responsibilities.” Such roles include setting the company’s security policy, making the security budget pitch (instead of the CIO) and delegating responsibility among lower-level IT security administrators and engineers.

None of these developments, however, make a focus on information security a sure bet in the eyes of IT leaders. Just because companies feel they have to spend money on security doesn’t mean executives view it as an essential, even beneficial business process instead of a pain-in-the-neck task being forced upon them.

Angee sayes security leaders still have to fight hard for every penny. Meanwhile, security execs don’t have the same decision-making power as other C-level leaders in every company, says Mark Lobel, a partner in the security practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. CIOs can bring in a CSO or CISO without a strategy and budget for that person to work with and end up achieving nothing. If something goes wrong, he concludes, “all you’ll have is somebody to blame and fire.”

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One obvious follow-up question to the U.S. government’s announcement this month that the federal stimulus has created or saved 30,000 jobs so far is this: How many were IT and engineering jobs? Unfortunately, there isn’t an answer.

WASHINGTON — One obvious follow-up question to the U.S. government’s announcement this month that the federal stimulus has created or saved 30,000 jobs so far is this: How many were IT and engineering jobs?

There is no information at Recovery.gov concerning the types of jobs either saved or created from the $16 billion in contracts awarded so far, representing 2% of the $787 billion stimulus.

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board that provides Recovery.gov, designed to allow citizens to track funding, is posting only what it gets in reports from recipients. “We are not analyzing it in terms of types of jobs,” said a board spokeswoman.

“That sort of analysis may be made at a later date, once we get the additional recipient reports on grants and loans posted on the Web site,” but there’s no time frame for providing it, she said.

The Recovery.gov site includes interactive maps and spreadsheets showing companies that have received the data, the number of jobs created or saved, and a description of some of the work.

This barebones information makes a rough guess possible about the quality of jobs based on description of the work, but that’s it.

“One of the primary reasons for the stimulus money is to create jobs and one of the primary things we would like to know from this data is what kinds of jobs were created, said Tony Fisher, the president and CEO of data management firm DataFlux Corp.

He blamed the lack of detailed information on an absence of data, a lack of consistency to the data we have and insufficient rules governing how that data is supposed to be collected and displayed.

“[Recovery.gov] falls short in a number of respects in helping users understanding spending,” said Craig Jennings, a senior policy analyst for OBM Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog group.

Among the problems is site navigation difficulty and an inability to search by recipient. This prompted the creation this month of the Coalition for and Accountable Recovery, which represents about 30 groups.

Along with OBM Watch, some of its other members include the Center for Responsive Politics, OMB Watch, Sunlight Foundation, Economic Policy Institute. The groups criticized the usability of the Web site, and said it needed functions, such as ability to search by recipient.

The stimulus is expected to create IT jobs but there’s never been any estimate about how many. Both IT and engineering jobs have declined in the recession.

However, IT firms are expecting the stimulus to perk up spending. Mark Loughbridge, IBM’s chief financial officer, said this month that public sector was again the fastest growing sector with 2% growth, led by health care and education.

“Now I think this is quite logical given the rollout of stimulus spend globally,” he said told analysts on a third quarter earnings call this month.

Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems Inc. said this week it is cutting 3,000 jobs as it awaits the acquisition of Oracle Corp.

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In this latest Hiring Manager interview, Joseph Seibert, the senior vice president and CIO of The New York Times Company, counsels job seekers on how they can make great first impressions with their resumes and during job interviews. He also offers hiring managers advice based on the lesson he learned from his biggest hiring mistake.

When it comes to hiring staff for his technology department, Joseph Seibert has a soft spot for candidates who are underdogs. He admires IT professionals who’ve charged ahead in their careers despite starting at a disadvantage.

In the past, Seibert has grown so excited about an underdog’s personality that he says he has made the mistake of advancing a candidate through the interview process who had a great story but who was not right for the job. Seibert, now senior vice president and CIO of The New York Times Company, says the lesson he’s learned from that mistake is to know himself: to be aware of his tendency to get excited and to keep his excitement in check so that it doesn’t undermine his effort to hire the best person for the job. It’s practiced advice that all hiring managers can benefit from.

Job seekers can benefit from Seibert’s advice, too. In this latest Hiring Manager interview, Seibert describes the mistakes IT professionals make on their résumés and during job interviews that kill their chances of wooing employers. He spoke with CIO.com about his hiring practices and how the transformation of the media industry is affecting IT staffing at The New York Times Company.

Sarah Mitchell: How are the challenges facing the news industry affecting your hiring?

Joseph Seibert: The news industry is transforming. Traditional print and media organizations have to become multi-channel distributors of news and information, including digital channels, such as websites, blogs, iPhones, cell phones and BlackBerries. I was hired to transform the technology organization so that it has the right structure, skills and capabilities to support multi-channel distribution.

The technology organization is extremely important to this overall transformation, and it is very important that I get the right structure and the right people within that structure who understand multi-channel distribution, digital technology and traditional technologies. I need leaders who have worked in some type of media, including a pretty sizable digital environment, and who can work amidst transformation and uncertainty. They must know how to build the infrastructure that provides speed-to-market, flexibility, and that supports those many channels efficiently and effectively.

What organizational changes have you made to the Read more…

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Research from Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows employers are planning to replenish their workforce as the economic recovery gets underway.

Employers could be filling IT positions in the coming months, research suggests, as the number of positions expected to be created could begin to outpace anticipated job cuts in some industries.

Hiring budgets could be coming out of the deep freeze initiated at the start of the economic recession, according to industry watchers. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports that employers in September began to detail plans to hire more workers than they did in 2008. Through September 2009, employers have announced plans to hire 169,385 workers this year, marking an 88% increase over the nearly 90,000 planned hires announced in the first three quarters of 2008. The sectors planning the most hires include the retail, government and nonprofit, and enterprise and leisure industries.

Employers in the telecommunications industry announced 6,339 planned hires for 2009, compared to 2,689 last year. Aerospace and defense employers intend to add 2,618 new position, less than the 4,709 in the previous year. Electronics companies are expecting to add 1,765 new jobs, another decline from 2008’s 3,013 planned positions. E-commerce vendors reported they would augment staff with 1,572 new openings, an increase over the 500 added in 2008. And while the computer industry reportedly announced 7,717 new hires, the data Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracked so far this year shows the industry isn’t planning any new hires so far in 2009.

“These figures represent just a tiny fraction of the hiring and available jobs out there. We track hiring announcements,” said John Challenger, CEO at the outplacement firm, in a statement.

20 most useful career sites for IT professionals

Challenger, Gray & Christmas also cited recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data that showed 2.4 million job openings as of August, down from 3.9 million in 2008. And the same government agency reported that 4 million workers were hired in August, despite the unemployment rate nearing 10%.

“There is no doubt that this is a tight job market. There simply are more job seekers than there are jobs. However, it would be a mistake to assume that no one is hiring,” Challenger said.

Separately, IT research firm Foote Partners also found cause for optimism in recent government statistics. David Foote, CEO and chief research officer, said in a statement that while high-tech industry segments have been posting job losses, they are losing fewer jobs and in some cases adding positions. For instance, “five IT bellwether job segments” have posted collective job losses of between 4,000 and 11,000 jobs each month (including 4,300 lost in August), but also showed gains such as 7,400 positions in Read more…

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IEEE-USA finds some positive news in the third quarter software engineering employment figures compiled by the federal government.

The most recent employment data for software engineers is mixed, improving in some areas while declining overall.

While the overall third quarter unemployment rate for computer professionals rose from to 6% from 5.4% in the second quarter, the jobless rate declined for electrical engineers and software engineers, according to a new analysis of government labor data compiled by the Institute of Electrical Engineers-USA.

The organization of technical professionals said that the unemployment rate for electrical engineers fell in the third quarter from 8.6%, to 7.3%, possibly with the help of increasing investments in smart grid technologies. Unemployment among software engineers in the third quarter also fell, to 4.7% from 5%.

However, the jobless rate for computer scientists and systems analysts increased to 7.3% versus 6.4% in the second quarter.

“If you look at the unemployment numbers in the last two quarters, the trends were all in the wrong direction,” said Gordon Day, president of IEEE-USA. “Now we’re seeing a mixture – some are still in the wrong direction, but half of them are either flat or turning around. I’d like to think that portends improvement over the next could of quarters.

Overall, the number of unemployed software engineers declined to 48,000 in the third quarter, from 52,000 in the second, its peak point during the current recession , according to IEEE-USA.

The number of unemployed computer scientists and systems analysts reached 59,000 in the 3rd quarter, up from 49,000 Read more…

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A recent report says September saw a significant improvement in IT services jobs, according to Vero Beach, FL-based Foote Partners.

Foote Partners tracks data in the five segments of technology that the Department of Labor provides: Communications, Computer Peripherals, Management Technical Consutling, Computer Systems Design and Data Processing/Hosting.

Foote is particularly impressed by IT services numbers saying that 400 to 500 jobs were gained in September, and 2,500 jobs gained since the beginning of the year, while the majority of the technology job market continues to lose jobs for all of 2009.

“This is only the second time since January that we’ve seen this kind of behavior in national labor statistics,”observes David Foote, CEO and chief research officer of IT industry analyst firm Foote Partners. “In the time our firm has been closely monitoring the five IT bellwether job segments reported in the DOL statistics–we started right after the financial industry meltdown last October–these segments have posted collective job losses of between 3,000 and 11,000 jobs each month, including 4,300 jobs in August. But in July and September there have been net gains 7,400 and 2,600 jobs
respectively.”

Other recent research on technology jobs by GovInfoSecurity.com finds small IT services gains it to be anything significant, and not a trend in the positive yet. On recent tech job Read more…

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Franco-US telecom equipment provider Alcatel-Lucent (Paris, France) announced it has slightly revised downwards the number of job cuts in France.

At the end of July, Alcatel-Lucent confirmed its intention to shed about 850 jobs in France in 2009 and 2010. This figure has dropped to 814 job cuts, including 689 at Alcatel-Lucent France, 72 at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise and 53 at its branch specialized in antennas.

This decision was presented by the group as being part of a global restructuring plan to save 750 million euros of costs by the end of the year.

This is the third restructuring plan in the last eight months Read more…

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Layoffs, a down economy, stress… is there a bright side to your job? Staying positive can be harder than ever. Scott Lowe helps the process by focusing on the good aspects of IT at Westminster.

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Everywhere you turn these days, you see negativity. From economic conditions resulting in mass layoffs to those same mass layoffs creating additional stress for the survivors to tales of horrible bosses, it can be hard to keep a positive outlook on work. Considering the fact that most of us spend at least a third of our day in the workplace, it’s really a shame that so much attention is devoted to a mindset that doesn’t accentuate the positive aspects of work life. With this constant barrage of negativity coming from any corner and a never-ending stream of work, how do IT leaders stay positive and motivated? What aspects of the job make you get up every day and go to the office?

In this column, I’ll tell you about the positive aspects of my job as CIO at Westminster College. In the comment section, describe what you like about what you do.

Note: Before I begin, I will preface this list by telling you that I’m focusing on the good here. Like every job, mine has its ups and downs and there are parts of my job that I’d gladly hand off to someone else, but the good far outweighs the bad.

Flexibility.

I can safely say that I have an extremely flexible job in which I’m able to better achieve some semblance of a work/life balance. Sure, I work a whole lot of hours, but it’s much easier to accept longer hours when I can come in at 10AM after spending the morning having a long breakfast with my four-year-old daughter. If I need a day off or want to leave early, there’s never a fuss. This kind of flexibility is something that I pass on to my staff as well. As a team, everyone works very hard to meet our department’s goals. This commitment includes long hours and, sometimes, sacrifice. Besides, this flexibility is a two-street. It’s difficult for me to tell someone that they have to work late with one hand, and with the other, tell them that they can’t take a bit of extra time in the morning. Obviously, flexibility is easier with salaried employees that understand that functions still need to be staffed during our normal working hours. Everyone works together to make sure key operations are staffed.

Variety.

No one can claim that the world of IT is boring! The kind of variety that I see is one of the main reasons that I stay in IT. I get bored easily, so a constantly changing landscape is a perfect backdrop for my career. Beyond the constant change in IT, I manage to get involved in a whole lot of operational items at Westminster.

Development.

Personal and professional growth is important to everyone. I’m fortunate to work in an environment that encourages and nurtures growth. People are frequently promoted from within; there is broad representation from many levels on committees, including our strategic planning committee and a lot more. My boss, the president, also encourages – to a point – our individual outside activities. I tend, for example, to do a lot of writing for TechRepublic. This activity is encouraged and well-supported.

Opportunity.

If I can dream it, I can do it. Working at a college Read more…

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For people who are more used to interfacing with a computer system than large groups of people, public speaking can be a daunting prospect. The good news (and the bad news for some, I suppose) is that IT is taking a more prominent seat at the executive table. With companies depending more and more on their online presence or the internal availability of electronic data, IT pros can expect to be called upon to make large-scale presentations for shareholders.

Alan Carroll, principal of Alan Carroll & Associates, and author of The Broadband Connection: The Art of Delivering a Winning IT Presentation, has kindly offered the following tips for some small things IT pros can do to make their presentations more effective:

Take your time to express yourself clearly. Don’t rush.
Do not fear silence. A true professional uses silence to gather his or her thoughts and allows the audience to think about what was just said.
Use gestures and move assertively. A common problem for IT presenters is the quality of their hand gestures, and they walk slowly to the front of the room while making no eye contact. These movements (or lack of) suggest fear or discomfort. Change the speed at which you move around the room. Most people move their bodies at the same speed — once in a while, speed up.
Modulate your voice purposefully. Express a range of emotions, including amusement, excitement, and even anger when appropriate. Vary your tones; do not be monotonous. Make yourself vocally alive to the audience.
Do not operate from behind a firewall. Believe you have a valuable contribution to make to the audience.
When you talk, make sure you have a solid connection with the eyes of someone in the audience. Only talk after you have given yourself a conscious command to lock on to a person’s eyes. After you have delivered your communication to a person in the audience, hold eye contact for just a second to make sure your communication has been received.
Minimize the time you have your back facing the audience while using your PowerPoint slides, whiteboard, or flip chart. Write big and bold on these — make your message is easy to read.
Stand up straight and maintain a relaxed yet powerful posture.
Touch things in the room. This includes walls, flip charts, Read more…

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