Call it a sign of the times. Being unemployed, while still an obstacle to overcome when looking for work, doesn’t necessarily damage a reputation the way it once did. Executives in human resources and IT from New England and the broader United States are more accepting of the economic realities of job hunting in 2009, shows a study.

It seems the stigma of unemployment isn’t what it used to be, given the economy, reduced hiring and increased layoffs in the worst recession seen in generations. New research from a Boston-based staffing company shows over 40 percent of executives don’t put a lot of weight on whether an IT job candidate has been unemployed or not.

From Veritude’s statement about its survey of 195 executives, 72 from New England:

“[W]hen it came to examining the acceptable length of time for a candidate to be unemployed, 36 percent of responding executives said they did not believe it mattered how long a candidate was unemployed given the recessionary conditions, with 36 percent indicating that six months or less was their ideal length of unemployment. The survey also revealed that when making hiring decisions, 44 percent of executives have no preference for a candidate’s employment status. In addition, one-third of New England hiring managers and human resources professionals are considering rehiring information technology (IT) employees whom they had laid off.”

This should be welcome news to unemployed IT professionals looking for work. It’s a reminder to focus on skills, strengths, teaming and management experience rather than having lost a job through a work force reduction and cost cutting.

“With half of employers looking to hire back a portion of their laid-off IT workers either as full-time employees or contractors and employers accepting the economic downturn as a reason for an extended unemployment, IT job candidates should take heart that their employment status will not significantly bias a potential employer,” Joe Collins, senior vice president of Veritude, said in a statement Dec. 2.

There is still some preference, however, for hiring those who are already employed. Around 19 percent, or one-fifth, of human resources and IT hiring managers polled said they preferred hiring current full-time employees, according to the report. In a similar vein, 22 percent said they preferred hiring candidates currently employed either full-time or with temporary or contract work. Another 17 Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, hiring, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, IT management, New England

Many economists have been expecting overall unemployment numbers to expand above 10 percent for much of 2009. The U.S. Department of Labor reported Friday that those numbers are finally here. As of Oct. 31, unemployment in the United States is the worst it has been in 26 years–now at 10.2 percent.

What does it mean for technology professionals? Well, the picture is shady. This week Microsoft announced more layoffs, as did Nokia Siemens and Real Networks.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant, Microsoft, announced another 800 layoffs this week, which puts its total for 2009 to be more than 5,000 employees cut this year. Historically, MS had not been a company that had layoffs, yet this economy is proving to be tough on even the most historically resilient of technology companies.

Nokia Siemens announced its plans to eliminate about 6,000 jobs between now and 2010 as it restructures its company from five departments to three. Blaming economic pressures and shrinking revenues, Nokia Siemens is struggling to make its impact in its industry.

Education and Health services is the only category showing any sign of positive gain in the picture, based on numbers released by the U.S. government. The overall picture, however, is not pleasant. Economy watchers Seeking Alpha put it in context which is that unemployment numbers are declining comparatively, but we Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, IT management

The IT jobs market experienced a small upturn in October, according to a survey of recruitment specialists.

After more than a year of falling demand there was a slight higher demand for both permanent and temporary IT workers in October than in the month before.

These findings from the Recruitment Industry Survey, which is produced by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG, showed It faired no better than the broader economy.

The survey uses a figure to represent demand, where anything above 50 indicates growth on the previous month.

For permanent IT jobs, the figure in October was 51.5, indicating a very marginal growth on the previous month. Two months ago in August, the figure was 44.8, a slide in the number of posts available from July.

But the fall had been at its worst in March, when the figure for permanent staff was 31.9, one of the most severe declines in the history of the report.

Temporary staff positions also grew last month, producing a figure of 53.8. This compared to a figure of 46.6 in August.

All sectors experienced some growth, except for secretarial Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, hiring, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, IT management, job, Recruitment & Selection

If you’re tired of hearing about personal branding, the following anecdote will convince you that it’s not a passing fad.

Just when I was getting tired of reading about personal branding, I had a conversation with a hiring manager that reminded me why personal branding and marketing through social networking websites is so important if you’re looking for a new job. A strong personal brand enables hiring managers who have jobs to fill—jobs that you may not know about—to find you. Marketing yourself allows you to tap into the “hidden job market” and make yourself visible to organizations that may need your expertise. Personal branding truly helps you stand out.

Erik Huddleston, the CTO of Inovis, a B2B data exchange, is the hiring manager I interviewed this morning. He explained how he uses social networking websites to recruit people for jobs, and his explanation illustrates the role that personal branding and social networking play in the job search and hiring process.

Huddleston says that when he has a position to fill, he proceeds directly to LinkedIn to identify professionals in key staff members’ networks who may be right for the job. He does the same on Facebook. If the people Huddleston identifies are also on Twitter, he checks out their Twitter streams, too.

“Looking at their background, their skill sets and what they’re talking about on their Twitter feeds, I can get a pretty good feel for people who sound like they’d work well,” he says.

Huddleston isn’t the only hiring manager using the “LinkedIn first” approach. David Perry, the author of Guerilla Marketing for Job Hunters, says many other recruiters and hiring managers use LinkedIn to pre-screen candidates.
If you have a strong LinkedIn profile that communicates your brand, expertise, accomplishments and unique value, you increase your chances of getting contacted about jobs that you don’t even know exist because you stand out to hiring managers. By contrast, if you’re not on LinkedIn or your profile is weak or out-dated, you’re probably getting passed up for consideration by hiring managers and recruiters.

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, IT management, personal branding

It may be the most common scenario in IT. Too many projects, and not enough staff to handle the work.

Add a down economy, the downsizing of staff, trimming of costs, and pressure to get strategically competitive projects up and running yesterday, and you have a stress cauldron boiling over that requires tough leadership and a great deal of pushing back.

It leads to the question: Does your CIO push back enough on the business pressures facing your team and co-workers?

CIO Insight’s article “The CIO’s Role in Project Management” delves into how deep leaders at the top of the technology food chain have to go into the business of running projects, managing budgets and showcasing milestones.

When establishing project priorities, the CIO’s role is “to make sure the priority process happens and to be an enabler, making sure those decisions get made,” says Bob Benson, a senior consultant at Cutter Consortium.

The CIO also has to be ready to put his foot down, says Bill Hagerup, a senior consultant with Ouellette & Associates. “The CIO has to be firm enough to say, ‘We can’t do everything at once; we don’t have adequate resources for that,’” says Hagerup. “It’s easy to say ‘yes’ at the top when you’re not doing the work at the bottom.”

The article also looks very closely at how IT pros have to get more of their own staff to be able to speak intelligently to the business.

“I really like the idea that the CIO mentors the project management group or PMO in how to deal, in a businesslike fashion, with clients and how to communicate effectively and see things from other people’s points of view,” Hagerup says.

As the article so clearly presents, fighting for Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career Career, career planning, CIO, CMDN Hot Jobs, IT career, IT Careers, IT management

Technology projects rarely go off without a hitch. We all know it, and we all have seen and absorbed an unnecessary amount of stress, blame and headaches from projects gone wrong.

Why do they go wrong? Bad project management? Poor planning? Bad estimation of work scheduling? Missed dependencies? It’s easy to have one throat to choke with a project manager, but often, it’s people management skills rather than any one project plan or scheduling deficiency that make the difference between project success and failure.

While these can all be factors, among the more overlooked aspects of project work are the relationships between internal departments and external teams. Without full cooperation between teams who are focused on the end result, you can expect to have a bumpy ride, says the CIO.com article, “Project Management: How IT and Business Relationships Shape Success.”

One problem the article brings up is that many project managers may be a tad too focused on software, processes and technology solutions rather than onbuilding the relationships that are key to a project’s delivery and ultimate success:

Despite the positive impact good relationships have on project management, IT project managers rely more heavily on software and methodologies than on building relations when they need to improve their delivery. It’s no wonder: Compared to the time it takes to build relationships, software seems like a quick fix. IT project managers are also most comfortable with tools.

“As IT professionals, we’re raised on technology,” says Ouellette & Associates’ Hagerup [Bill Hagerup, a senior consultant with Ouellette & Associates, an IT leadership and project management consultancy]. “Almost all the training we get throughout the years is about tools and processes.”

Consequently, he adds, IT professionals think process and technology [are] the answer to everything, including effective project management. While project management frameworks and tools certainly help, projects are fundamentally people-driven, he says.

“When things go wrong [with a project], it’s people who have done something that didn’t work,” says Hagerup. “Problems start with people and they end with people.”

Yet project management training and certification programs are only just beginning to address the people side of projects Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Management Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, IT management, Leadership, Management, Project Management

Many jobs are hard to describe, but technology jobs are harder than most, even to IT management

If you’re an IT pro, the innocuous question “What do you do?” puts you in a quandary. If a layperson is asking, to avoid a long and potentially tedious explanation, you might say: “I work in computers.” But that sets you up for silly follow-on questions like: “Oh, you design Web sites?” or “Really? My laptop has been doing some funny things recently — may I tell you all about them?” Unless you’re a Web designer or a PC tech, most people have no frame of reference whatsoever for your job.

Socially, this is no big deal unless you’re looking for a date, but it can be a huge problem when dealing with management. Most non-technical managers operate on a level similar to that of the woman I observed in a computer store yesterday: She couldn’t grasp why her laptop needed a power supply, because it already had batteries.

yawning knowledge gap separates ordinary folks from those who keep the ship of tech afloat every day. When times are good, things seem to bump along regardless. But when times are tough and cuts need to be made, management needs to know exactly what you do, especially non-technical IT management. Not being clear about your work, your responsibilities, and your skills poses all kinds of hazards.

Take the example of Terry Childs. His managers clearly had no real idea of what he did beyond “make the network run,” and they treated him and his position accordingly. Had they understood the depth of knowledge and experience required to build and maintain a network of that size, maybe they would have hired another network admin with sufficient skills to take over if something happened to Childs. They certainly should have — years ago.

To make matters worse, laypeople have no way to determine how much work is getting done. You could spend all week on a particularly challenging network reorganization project that will pave the way for future additions and clean up years of sloppy administration — and when you’re done, it looks exactly the same to the casual observer. Spend a week converting from an ancient version of Solaris to OpenSolaris 2009.06 on a bunch of production servers, and the only way others would even know about it would be if you screwed it up. The upside to this work is that it makes the IT infrastructure more agile, reduces time required for maintenance, and paves the way for new projects and tools that can help the company Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Management career planning, Careers, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, IT management, network monitoring and management, networking

Programmers are finding jobs and development budgets are climbing — and we have your company’s poor planning and flawed processes to thank
The economy brings more bad news every day. The dollar is battered, interest rates are at record lows, salaries are shrinking, and overall unemployment is expected to hit 10 percent by year’s end. Times are tough — for everyone except software developers. It’s time we gave credit where it’s due.

According to recent studies, development budgets are actually increasing despite the recession, and the market for programming jobs will still grow by 7.4 percent in 2009. The U.S. Department of Labor ranks software engineering as the country’s fourth fastest-growing occupation, a trend it expects to continue through 2016.

What gives? Surely in these lean times, in-house development teams are just like everyone else? They must be cutting corners, creating efficiencies, trimming the fat, and doing more with less?

The sad state of software development

Not so, say the analysts. According to one IDC study, 7 out of 10 companies report that their in-house code bases have grown increasingly complex in the last two years. Often they’re so complex that debugging is “problematic,” leading to slower development cycles and escalating costs. Meanwhile, a study by the consultancy Voke found that application development is fraught with waste; a third of all projects are abandoned after being implemented, and of those that get deployed, only slightly more than a third meet user requirements.

That’s one hell of a résumé. Yet in the midst of a recession, software development has garnered an ever-increasing share of the bottom line, thanks to a bravado mix of poor quality control, inefficient processes, missed deliverables, and broken promises. Doing more with less? Hardly — we’re doing less with more.

So let’s take this opportunity to say to all the software project managers out there: Thank you. Thank you for keeping programmers in high demand, even when folks in other fields are losing their jobs. Thank you for ensuring us a never-ending supply of programming work, even when other projects Read more…

Jobs Editor CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Management agile development, business process management, Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, development methodologies, funding and finances, information technology, IT career, IT management, project prioritization, working conditions

Security protocols have never been a core part of software development, but as this changes, those who have this specialized knowledge are paid a premium.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 10-year economic outlook, computer software engineers who work in the application professions sector are expected to be the fourth fastest-growing occupation between 2006 and 2016, increasing by 44.6 percent.

Yet making sure that software is built in a secure way has typically been a secondary concern within the field.

“Software developers have never considered security as really part of their domain. But this is changing,” John Pescatore, a Gartner analyst, told eWEEK.

But this stands to change. According to Gartner research, 75 percent of attacks are now targeting applications. Furthermore, as more Web sites develop Web 2.0 technologies and consumers continue to demand mash-up services, developers who know how to incorporate security into the initial creation of applications are expected to carve out an important niche for themselves.

“The job is at the intersection of security and software development. In the last couple years these security issues have risen to the forefront of a concern about doing business online,” Mike Weider director of security products at Rational, a division of IBM.

IBM is just one of the companies that view these software security developers as an important specialty that will make a big impact in making the software consumers and businesses use every day more secure.

“Organizations have to wake up to software security and when they look at how they’re going to address it, the real problem is often a lack of skill within their development groups. They’re looking to hire resources who can educate the rest of the organization while creating and designing security programs,” said Weider.

Where software developers are going to learn more about building secure applications is still unclear. Currently, most software developers aren’t picking up this information at the university level.

“It’s clear that there is a huge problem with software security and the reason is that application developers have traditionally not been trained in security. If you look at most computer science programs today, you don’t see a lot a lot of emphasis on security training,” said Weider.

While universities increasingly have a security curriculum, they don’t have elements of this included in software engineering.

“You’re not learning good security practices and coding at the same time, and that’s definitely something we need to see changed,” said Pescatore.

Businesses are increasingly requiring everyone in software Read more…

Administrator CMDN Hot Jobs, CMDNHotJobs.com, Career, Management, Tips and Techniques Career, career planning, CMDN Hot Jobs, information technology, IT career, IT Careers, IT management, security software