It was the worst of times these past three, four years and IT workers suffered as much as more as most. While companies across all industries were busy pink-slipping millions of workers, shuttering facilities and abandoning all non-essentially IT projects, it was the networking, software and security specialists who were out of work and largely out of luck.
But as CIO Update found, those days appear to be over as the vast majority of some 1,400 CIOs surveyed say they’re adding headcount and are feeling far more optimistic about their company’s future than they have in years.
According to survey by headhunter Robert Half International, 64 percent of CIOs blamed understaffing in their company’s IT department for impairing their ability to implement innovative or emerging technologies.
To turn things around and build out computing environments in the cloud or to update ancient installed hardware and software platforms, CIOs will have to not only begin hiring more networking and cloud-computing specialists, but pay them handsomely to keep competitors from luring them away.
It’s not the exactly 1999 again, but CIOs are starting to see some blue sky on the horizon and that means good things for IT workers across the board.
The third quarter figures to be a good one for skilled IT workers as CIOs begin to shake off some of the hiring rust that’s accumulated over the past three or four years and expand their staffs to take on key strategic projects put off during the recession.
While it’s too early to declare the end of the worst economic malaise since The Great Depression, IT staffing and recruiting firm Robert Half International said 10 percent of the 1,400-plus CIOs at companies with more than 100 employees plan to increase their IT teams in the third quarter.
Virtualization, cloud computing projects and long overdue corporate upgrade cycles are creating plenty of work for IT staffs that were largely gutted in cost-savings moves throughout the past half decade.
