"Now more than ever, companies have to focus on efficiency," says Yazad Dalal, vice president of North American sales at the New York-based job search Web site Vault.com. "The primary way to do that today is through technology." Vault predicts that the number of IT jobs will increase by 50% over the next six years. "You don't need to be a technology company to need world-class IT professionals on your staff," Dalal adds.
Jobs can range from desktop support to network systems and data communications manager or analyst. The minimum requirement: a bachelor's degree in computer science. IT pros with 10 or more years of experience under their belts command the most elevated positions, which can pay as much as $100 an hour.
In Pictures: Where The IT Jobs Are
The biggest cluster of IT jobs is in New York City, says Dalal. Even though the financial sector has been battered by the recession, banks and investment houses like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are actively hiring in their IT departments. "We're hiring in this area globally," says Andrea Rachman, a Goldman spokeswoman.
At the same time, New York is home to so-called Silicon Alley, an area stretching between Midtown and Wall Street where a number of new-media and technology companies live. Tech companies are also in hiring mode, says Dalal. Those businesses, which include the New York offices of large Internet concerns like Yahoo! and Google, are willing to pay high Manhattan rents in exchange for proximity to their clients and for the "little bit of spark," in Dalal's words, that comes with a SoHo or Bryant Park address.
Another hot town for IT jobs: Washington, D.C. The plethora of government contractors there explains this phenomenon. Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton, for instance, have offices in D.C., and they need good IT folk running their systems.
Texas is an IT hot spot thanks to the plethora of banks in the state. Matthew Ripaldi, senior vice president for Ajilon Consulting, in Houston, which handles IT staffing and strategy, agrees with Dalal that IT jobs nationwide should grow by at least 50% over the next half-dozen years.
From Ripaldi's perspective as a staffing consultant, companies are increasingly hiring IT employees on contract, either for a fixed length of time, like six months, or for the duration of a project. Pay for contract work can range from $20 to $100 an hour.
For full-timers, entry-level salaries start in the $36,000 to $48,000 range, says Dalal. Those jobs go to college grads who've majored in computer science. For an IT pro with experience, pay can rise as high as $122,000.
Although IT is more robust than other hiring areas, it's still suffering a hit from the downturn. According to Edward Koc, director of research for the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which links employer recruiters with college career centers, computer science is the college major with the second strongest hiring record this year, behind accounting. Even so, less than half of computer science grads--48.7%--landed jobs in 2009 (and only 53.1% of accounting majors did).
Ripaldi points out that IT job applicants must not only be computer whizzes; they need to be able to communicate well with human beings too. It's also very helpful, he says, to know the latest computing frameworks, like Microsoft's .NET Framework. "There are some skill sets with IT that have zero unemployment," he observes. Being up-to-date in .NET is one of them.
On the ground at a school, Manny Contomanolis, who runs the Rochester Institute of Technology's career services office, says computer science majors there did well this year. His office is still compiling its final 2009 tally, but he estimates three-quarters of the students found jobs this year. A strong showing, but not as impressive as pre-crisis 2008, when Contomanolis says 98% of Rochester computer science grads landed employment.
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