Boston — Jan. 14

Veritude, a staffing services provider, released IT hiring research that indicated that a majority of IT executives nationwide anticipate hiring to increase or remain stable in 2010. Specifically, 50 percent of the surveyed IT hiring managers plan on adding head count, 31 percent will keep staffing levels the same, and 19 percent anticipate a decrease in staff. And when it comes to hiring, IT executives still rate finding qualified talent as their biggest challenge.

The research also shows that of the IT professionals that plan on hiring, half will increase staffing levels by less than 10 percent. Additionally, when asked which categories of staff will be hired, temporary/contract workers came out marginally on top, with 69 percent of respondents indicating they will hire this category of worker and 57 percent indicating they will hire permanent employees.

“The anticipation of modest hiring increases, combined with a nearly 50 percent drop from last year’s survey in the number of respondents expecting to decrease staff due to company layoffs, points to a positive outlook for the IT job market in 2010,” said Joe Collins, senior vice president of Veritude. “As IT hiring resumes, it is no surprise that contractors will likely lead the way. Contingent IT workers deliver the ‘just in time’ knowledge, flexibility and cost advantages that today’s CIOs require to more effectively compete.”

According to the research, business intelligence skills, such as Oracle and Informatica, are the skills most difficult to find (49%), followed by legacy application skills (32%). IT respondents also rate project managers as the position most in demand, while enterprise architects and systems analysts are the positions in least demand. When asked further about the difficulty in finding qualified talent, 44 percent of IT hiring professionals said the availability of skills has not changed, with 30 percent claiming the skills are easier to find and 26 percent claiming the skills are harder to find.

Collins continued, “Consistently, finding qualified talent is the No. 1 hiring challenge. Right now with the amount of top talent in the job market, IT hiring managers have the illusion that they can find the ‘perfect’ candidate no matter how specialized the requirements. However, managers need to prioritize the needs of the position to identify the best candidate in a sea of resumes. More and more, organizations are looking at IT as a strategic player, so they need candidates with the business intelligence skills to make bottom-line impacts.”