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8 February 2005
IT jobs market still rising While the United Kingdom’s CWJobs/SSL quarterly IT skills index reveals demand for permanent and contractor IT personnel increased by 23% and 14% respectively in Q4, bucking the seasonal trend that December is a typically slow month for recruitment, SA – while essentially mirroring this demand – looks unable to fill many of the vacancies currently on offer in the industry. This is according to Org Geldenhuys, a founder and director of IT recruitment company, Abacus Recruitment, who said the country’s employment practices are “making it difficult to fill vacancies that are currently available”. He did, say, however, that all indications are that the local IT industry is “on a rise” – and is in sync with the generally positive business sentiment currently prevailing in SA. According to UK-based online recruitment publication, www.contractorUK.com, the rise in job vacancies in the UK signals the fourth consecutive quarter that the total number of IT vacancies in the UK has risen, with an increase of 140% over the last 12 months. In the UK, research reveals that Office, SQL and Oracle remain the most sought after skills in the IT contractor market for the fourth consecutive quarter. SQL, JAVA and Office were the most popular skills for permanent IT staff in Q4 2004. “In South Africa,” said Geldenhuys, “SQL remains fairly popular, but there is more demand for Java and .Net skills. But, right now, it seems like Java is taking the lead.” “Interestingly enough, while there is a lot of talk about the growing importance of open source software, we are not seeing – certainly in our domain – a big demand for Linux. In fact, demand for Linux is rather muted.” |