DETROIT — It’s a good time to be an IT jobseeker in Detroit. How good? Well, how good does zero layoffs sound?
Eighty-nine percent of Detroit-area CIOs plan to hire IT professionals in the last half of 2014, either to expand or fill vacant positions, according to a new report from Robert Half Technology. That’s 9 percentage points higher than the survey result for the prior six months, when the figure was 80 percent.
And exactly zero CIOs plan layoffs in the second half of the year,
down from 3 percent a year earlier.
The survey found that 15 percent of Detroit CIOs plan to add new
positions in the last six months of 2014, up 3 points from the prior six
months’ survey. Another 74 percent plan to hire, but only for open
positions. That’s up from 68 percent in the prior six months’ survey.
Also, 94 percent of Detroit CIOs are confident in their companies’
prospects for growth in the last six months of 2014, up from 92
percent in the prior survey.
“SQL migrations and mobile applications development projects
continue to fuel IT hiring in Detroit,” said Jeremy Brodsky, Detroit
branch manager of Robert Half Technology. “In addition to full-time
hires, we’re seeing increased contract-to-hire and project-based roles
on both the infrastructure and development sides.”
The 2014 hiring projections are based on interviews with 100 CIOs
who were asked to provide a six-month hiring outlook. The surveys
were developed by Robert Half Technology and conducted by an
independent research firm. In order to ensure that companies from all
segments were represented, the sample was stratified by number of
employees. The results were then weighted to reflect the proper
number of employees in the greater metropolitan Detroit area.
Robert Half Technology is a provider of IT professionals on a project
and full-time basis and has been tracking IT hiring activity in the United States since 1995.
In terms of recruiting, 53 percent of Detroit CIOs said it’s somewhat
or very challenging to find skilled IT professionals today. It is most
challenging to find skilled talent in the functional areas of networking
(18 percent), applications development (18 percent) and help
desk/technical support (16 percent).
Seventy-eight percent of CIOs also said they are confident that their
firms will invest in IT projects in the second half of 2014. This
compares to 76 percent in the first six months of the year.
Fifty-nine percent of Detroit technology executives surveyed said that network administration is among the skill sets in greatest demand within their IT departments. Desktop support and database
management followed, with 57 percent and 52 percent of the
response, respectively.
More aboudt Robert Half Technology at www.rht.com or
www.blog.rht.com.