DETROIT — Chief information officers in the Detroit area plan to hire at a more robust pace in the first half of 2015 than they did in an already pretty good second half of 2014, according to the new Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Forecast and Local Trend Report for Detroit.
The survey shows that 18 percent of Detroit-area CIOs plan to expand their IT teams in the first half of 2015, up 3 percentage points from 15 percent who said they planned to do so in the previous survey, which covered July through December 2014.
Another 71 percent plan to hire only for open IT roles, down from 74 percent in the prior survey.
Just 1 percent plan to cut their IT staffs in the first half of the year. That’s tiny, but it’s up from zero in the prior survey.
“More organizations are hiring IT professionals to support project work from the Big Three automakers, and more automotive suppliers are hiring to improve internal systems,” said Jeremy Brodsky, Detroit branch manager of Robert Half Technology. “There’s a growing number of virtualization, application development and software development projects taking place, which places IT professionals in high demand. Now more than ever, employers are recognizing they need to act quickly to secure top talent.”
The 2015 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.
In terms of recruiting, 71 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 software development (26 percent), database management (14 percent) and applications development (12 percent).
The survey results suggest that Detroit CIOs are optimistic about their companies’ growth. Ninety-five percent of CIOs reported being somewhat or very confident in their companies’ prospects for growth in the first half of the year. This compares to 94 percent in the second half of 2014.
Sixty-seven 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 Windows administration followed, with 63 percent and 59 percent of the response, respectively.
More at www.rht.com.