The Beer Files had the pleasure of sitting down to a roundtable discussion with a bunch of senior IT recruiters recently who were not backward in coming forward to spill their views about life, death and the universe. A couple of the things we heard pricked up our ears, made us sit upright and jot down some notes.

Firstly, all of you nerdy, techie programmers may want to try your luck in some other field because you are no longer wanted. Presumably, anything you could do can now be done more cheaply by code cutters in India, the Philippines or Mexico. What recruiters want these days are well rounded IT people who present well - someone with management potential, rather than raggedly dressed, unshaven Java programmers. Apparently, say the recruiters, a staggering number of such people left the IT industry during the tech wreck and now the industry wants them back. Secondly, nearly half of all positions that recruiters are looking to place are sales roles. Once again, the infamous tech bust wiped out their jobs but now that the balloon is reinflating they're wanted back big time.

So school leavers and ICT graduates, you may want to think seriously about taking some courses in management, sales, marketing, personal communications and learning how to present well if you want to get to the front of the pack when going for a job. You might even try writing a personal letter to an employer that takes your fancy, regardless of whether a job vacancy is advertised. Come to think of it, that's the way things used to be before the IT industry exploded onto the scene a quarter of a century ago.