ICT salaries up 12%: new report

By Stan Beer
Monday, 27 November 2006 15:22

Enterprise

Salaries in the Information, Communication and Technology sector were up by 12% across the board for the six months to December 2006 according to a new report.

According to the Ambition Technology Market Trends and Salaries Report – Summer 2007 released today by listed recruitment firm, Ambition, (ASX:AMB), demand for application developers, data management professionals, and business analysts was continuing unabated with this trend expected to go on strongly in 2007.

“The market has been, and remains, hot with demand outstripping supply,” Andy Cross, Ambition technology managing director said. “Salaries have jumped 12% and the technology recruitment market can’t bridge the demand gap. That means the war for talent will continue in 2007. This will be the key challenge in our sector for next year.”

According to the report, demand has been strong for both short term contractors to fill vacancies as temps, but also for longer contract roles of 12 months plus. Hour and day rates were strong for CRM roles with rates of as much as $1200.00 plus per day.

“While we haven’t gone back to the heady days of 1999, we are seeing some good returns for those with the right skills sets,” said Mr Cross.

“We are seeing intense competition to attract and retain the right talent with businesses seeking candidates with a combination of technical and business skills,” Mr Cross said. “Whatever your role in ICT, you need to be able to analyse, solve problems and work as part of a team – on top of your technical skills.”

Mr Cross said the days of IT staff being judged solely on their technical skills were over.

Application Development – strong demand for service-oriented architecture and web services across the board. Java skills are at a premium, as are PHP, .NET, and development management experience.

Data Management – boom time for security and storage skills especially Data Protection (anti-virus/spyware; security developers) and Data Management skills such as backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity professionals.

Business Efficiency – High demand for SAP consultants and for those with Oracle skills especially payroll and inventory management.

Despite the recent emergence of the CIO as a mainstream senior management position, there are a finite number of roles in Australia, particularly with the trends towards regionalisation. This has a two-fold effect:

CIOs are retaining their existing roles for longer creating pent-up demand in this level of the marketplace.

Ambitious CIOs are looking offshore, particularly to SEAsia.

“A willingness to travel is increasingly being seen as a valuable CIO character trait in today’s global economy,” says Andy Cross.

The high levels of recruitment activity in the ICT sector of the past twelve months are predicted to continue according to the Ambition Technology Report. In the banking, finance, and government sectors, a number of large projects being undertaken will require significant staff increases.

There is also a trend towards the development of in-house resources to reduce reliance on vendor and consultant resources, yet a small candidate pool may make this difficult. Given the finite resources pool in ICT recruitment, candidates with skills in short supply are increasingly being evaluated using psychometric assessments to identify candidate “types” and manage hiring risk in a tight market.