IT Careers

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IT Careers

• Presented By Mr. Spiros Velianitis

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Discussion Topics

• Why Discuss IT Careers?
• What are the NWCET Information Technology Skill
  Standards?
• Career Clusters
• Possible Factors Restraining IT Hiring
• The Outsourcing Constraint
• The Visa Parameter
• IT Workforce 2004 Overall Trends
• Declining Employment in the IT Industry
• High Demand for Computer Occupations Till 2012
• What is Hot?
• IT Salaries are on the Rise
• How Much Am I Going to Make?
• How About Entry Level?
• Stay Current and Add Value
• Pay Attention to Soft Skills
• Where To Learn About Job Openings
• 100 Best Places to Work in IT

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Why Discuss IT Careers?

• Competitive pressure is an issue for employees
  and employers alike. To be successful IT workers
  must make themselves as valuable as possible to
  hiring companies. They must also make themselves
  the stewards of their own careers. Understanding
  the trends and directions shaping the IT
  workforce is one of the best ways to launch or
  sustain an information technology career.
• If the U.S. is to remain a leader in information
  technology, IT workers must remain at the
  vanguard of their profession. IT workers must be
  the best to build the best. That means education,
  training and professional development.
• For individual workers, it means developing a
  career strategy that puts one in the best
  possible position for success.
• Becoming appropriately skilled and maintaining a
  finely tuned competitive edge will be
  increasingly important for IT workers and IT
  companies alike.
• Source Information Technology Association of
  America Annual Workforce Development Survey,
  September 2004

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What are the NWCET Information Technology Skill
Standards?

• The standards enumerate technical skills,
  employability skills, and foundation knowledge
  requirements for eight IT career clusters. Career
  clusters are groupings of representative job
  titles, related by a close association with a
  common set of technical skills, knowledge, and
  abilities. The career cluster approach was used
  because it more closely reflects how work is
  organized today, especially in illustrating
  mobility and progression among representative job
  titles.
• National Workforce Center for Emerging
  Technologies (NWCET) is a National Science
  Foundation funded Advanced Technological
  Education IT Center
• More information on NWCET can be found on the
  Center's Website at http//www.nwcet.org

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Career Clusters

• Database Development and Administration
• Digital Media
• Enterprise Systems Analysis and Integration
• Network Design and Administration
• Programming/Software Engineering
• Technical Support
• Technical Writing
• Web Development and Administration

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Database Development and Administration

• Knowledge allows companies to make sound business
  decisions and operate at peak performance. The
  inability to turn data into meaningful
  information differentiates companies and can
  allow the potential of company investments in IT
  to go unrealized.
• Database developers and administrators help
  companies reap maximum benefits by mining legacy
  systems for maximum productivity gains, building
  customer relationship management solutions, and
  turning supply chains into value chains. They do
  this by creating structures, tools, forms, and
  reports necessary to make data from core
  operations and remote field offices both readable
  and usable.
• Work here includes needs analysis, database
  design and modeling, user interface development,
  object creation and related implementation
  activity monitoring, testing and maintenance.
  Building, testing and maintaining dynamic,
  compliant databases helps to get the most out of
  companies information resources.
• Database developers work on the most mission
  critical of corporate information systems, legacy
  systems that provide long term continuity and
  seamless customer support, or the next generation
  of peer-to-peer or data mining applications.
• Security knowledge is a critical skill in this
  job category, where volumes of customer,
  financial or sensitive data must be kept free
  from intrusion, attack or theft.

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Digital Media

• Digital media experts put computers and software
  through their paces to create animations, movies,
  games and more.
• These professionals convert bits of data into
  compelling graphics, text, sound and animation.
• Digital designers must understand customer
  requirements and expectations, translate these
  into prototypes and simulations, build scripts
  and content elements, refine outcomes, test
  results and document how it was all done.

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Enterprise Systems Analysis and Integration

• Enterprise Systems Integration professionals put
  the pieces of a large-scale solution together,
  often from unrelated products, services and
  systems. The result must be a cohesive and
  productive whole.
• These behind the scenes technical gurus
  orchestrate the interaction of numerous
  technologies to create comprehensive, secure
  customer solutions.
• Systems integrators must be adept at analyzing
  what can be enterprise-wide requirements and
  innovative business models, assessing strengths
  and weaknesses of commercial off-the-shelf
  products, performing cost benefit analyses and
  developing technology modernization plans,
  managing large-scale programs, interacting with
  customers, and much more.

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Network Design and Administration

• Network design and administration professionals
  help companies and organizations move different
  types of communications traffic through the
  Internet, intranets, extranets, local and wide
  area networks, the public switched network and
  more.
• Integration is becoming increasingly key, because
  cross-platform convergence is becoming
  increasingly common.
• Network design and administration professional
  skills include requirements analysis network
  design process, protocol and hardware planning
  and integration performance evaluation and load
  balancing information security plan development
  and implementation system monitoring and
  reporting and on-going maintenance to keep all
  of the trains running on time.
• In the age of increasing network threats and
  cyber terrorism, network administrators must have
  unparalleled knowledge of the latest information
  security features, products and services.

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Programming/Software Engineering

• If software is music, computer programmers and
  software engineers are composers.
• Programmers must determine how a given computer
  system or application performs in the overall
  environment. And they must make sure that there
  are no sour notes.
• Programmers develop information architectures to
  understand how a system should perform identify
  customer requirements translate those needs into
  system capabilities and functionality write
  computer code test and re-test for security
  defects, bugs and vulnerabilities, and finally
  upgrade the products as new needs are determined
  by customers.

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Technical Support

• Technical support personnel work with customers
  to diagnose and correct system errors or failures
  and to install and upgrade new equipment and
  software
• Perform at a call center or help desk and answer
  questions from users
• Work with sales teams to provide technical
  guidance and consultation
• Perform systems operation and maintenance
• Supporting users is the name of the game. Tech
  support pros must be able to troubleshoot
  analyze requirements facilitate remedial action
  and customer service
• Install and configure new systems perform
  systems monitoring optimization and diagnostics
  test and retest
• Develop documentation.

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Technical Writing

• From the first word on user requirements to the
  last word on how the system works, technical
  writers document, explain, translate and
  interpret technical speak into plain language.
• Technical writing output includes user and
  maintenance manuals, training documents and
  packaging materials for software and other
  products.
• Tech writers also produce highly technical
  documents for administrators, designers,
  developers and programmers.

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Web Development and Administration

• Behind each online sale, catalog web site,
  electronic procurement or e-commerce portal is a
  web developer or team of developers and
  administrators. These professionals help firms to
  offer their products and services through
  dynamic, secure and navigable sites that create a
  complete, efficient customer experience. The goal
  is to deliver complex content, safe transactions
  and back-end supply chain management, all
  combined to sustain a buyers confidence.
• Web developers must deliver these elements via a
  crisp layout and attractive design for clients
  and often constantly re-tool sites to make room
  for new or changed web content. Companies want to
  access their back office applications and data
  with web capabilities, extend customer resource
  management functionality, achieve better
  operational efficiency through intranet
  applications, and gain competitive advantage
  through tighter extranet integration with key
  suppliers and subcontractors.
• Web developers can begin their careers by
  building pages and work to deliver the most
  strategic offerings of the enterprise.

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Possible Factors Restraining IT Hiring

• The intention of larger employers to shift some
  of their work overseas
• Increases in productivity enabling companies to
  take a more stringent approach to their hiring
  plans
• The possibility that companies have adequate
  staff resources for current business needs
• The rising cost of health insurance is curtailing
  the hiring plans of companies, particularly small
  firms that cumulatively hire the most IT workers
• Companies may be substituting incremental
  improvements in IT capability for the kind of
  more sweeping strategic approaches taken in the
  1990s
• A soft economic recovery may be prompting
  companies to make greater use of temporary and
  part-time workers rather than fill slots with
  permanent hirers.

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The Outsourcing Constraint

• In March 2004, ITAA published a study prepared by
  econometric modeling firm Global Insight. That
  study found that, since 2000, approximately
  100,000 computer software and services jobs have
  moved offshore.
• That study found that global sourcing will have
  an array of positive benefits for the U.S.
  economy, including a net gain in jobs, better
  average real wages for American workers, lower
  inflation, higher business investment, and
  improved GDP.
• The study also found while the economy will
  produce over 500,000 new IT jobs between 2003 and
  2008, approximately one out of every two of these
  jobs will be located offshore.

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Jobs Most Resistant to Outsourcing in 2005

• Architects (network, data, Internet/intranet
  storage)
• Integrators
• Security (auditing, forensics, management)
• Enterprise data management, data modelers
• Business analysts, business technologists
• Project managers/leaders
• Process modelers
• Network managers
• CRM professionals
• Source "IT Insider Compensation Benchmarks and
  Employment Trends," third quarter, 2004 Foote
  Partners LLC, New Canaan, Conn.

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The Visa Parameter

• NOVEMBER 22, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - WASHINGTON --
  Responding to pressure from high-tech businesses
  and industry groups, Congress this weekend
  approved an increase in the number of H-1B visas
  by 20,000 but limited it to specially qualified
  students. The legislation, included in the
  omnibus budget bill, allows foreign national
  master's and Ph.D. graduates of U.S. universities
  to apply for an H-1B visa, according to people
  familiar with the bill.
• The H-1B visa, which is heavily used by high-tech
  employers, allows skilled foreign workers to get
  jobs in the U.S. for up to six years.
• The number of H-1B visas was set at 195,000 for
  fiscal years 2001, 2002 and 2003 before dropping
  to 65,000 in fiscal 2004

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IT Workforce 2004 Overall Trends

• The U.S. IT workforce gained population in the
  last year, moving up two percent from 10,312,650
  in 2003 to 10,526,289 in 2004. The increase
  continues the recovery in IT workforce size, a
  recovery made necessary only by the 2001
  recession and contraction of dot.com and telecom
  companies. Figure 1 provides a glimpse at the
  year-to-year variation in workforce size. Table 2
  shows the headcount for the eight career clusters
  (category).

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Declining Employment in the IT Industry

• Thought the IT workforce reached an all time high
  last year, the IT industry nationwide saw a
  declining workforce (Figure below).

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High Demand for Computer Occupations Till 2012

• Among all occupations in the economy, computer
  and healthcare occupations are expected to grow
  the fastest over the projection period (chart 7).
  In fact, healthcare occupations make up 10 of the
  20 fastest growing occupations, while computer
  occupations account for 5 out of the 20 fastest
  growing occupations in the economy.
• Source Tomorrows Jobs Occupational Outlook
  Handbook 2004-05 Edition. US Department of
  Labor-Bureau of Labor Statistics

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What is Hot?
Source IT Hiring inches upward. NetwokWorld,
1/24/05
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IT Salaries are on the Rise
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How Much Am I Going to Make?
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How About Entry Level?
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Stay Current and Add Value

• As an IT worker interested in moving your career
  forward, consider gaining both up-to-date
  technical skills but also learn to step back and
  see the organizations bigger business picture.
• Hiring managers see a range of activity as
  helpful background in acquiring an IT job. Table
  13 shows that while engineering is most highly
  ranked, communications is also considered
  important, as is education.

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Pay Attention to Soft Skills

• Soft skills round out the technical worker and
  give the individual a sharper competitive
  advantage. Soft skills could be writing a memo,
  developing a plan, organizing a meeting or
  managing a project. While building a solid
  technical background, some may overlook the
  importance of soft skills to a well-rounded
  career.
• IT employers say its the soft skills and not
  the software skills that give job seekers the
  edge Sacramento Bee May 23, 2004
• We dont have people who just sit in a corner
  and code Steve Scott, Vision Service Plan

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CIO Interview
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Where To Learn About Job Openings
Source Tomorrows Jobs Occupational Outlook
Handbook 2004-05 Edition. US Department of
Labor-Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Some Useful Employment Links
• MISA http//www.sacmisa.org/misa Personal
  contacts
• CSUS Career Center http//www.csus.edu/careercent
  er/home.htm School career planning and placement
  offices
• CBA Student Affairs http//www.csus.edu/cba/stude
  ntaffairs/job_career/index.html School career
  planning and placement offices
• Sacramento Bee http//www.sacbee.com/classads/emp
  loyment/ Classified ads
• Dice.com http//www.dice.com/ Internet networks
  and resources
• State Jobs http//www.spb.ca.gov/ State
  employment service offices
• Federal Jobs http//www.usajobs.opm.gov/
  Federal Government

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100 Best Places to Work in ITComputerworld
6/14/2004
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Presentation resources Information Technology
Association of America Annual Workforce
Development Survey, September 2004 (unless
otherwise noted)