Job Trends in the IT field

Posted on | April 22, 2010 | No Comments

This is a legacy post. Originally posted at http://www.jasonlutterloh.tumblr.com.

Tonight, the iSchool had an all-school meeting with the visiting committee present. The committee is made up of industry professionals from companies such as IBM, Rackspace, Oracle and so on. It was a fantastic learning experience. The CIO from Rackspace spoke about job trends in the IT market.

The main things that I learned had to do with the following:

• Talent. Companies want to hire and retain talent. Talent is measured by performance, influence (of co-workers, etc) and necessity.
• Resumes. Going in to the business world fresh out of college does not give employers much to look at in the way of performance or experience but the men that spoke let us know what they do look at instead. Hiring Coordinators, when viewing entry-level candidates, are looking for those who did well in school, were involved, and show promise of performance/ benefit to the company.
• Diversification. This term makes me think of stocks but it applies to the IT job field as well. I learned that being a type of “Renaissance Man” is important. Companies look for flexible people that can adapt and mold themselves into whatever will benefit the company most at the time being.

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