Some say you'll never learn your market value if you stay with a company too long. A recent report from RHI Consulting (www.rhic.com) seems to back that up. RHI surveyed more than 1,600 U.S. and Canadian CIOs with at least 100 people on staff and asked what was the most significant effect of the competitive job market for IT people.
Twenty-two percent answered they have to pay higher starting salaries for employees. But don't feel too sorry for the guys who have been working for the same employer for more than a few years. Companies know they have to pony up some cash to keep their employees-21 percent said this had the biggest effect on their IT staffing strategy.
Keeping those employees happy is probably worthwhile, because 15 percent of the respondents said they have increased their budgets for employment advertisements and recruiting. One way to keep current staffers under the roof is by throwing a few perks their way-whether it's a bigger travel budget or tickets to Wrigley, 13 percent said monetary incentives and other benefits are finding their way into the staffing strategy.
Outsourcing certain tasks to project professionals is another way that CIOs are dealing with staffing problems (12 percent said this is their strategy). It's refreshing to know that only 2 percent of those surveyed either don't know what their staffing strategy is or were too busy interviewing new staffers to answer. The scary part is there are 320 CIOs with over 100 people on staff who couldn't figure this one out. Unfortunately, they were not identified.
The CIOs were also asked which of seven specialty areas were experiencing the strongest growth in American IT departments. Would anyone be shocked to learn that Internet/intranet development was tied with networking as the top-rated areas, with 20 percent response apiece? The help desk was next with 17 percent, followed by applications development (12 percent), data/database management (9 percent), project management (5 percent), and systems analysis (3 percent).
The RHI report also states that companies are actively recruiting IT experts who can assist with enterprise application upgrades, corporate network security, and maintenance of e-commerce sites.
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