The new year feels like a breath of fresh air as IT trends reflect growing economic optimism. While challenges remain, the IT job market is seeing signs of life with increased hiring and slight growth in salaries for IT positions across the board.

Keep reading for recent data on IT hiring trends, and watch for our upcoming Market Pulse newsletter with more in-depth analysis of the IT job market.

IT Trends to Watch in 2012

Janco Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that conducts semi-annual salary surveys reports additional trends to watch in 2012. As competition for top talent grows and compensation begins to increase, IT professionals will see:

• Growing demand for IT executives in mid-sized companies as the recession comes to an end.
• Accelerating hiring of CIOs, with slight increases in  large enterprises and significant demand in mid-sized firms.
• More opportunity for flexible hours and work schedules, viewed as a low cost /  high value benefit.
• In the last 12 months mean compensation across all IT professions has increased by 0.81% (from $77,604 to $78,229), with an increase from  $73,934 to $74,435 in for mid-sized firms and from $81,273 to $81,644 in large enterprises.

Competition for Top IT talent is on the Upswing in 2012.

According to a Computerworld’s annual Forecast survey, (as reported in TechRepulbic), the top  IT skills for 2012 are:

1. Programming and Application Development, including website development, mobile applications and internal systems. 61% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, up from 44% in the 2010 survey.
2. Proactive Project Managers who can anticipate users needs and translate demands for IT staff.
3. Help Desk/Technical Support staff who can help end users with the proliferation of mobile devices and applications.
4. Networking from VMWare and Citrix to virtualization and cloud computing. Diverse projects and emerging trends drive the need to networking expertise.
5. Business Intelligence to capture new opportunities as employers shirt their focus from recessional cost-cutting to strategic investments in technology.
6. Data Center - The move to the cloud has not slowed the need for IT professionals with expertise in data center operations and systems integration.
7. Web 2.0 and end-to-end social media skills will continue to be in demand, from .Net, AJAX and PHP to  HTML, XML, CSS, Flash and Javascript.
8. Security - While demand is down from  the 2010 survey, security remains stays perennial concern of IT executives to protect business investments and customers’ information.
9. Telecommunications - Demand for IP telephony skill continues, and  those familiar with Cisco IPCC call center systems is strong.

Read the full post here: Top IT Skills Wanted to 2012.

Learn More

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This week’s guest blogger is Beth Armkrecht Miller, CMC – Leadership Advisor, Coach and Vistage Chair.

So why is it important to have a trusting workplace? And how do you know if you have one?

Studies show that a trusting workplace increases employees’ level of happiness, work effort, productivity, and engagement. It also provides an environment that encourages open communication and promotes people to share their ideas.  When people feel comfortable sharing their ideas, there is a greater capacity for innovation within an organization keeping a company current and relevant in the marketplace.

Evaluating the level of trust in your workplace

Below are eight factors that studies have shown influence trust in the workplace:

1.  Openess: Do you as a leader display having an open mind? As a leader, when you show others around you that you are open to new ideas and encourage others to share their opposing opinions not only do you create an environment of trust but you are enabling innovation within the organization.
2. Vision and Values: Are both vision and values communicated and lived on a consistent basis?  Without a vision for your company and a set of values, your employees will not have a sense of direction.  When they understand where the company is headed and it will you get to there, they trust decisions that are being made in the organization because they understand them. The key is to make decisions consistent to your values. It isn’t enough to put values down on paper; they need to be demonstrated throughout the entire organization.
3. Courage: Do company leaders have the courage to do the right thing even if the decision or action could put them at risk?  It takes courage to stay the course when obstacles get in the way of your vision. Leaders often take the easy way out when faced with difficult challenges.  Those who are able to make the tough decisions which support the company’s values, build trust and respect amongst their team members. They do the right thing even if in the short term it impacts them in a negative way.
4. Shared Goals: Do employees understand how their individual goals impact the organization’s goals?  Goals that are shared build stronger and more committed teams. And when the goals are clearly linked back to the company’s vision, you are strengthening the understanding of your company’s journey and how you will get there.
5. Community: Does your organization promote giving back to its community? Community service projects build relationships amongst employees and are viewed as not self-serving by employees. And, when employees are involved with the decision process of what projects the company should be involved with, they feel important and you show them that you value their opinions and ideas.
6. Integrity: Do leaders keep their promise and commitments to employees?  Do they tell the truth to them?  When leaders are transparent and share information honestly, employees trust what is being told them. Promise and commitments are not just those that are made to individuals but to the organization as well. So what are those promises and commitments you make to an organization as a leader? They are things like stewardship of company resources including finances and human resources. They watch over the finances by making sound decisions and develop their employees’ talent to the best of their ability.
7. Manners: Are employees recognized for good work and thanked for their hard efforts? Companies whose leaders consistently thank, praise, and reward employees for their good efforts demonstrate good manners and increase the level of trust employees have in the company and their leaders.
8. Care: Do employees feel like leadership cares about them? Companies with leaders who make all employees feel important and part of the team create a feeling of safety. They actively listen, are visible and accessible, and take an interest in people’s personal lives. Employees feel genuinely cared for by their employer.

If you really want to get understand how your employees rate workplace trust, develop an employee feedback survey to determine what areas you and your organization need to improve on to increase the level of trust.  The sooner you identify the areas of needed improvement, the sooner you can put a plan of action into place to increase your employees’ productivity, engagement, and level of happiness.

Beth Armknecht Miller, of Atlanta, Georgia, is Founder and President of Executive Velocity, a leadership development coaching firm accelerating the leadership success of CEOs and business leaders. She is also Chair to two Vistage groups. She is certified in Myers Briggs and Hogan leadership assessment tools and is a Certified Managerial Coach by Kennesaw State University. Visit http://www.executive-velocity.com  or  http://executivevelocityblog.com or follow her on twitter @SrExecAdvisor.

This week’s guest blogger is Beth Armkrecht Miller, CMC – Leadership Advisor, Coach and Vistage Chair.

In today’s world, email and texting are the ways many communications are delivered.  These types of communication can provide you with clues to a person’s personality type within the Myers-Briggs framework.  Having the ability to identify a person’s personality, will help enhance your communications with others by adapting your emails to the recipients preferences. It will decrease miscommunications and confusion.

Myers Briggs tool identifies personality preferences based on the interaction of four preference pairs – Extraversion/Introversion; Sensing/Intuition; Thinking/Feeling; and Judging/Perceiving. An individual’s type preferences are represented by one of sixteen four-letter types that describe the combinations of preferences.  An example of this would be ENTP: Extroversion, Intuition, Thinking and Perceiving.

So what are the clues in an email that will help us to determine what type we are communicating with?  First you need to understand what each preference means:

E/I  Preference

Extraversion are those who prefer to focus on the outer world of people and activity.

Introversion are those who prefer to focus on their own inner world of ideas and experiences.

S/N Preference

Sensing are those who prefer to absorb facts and data that are real and tangible. They tend to focus on the past and present.

Intuition are those who prefer to absorb information by seeing the big picture, focusing on relationships and connections between facts. They tend to focus on the future.

T/F Preference

Thinking are those who prefer to look at the logical consequences of a choice or action. They are more objective than subjective.

Feeling likes to consider what is important to them and to others involved. They are more subjective than objective.

J/P Preference

Judging are those who prefer to like to live in a planned, scheduled, and orderly way, seeking to manage and regulate their lives.

Perceiving are those who prefer to live in a flexible, spontaneous way, seeking to experience and understand life, rather than control it.

Now that you’ve identified the type what is your next step?

Beth Armknecht Miller, of Atlanta, Georgia, is Founder and President of Executive Velocity, a leadership development coaching firm accelerating the leadership success of CEOs and business leaders. She is also Chair to two Vistage groups. She is certified in Myers Briggs and Hogan leadership assessment tools and is a Certified Managerial Coach by Kennesaw State University. Visit http://www.executive-velocity.com  or  http://executivevelocityblog.com or follow her on twitter @SrExecAdvisor..

Agile has compiled data on IT and staffing trends in the Atlanta technology community, and will publish our Q32011 Market Pulse report in the next week. This quarterly report provides information that we have gathered and analyzed regarding IT employment in Metro Atlanta.  It also includes findings from a survey sent to over 300 IT executives in the Atlanta area.

Based on our data and survey results, three things are clear:

1. IT employment in Metro Atlanta is definitely on the rise as overall jobs decline.
2. Atlanta companies want to hire highly skilled IT professionals on a permanent basis.
3. Almost half of the executives who responded to our survey expect increases in IT projects and hiring next year.

Agile’s Market Pulse will be available on our website (www.gotoagile.com), but we’d like to offer you a sneak preview of what’s inside the latest issue:

• The number of IT jobs in Metro Atlanta grew 2.3 percent year-over-year in Q32011 to 92,433. For the same period, the number of ALL jobs in Metro Atlanta declined 1.4 percent to about 2.23 million.
• Employers are ready and willing to hire top IT talent on a permanent basis; data shows a nearly 70 percent increase in the number of openings for perm IT jobs in Q3 as the number of openings to fill contract positions declined by 30 percent.
• There has been a steady rise in “days to fill” IT positions which may be contributed to employers requiring IT professionals with unique/hard-to-find skills.
• Our survey reveals more than two-thirds of respondents report there were more activities and projects in 2011 than in 2010; more than half of those responded that the increase was between 10-24 percent.
• Half of the respondents expect their activity and project levels in 2012 to be about the same as 2011; 45 percent believe they will be busier in 2012.
• When asked about their biggest challenges in 2012, 40 percent said that “growing my IT organization” was at the top of the list.
• When asked what they believe is required to generate job growth, more than two-thirds stated that cutting or reducing government programs and lessening the tax burden on business is necessary.

Some of the above findings may not surprise you, but some may – especially survey responses from local technology leaders.  We hope you’ll find the information both interesting and useful.

Please check Agile’s web site (www.gotoagile.com) next week for the complete Market Pulse report.

This week’s guest blogger is Beth Armkrecht Miller, CMC – Leadership Advisor, Coach and Vistage Chair.

An Employee Engagement Survey conducted by HR Solutions of Chicago revealed that employees were more engaged with their work when they felt:

• Supported by their manager when making suggestions to correct work place problems.
• Valued and recognized as an important part of the team.
• Their manager was helpful and friendly.

 So what can happen if your employees are disengaged? 

According to the study, business leaders will experience a lower level of productivity from team members.  And based on the research done by Marcus Buckingham in First Break all the Rules, employees who don’t feel valued are more likely to leave in search of an employer who does value and recognize them for their accomplishments.  Low employee engagement can also lead to lower profits and levels of customer satisfaction.

Ultimately, it is the employee’s manager who is the key driver in employee engagement. The CEO’s responsibility is to ensure that managers are provided the development opportunities to increase their leadership capacity. Because managers are the ones who directly influence employee opinions and attitudes, their development is critical.

What is your company’s level of employee engagement and how do you measure it?

For most companies, an employee satisfaction survey provides anonymity to employees, and provides them with a platform to be open and honest with their feedback. However, for smaller, emerging growth companies a survey may be overkill. Personal interviews using an outside consultant can also provide honest feedback. The key to a good survey are obviously the questions.  You need to understand how to create good survey questions or outsource this process to someone who has the expertise.

Once you’ve received feedback, then it is time to develop an action plan to increase employee engagement. Results of your survey or personal interviews may show a systemic problem across your organization or may show intermittent problems. The problems could be with a specific department which may mean managerial development is needed.

What should be the key steps in your action plan?

First, identify those areas that could have the biggest impact on improving future survey results. Concentrate on only one or two areas to improve and identify those leaders that need to be involved with implementing the improvements. For instance, your survey may show that recognition for a job well done is not given in a timely fashion.  If this is the case, identify what processes can be implemented to improve the recognition process and then provide the necessary training for the managers who will be involved with implementing the changes. Next, determine ways of measuring the effectiveness of the changes you’ve made to the process. In this case, you don’t want to find out in your next survey that the changes made had no effect in solving the problem of untimely recognition.

Remember that results of the survey and your committed action steps for improvement also need to be communicated to employees in a timely fashion. This is critical to the ongoing process of honest employee feedback and for increasing employee engagement levels.

By implementing an employee engagement action plan, your employees will be more engaged with their work, will truly feel valued, and will know they will be recognized for their accomplishments. Company loyalty and employee retention will rise. Furthermore, engaged employees contribute to higher levels of customer satisfaction and increased profits.

Beth Armknecht Miller, of Atlanta, Georgia, is Founder and President of Executive Velocity, a leadership development coaching firm accelerating the leadership success of CEOs and business leaders. She is also Chair to two Vistage groups. She is certified in Myers Briggs and Hogan leadership assessment tools and is a Certified Managerial Coach by Kennesaw State University. Visit http://www.executive-velocity.com  or  http://executivevelocityblog.com or follow her on twitter @SrExecAdvisor..