IT career opportunities are on the rise according to latest figures released by online recruitment company Olivier.
By aggregating results from the three main job search databases; Seek, My Career and Career One, Olivier compile an Internet job index each month which has been showing IT&T jobs to be rising consistently over the last two years.
Its index shows the IT&T job market grew by 1.95 per cent from April to May, and June looks to be continuing the upwards trend.
“Information Technology is making a come-back. Whether it will come back to the pre-2000 boom, I’m not so sure, but opportunities are definitely growing again,” said Robert Olivier, director of Olivier group.
“We should celebrate this instead of focussing purely on the downturn and the problems associated with offshoring,” he said “I think the future is positive.”
Within the IT sector, the Olivier index shows desktop support and helpdesk roles experienced the most growth.
“This is a natural follow on from all the years put into software and technology development. It’s also where most of the entry level jobs are,” said Olivier.
“Most IT jobs advertised are still in software development and engineering,” said Olivier.
Edward Mandla, president of the Australian Computer Society, agrees with Olivier that there is a general IT turn around.
“Vendors are telling us they now have the biggest sales pipelines in three years, with deal sizes being twice as big,” said Mandla.
“However, they are now in a real catch-22 situation of whether to hire, in case they get the business, or not hire and then face staff shortages and increased costs.”
Mandla said there are many signs that we are three years away from an IT&T staffing shortage.
“Uni enrolments for IT related courses are lower than they have ever been, at half the numbers they were three years ago,” he said.
“There’s a real perception amongst mums and dads after the dot com collapse that IT is not a good industry to be involved in. But the signs are good and we need to turn that perception around,” Mandla said.