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Top IT skills wanted for 2012

Yesterday I decided to rethink my career plan, and maybe move into a different area to get some new challenges.

Today I read this, a list which areas are hot, and what you need to get there. It couldn't be better timed.

Add this to the career stuff TR's John McKee has been putting out and I have a plan in the making.

This piece is for every IT staffer who is being put upon with "downturn" and similar as an excuse. If you are being expected to perform at unreasonable levels, with veiled threats of redundancy if you don't, then join me by training up and go find someone who will appreciate what you have to offer. Here is a roadmap to where the next career step can be found.

I am working to get my VCP. I figured that combine that with my Hyper-V cert and the years experience with network support would put me in a nice position for a better job.
I feel better about my choices after this.

thanks

I'm always surprised that the biggest frustration for every IT organization never shows up on skills lists. You can hire for specific technical skills, but if the individual doesn't care about colleagues or customers, won't share knowledge, can't resolve conflict and won't work effectively with others, the technical skills are essentially lost.

Thoughts?

I think that's a given in almost any job and would be listed under 'general' skills. The article is Top IT Skills.

Monica, the title of the article is wrong...have you seen the list of general skills from head hunters? Is everything in the IT world!

I was told by a prospective employer that he would rather hire a mediocre tech with great communication skills than an excellent tech with mediocre communication skills. His point was that it is easier to train a good communicator how to be a better tech than it is to train a good tech how to communicate better. Communciation is a 2 way street, both parties have to listen and speak to make the process work. Too often I have been told that the information I give is not what is wanted, but what is wanted is explained so vaguely that there is no real communication to help me change on my end of the conversation.

Over 90% of the software/ hardware professionals with whom I've worked have been excellent communicators. (The exceptions, for the most part, are people who strictly answer exactly the questions asked, as a way to rib people into better formulating their questions.) Customers, sales-clones, managers and executives should be such good communicators.

People who complain in a hand-waving way of others' "people skills" and "communication skills" are very poor at working with other people. Why? Because they lack clarity in their thinking. They can't home in on the details of exactly why they have these vague impressions and opinions.

The list Toni Bowers presents is somewhat promising. There are actually a few real jobs, and maybe even a few ethical ones, there between the lines.

I've lost count of how many web sites have been broken over the last several years by bad Javascript and .Net garbage. Perl, PHP and Python have a much better record.

Sister site BNET had a head-line about when you should tell you're boss he's wrong. D'uh. Politely tell him he's wrong when he's wrong. It's part of your professional obligations.

...., it doesn't help one figure out where to move their career.

I agree with you. I.T. Pros OFTEN communicate much better than they're given credit for. They are almost always precise, and give the non-IT person the facts in a way that reasonably intelligent people should be able to handle it.

Two problems:

1. Reasonable intelligence.
2. (Most prevalent) Non-tech doesn't want to make a decision. He/she wants 2 + 2 to equal 5. So accusing the tech of "not knowing how to communicate" is a way to shift blame.

Sure, some can't work with people, but far fewer than is often assumed.

Blame the customer. IT techs who cannot speak proper English, that is without tech jargon, fail at meeting customer needs.

Hey sboverie...I'm with you all the way. I think that if a company wants a good communicator they should hire an Inglish major. It just happens that every technical person I have met or worked with, engineers, mathematicians, Physicists always explain everything in technical terms; now...if the person is not a technical individual (english, music, etc.) how on earth he/she will understand the technical lingo? Technical people are good at what they do and non-technical people are good at talking (BS most of the time). So, what a company wants? A guy who fixes problems or a guy whom talks all the time with his co-workers (BS most of the times)? take it or leave it!

Cicuta
Sr. Electrical/Electronics/Systems Engineer & Sr. UNIX IT Systems Engineer and Administrator.

you right

I am often asked if I would hire a college grad or a tech with many certs. Without hesitation, the college grad. You must learn to communicate in college. Some colleges do a great job in teaching written and oral communications (I am unable to name any, since I am in that business and quite biased). If I hire the college grad, I can get him/her certified (if needed).

Most managers focus on the technical aspects because let's face it, the non-technical skills are secondary. Most managers don't know how to train people on the technical aspect (or don't have the budget to) and don't know what questions to ask during a hiring interview to ascertain the soft skills. If you want a great primer on how to conduct better hiring interviews, Harvard press has some nice little booklets available on Amazon that are wonderful guides to getting a lot of things right.

BTW - finding someone with both soft skills and hard skills is VERY rare, and not just in IT. It is the responsibility of the MANAGER to work with their people to make them more productive - whether in technical areas or other areas, so if you want to gripe, blame the managers. In order to get better, people have to #1 know they are doing something poorly, #2 want to change, and #3 have a positive role model to emulate. If any of those are lacking, the person won't change.

It is all well and good having productive staff, but id rather have happy staff first that become productive. As a manager i keep my staff longer than anyone else because i value them first, the tech skills can be coaxed and lifted up to the forefront easier that way.

You need to have some worthwhile things for them to do (worthwhile in customers' and each worker's view, not just the CEO's).

You need to have mutual respect.

You need to have a meritocratic reward system and minimize "office politics" (which are inevitable, but the more the best way to deal with them is by pointedly ignoring them the better).
But that also means you have to have viable ethical products; otherwise most of the workers won't be keeping up with the cost of living, let along getting ahead in their careers and lives. And if what you're doing or your products are aimed at unethical uses, then you'd all better escape the sinking ship as rapidly as possible.

You need to be open so that everyone has realistic expectations, etc.

And for most people, it requires a bit of fun and creativity, creative fun... to be able to keep on coming up with those great new products, features, and solutions to mysterious problems.

A technical staff can also be happy, if you do your management right. It is easier to train a tech staff to be an effective communicator than the other way round. Communication is a skill that most people learn when they are growing up. How do you think they asked their parents when they want things? If they did not do it right, they correct them. It does not take more than a quarter of at school to train a person to be a better communicator. It can take for ever to train a person to be a high tech person, unless you love the profession. IT requires creatitivity, patience, etc. Give credit unto whom it is due! No wonder, they are now looking for us!

I give credit to my vmware-training provider http://www.globalittraining.net/vmware-training
where I recently took a class. I have never had a more comprehensive training session. Communication was the key.

I agree that collaboration skills are not getting enough attention for hiring decisions. Highly skilled programmers with amazing collaboration skills are rare gems.

Nearly all skilled programmers are good collaborators in my experience. The combination is common, not rare...

though I will concede room for difference in other kinds of work environments since what people call "IT" leaves open a vast range, and the "data processing", "accounting", "HRMS", "ERP", "CRM" folks are a different and strange breed.

My job isn't precisely technical right now, but we have the same problem. Leaders hoard knowledge to make themselves look good and then wonder why they fail, as do the leaders above them that failed to look beneath the surface.

I agree, I currently work in a place where majority of our techs have no certs or even degrees in the technical field but they are all very customer oriented. My particular place of work that means more than anything. I'm trying to achieve a balance.

I'm a retired IT guy. If I *ever* spoke with a customer, it was because the customer dialed the wrong extension! It happened once or twice. I told the customer that he had the wrong extension and that that I would attempt to transfer his call. 99% of the time it worked.

There was not much more that I *could* do.

I have been in the thick of this battle a number of times. Here are my points FWIW;

People skills and personality are something you gleam from an interview and references. You're better off hiring a customer service person that is people oriented as an entry level person to handle customers and triage, then pass the issue on to engineers and techs. This lets you stage your talent, customers get a friendly face and engineers/techs are less likely to feel bothered by chronic issues and people. I'm not saying engineers/techs are not skilled at this and can not perform these tasks, it's just not the best use of a resource.

It never hurts to be nice, reach out and be pleasant, but some people will NEVER be happy, accept it. They look for excuses and things to complain about and technology is an easy mark for certain types.

It's a waste of a resource to have your Tier 3 high end Cisco engineer spending cycles "fixing" someones laptop because their kid downloaded LimeWire.

The examples of poor leadership and management are unending when it comes to forcing people into the wrong job.

You want great customer service? Hire a customer service rep.

You want great support and engineering? Hire a tech/engineer.

The two can then work together and improve your business.

I couldn't agree more. I get frustrated whenever I see the "Looking for a Rockstar blah blah guy" line in a job posting. As a former CEO/CIO/CTO of several software companies, the worst thing you can do is hire a bunch of rockstars. What you need is a team of people who can communicate and collaborate effectively! Articulate your vision clearly, encourage transparency and innovation, then give them the tools to do the job and get out of the way ...

Programming and Application Development is such a big area. I would be interested in a breakdown of .net, java, javascript, C++, IOS, Android, php, etc.

Wake up to reality...haven't you seen a head hunter's requirements for a 2 months contract? They list everything under the sun. By the way, permanent jobs are gone in the USA unless you want to go to China or India.

Cicuta

I agree that headhunters want everything under the sun. It's not enough to be a PMP with SDLC and SPI skills, they also want you to be a programmer, an analyst and all with an MBA! As for permanent jobs - depends on your definition. I have plenty of peers in my industry that have been at their company 5+ years, but things are changing. Our company will eventually move to all outsourced testing which is common with the big boy businesses like HP, Micron, and Microsoft in our area.

Hey reneegalligher@... Those guys with 5+ years working will be singing the blues by 2015 or sooner as China is buying everything here. By 2015 most companies will contract everything out. As for HP, is in trouble now and will have more difficulties later on as China has bought IBM PC division, the largest PC maker in the world, followed by HP and Dell...not for to long either.
As far as the definition of a permanent job I say that it is a job where the employee does not have to worry that the next day he/she will get the pink slip or behaving as though they are walking on eggs... Look at the economy now...do you think that companies want to commit to permanent jobs...that is something of the past. 5 years ago things were not as bad as they are now also but if any one looses the job now...hung it up and be one of the 99. I am retired now so I have seen the good times and the bad times and now is super bad.

"China has bought IBM PC division"

Suckers!!! Bwa ha ha ha ha.
That kind of makes up for them stealing the guidance system hardware back in the 1990s via Litton. Here, have Windoze 8 and 9, .net, and c#, and we'll throw in the source for IE; no charge. It could handicap them for decades.

They can have all such garbage they would like, but let's keep our good tech away from them (e.g. hardware and software design tools and simulators, research lab management systems, research methodologies, vehicle and weapons and delivery systems designs, fabrication systems...).

As to "permanent jobs", no one really expects "permanent".
If they are conscientious workers they should be retained and trained on a regular basis because they are required for the company, so long as the execs are honest, to thrive.
But, as you point out, that's not the case, today. Today, the rule is to milk talent, paying only a fraction of its worth, and then dump it and walk away as quickly as possible, letting a few people pocket the arbitrage. And they only get away with it by deception, by distracting people from examination of the long-term total compensation package but looking only at one aspect of today's compensation. I've talked with CS students a couple times and it's difficult to believe I could have been as naive as they are.

But, when you're starting out, you're unsure of your ability and the quality of your product. You expect to have to work extremely hard to prove yourself with the expectation that then your compensation will rise. Today, it doesn't. About the time you start getting significant raises in total compensation, you get dumped at age 30 or 35 or 40 and declared "over-qualified" or "unqualified" or "out of date".

The weirdest cases are where the dumped programmer then gets work as an adjunct at a university or training program, trying to get the guest-workers up to the point where they can begin to be productive in the latest buzz-words. Sure, he or she knows his stuff inside out and can do it on the job better than, as well as teach it to, his replacements, but is still declared "unqualified" and "out of date". Welcome to wonderland, say Alice and Bob.

It's not just the last 5 years, more like the last 25 years, based on the archives, that the profession (and he US economy) has been being actively made worse and worse and worse.

I don't care what computer language my work is in. I don't think it really matters as long as that language can do what the job entails. So you have to learn a new language, that takes what 2 days?
OK I hear a lot of you saying that's not reasonable and for some of you it might not be but if you already program in php then moving to asp with vb is simple. You program in C or C++ and Java is a very easy move. Pascal to Ada, picking up FORTRAN, someone wants Visual C# or they want the 3d in VRML. If you already know how to program in more than one language family picking up any other language should be a snap.
What i do, start with how do I write something to the console, or make a simple window and write hello. Then how to concat strings, then get user input, then store that input and write it to the screen (hello bob.) Then open a file and open a config file. Parse strings, do math, and write to a file.
Hey look your programming and you've learned the syntax and method structures. Probably already made a new class and you can make a useful program. At this point I usually write an editor.
Then start looking at what do I need to do to start doing the tasks for the application I need to write.
Up until this point that should have taken less than 4 hours if you have found a good reference site. For every new language the one over riding thing I always do is find a couple of good sites on the web with references, examples, api documentation. Then as I go i generally move to just using one but keep the other just in-case the one you chose doesn't cover everything.
Learning a new programming language should never be something to dread. If it is then don't avoid it but turn it into a quest that you do on the weekend. Make it fun somehow and push yourself. Once you get a couple of languages under your belt then each new one gets easier and more fun.
I know people who when they learn a new language implement their favorite game or at least part of their favorite game, enough to play a bit and say I did this. It gives you an accomplishment and makes all the hard work pay off personally. Even if your bosses don't seem to be impressed maybe you can impress your co-workers with some classic mudd action or a game of checkers.
Programming in itself is fun, the feedback is immediate and if you can say I write programs in all these languages that is impressive on a resume.

..unless you have real professional experience using them. Yes, an ASP.NET programmer who knows C# can probably learn standard Java pretty easily. However, it would probably take quite awhile (more than a few days or weeks) for that same programmer to learn and use Java EE effectively for enterprise development. Having shallow knowlege of a bunch of different languages may be fun, but not too helpful when a position is asking for a specific skillset with experience. Every new computer science grad "knows" C, C++, LISP, Java, Perl, Prolog, assembler, and 10 more languages that they won't be using in their jobs, nor would they know how to use most of them in a business setting.

'Easy' for you...but not for me. Gives me a splitting headache. I'm a hardware person...

... Objective-C, Cocoa, Cocoa Touch/iOS, Perl, Python, WebObjects, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, ORM... How many and what proportions (since multiple skills are required in each job or tempgig or bodyshop ad).

How many want confidential, secret, top secret, Q... clearances, vs. how many are willing to sponsor new-hires for clearances.

Dice has been lax about those break-downs in categories of ads, too.

How many are willing to relocate new-hires?
How many are willing to invest in 2 weeks of new-hire training, 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks... 12 weeks as used to be the practice.

Why jaxent? you will never be able to learn it all in your life time and companies want that whith out knowing anything at all as they themselves are non-technical people and that is one of the reasons we are loosing all the markets to Asian companies.

this is exactly my opinion too. http://www.nagelstudiohamburg.net/nagelstudio-hamburg.html

I can tell you that from a corporate perspective - if you are a certified IT what-cha-ma-call-it - you can forget finding any of these positions.

In fact, out of the 15 people I know who went through the PMP program and have their certification, 15 of them are now unemployed. The corporations simply look at that as an added expense. So they are willing to can the PMP Project Manager for someone to come in and do the same.

Additionally, since most of the people who have gone before us did not know what they were doing, A+, MCP, and many of the other certifications are layoff targets. Not only because of the poor performance, but also because with the certifications, you can require more money. And with that - your first in line for unemployment.

The Admiral ...what you say made me laugh big time... and by the way it is 100% true.

I wonder why the company would start by firing their most qualified project managers? Surely the extra few thousand that the qualification gives in salary would be made back by the better quality of PM?

Having a certificate or degree doesn't make you good or indicate whether or not you are good. Being good is something more. It's what other posters were talking about -- understanding well enough to pick up whatever detailed things you need as you go. Once you've developed that knack and mind-set, your skills can never "go stale". You stop memorizing details of syntax and just keep in mind the heuristics (or maybe you quickly get into the minds of the designers of the new language). You're more flexible and able to handle it all. Memorizing that this language uses this detailed variant and that language uses this slight variation is a waste of brain-power if you know the approaches and likely variations. The emphasis on rote memorization is exactly why non-US programmers aren't, as a general rule, as good.

The folks who like to test such things (e.g. Capers Jones) have told us that people who are familiar with a dozen programming languages are precisely the ones who tend to be orders of magnitude better, who design and write much better software.

Certificates and such are merely barriers to entry, gimmicks hatched by people whose one desire is to drive up their own compensation artificially, without going to the trouble of becoming genuinely better.

"Qualified" is a weasel-word. It can mean whatever its wielder wants. You can be the very best at doing something and yet easily be declared "unqualified" in order to disguise a manager's desire which may be illegal if it were expressed candidly. We should strive to eradicate it from our vocabularies. The relevant and proper question is not "Is this person qualified?", but "Can this person do it? Is he or she capable?".

Everything amounts to Development, Integration of Systems, and Systems Support; and to cover everything, as most companies want it all, you need 100 years of studies and experience at the very least.

I'm very excited about where IT is heading; to me it seems as though (and I may be borrowing this idea from a Tech Republic article) IT is moving back into business operations as it should be. It is finally becoming an integral part of the business, allowing it to be leveraged as an investment, rather than frowned upon as a liability and I think these demands reflect that.

"The Cloud" will make all Security Experts millionaires. I'll never understand this hell bent move to the cloud...

I've been in IT for just over 12 years. I started as a programmer at Wal-Mart, rose through the ranks of management and was most recently CIO for Teleflora. I may not yet have a long career, and I know I have a lot to experience. But I firmly believe one thing... This model of business owners (entrepreneurs) spending increasing amounts of money and energy on IT departments just doesn't make sense to me. Now I know this isn't changing any time soon. We have monolithic companies that have invested huge amounts over the years who may never change direction. But there is a movement underway... Clouds, crowds and consulting is not going away. And it's not, because it is the future of IT (IMHO).

30% YOY growth in IT costs (call them investments if you like, they still cost money). I can't imagine any cost line item growing at that pace and not being evaluated for inefficiencies... Notice I didn't say "budget cuts". We're not talking about trimming the fat. Companies have to really consider what their core competencies are in this technology era. Sure! They can continue to recruit, train and manage an increasing IT staff. Or they can focus on the actual business they are trying to create. As a former CIO, it's been my experience that, with the right service model and processes in place, IT is more about the service than it is about the bodies in the building.

I know that's oversimplifying it and is likely rubbing some the wrong way. Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely open to other perspectives on this. But it just doesn't seem economically viable for each new business to be responsible for their own technology development. It's not a core competency for most. It costs a fortune! And the SaaS, PaaS and LaaS services will only improve and become more cost-competitive. I say it's time to abandon the old model and get on board with the inevitable. The Information Technology Services industry is the future. Many of the IT services provided to a business organization will be sourced from this major industry. Programmers, engineers, analysts, architects will seek employment in this industry, because it will provide them with the environments they thrive in. Business knowledge, acumen and support will still be one of, if not the, top consideration by business organizations when choosing an IT partner. And services will be closely considered and supported throughout the relationship. And it's already happening... start-ups today already largely leverage cloud and SaaS for their get-off-the-ground technology. If it continues to work for them, there is little reason to believe they'll move everything in-house once they reach a certain amount of income. So the medium to large companies of tomorrow will have gotten there with the support of partners in the IT Services industry.

If you consider the electricity industry 100 years ago, you could imagine the similarities to where we are with IT today. They were hiring engineers, electricians, project supervisors and management to find ways to automate their manual processes with electrical innovation. Over the course of 15 years, the industry moved from a very widely dispersed and scattered (though expert) knowledge of their burgeoning industry to one that was appropriately structured to provide adequate services to the business industries. And it become an industry of its own.

Just my thoughts... happy to discuss.

Well said! The analogy comparing IT to the electrical industry blew me away but makes total sense. I have often said that IT will be about providing service rather than a product in the near future. It just costs too much for the equipment, software, and expertise to run it.