Hotgigs,
a contract talent marketplace that lets companies instantly research contractor
rates and locate pre-referenced and ranked contractor profiles, recently issued
a snapshot of its March hiring trends. According to Hotgigs,
in March more searches took place for temporary IT project managers and IT
managers than any other IT job category, which could indicate moderate hiring
growth in the technology sector. “When companies begin to scale their IT
areas and plan projects, one of the first things they look for are project
managers,” says Hotgigs founder and CEO Doug
Berg. “Once companies feel more confident in the economy, they move these
people into permanent or long-term positions.”

Each month through its web site, Hotgigs
collects data on contract employment trends from more than 1,900 temporary
staffing companies, 10,000 freelancers, and nearly 1,000 hiring companies. In
March, hiring companies in the U.S. and Canada did 38,000 searches for contract
project managers on the Hotgigs web site. Here are
the top ten IT contract skills searched:

Rank Top IT Searches #
1 Project Management 38,961
2 Web Development 32,631
3 ERP and Packages 26,503
4 Analysis and Design 24,622
5 Networking 23,684
6 IT Management 18,758
7 System Admin 17,268
8 Data Development 15,813
9 Mainframe Development 12,894
10 QA and Testing 12,507