7 out of 10 IT job openings go unfilled

cshkuru

Seven in 10 openings for key IT jobs going unfilled, study reveals | ZDNet

At least seven in 10 IT-related job openings went begging this year, a new study shows. Looking forward into the year ahead, it appears demand will be strongest for information security skills, along with administrative and development abilities.
Sorry I'm not buying it. I know too many people looking for work. If those positions are going unfilled it is a deliberate strategy on the part of the companies.

Remedymp

Because they have no idea what they're looking for. Smh...

techfiend

70% seems really high but I think many go unfulfilled because they are looking for too much and expect too little from their interviewees. I really think most IT managers pick apart the small stuff and disregard the bigger things. Personality, ability and the drive to learn what you don't know gets you positions in most fields. In IT you need so many years of doing this and that, even if you had little exposure to this and that during that time.

Iristheangel

It depends on the location. I can see that here in Los Angeles. My last job remained vacant until just this week and that's only because I recommended someone for them. I mean... that's almost 2 years vacant right there. As part of our own local hiring process, Cisco has the entire SE team interview candidates and I can definitely see how we're lacking good candidates in the area. There's two kinds of candidates with 10 years of experience: Those who truly have 10 years of experience and those two have 1 year of experience ten times... meaning they got comfortable and did the same repetitive tasks for 10 years.

beads

Your seeing the usual skills mismatch between candidates and the real not imagined skillsets of the candidates themselves. Before you disagree you really have to be on the other side of the desk to really understand how whacked some candidates tend to come across.

Not looking forward to hiring a couple of "architect" level analysts next year.

- b/eads

techfiend

LA definitely seems to have a shortage lately. I've received many emails of openings in the area, they are either way above my head or pay well below market value. One that was really interesting was a server 2012/vsphere administrator that I could have done, even though it was looking for 5+ years of experience. The pay was only $60k though, I can't imagine that going very far in LA.

Imagined skills is an understandable issue in IT because of the reliance on certificates. CCNA is imagined for me, I can explain the general networking and subnet if asked out of the blue. I have to study or ? to configure much of anything because I don't work with it regularly. Maybe I should make it a habit to setup a network once or month or so. VCP-DCV is imagined to me to a lesser extent, I have no problems provisioning vm's and monitoring them, I've been doing it for years. It was only a little over a month ago that I was introduced to vCenter. I can discuss most of the things I learned but I wouldn't trust myself to setup most of the features on a production system. Setting up a vCenter lab seems very expensive but something I'll likely do if I move on to more advanced vmware certs. Luckily, I think most companies have labs to test on before taking to production.

That sort of explains why experience is important and certify your experience but certifying in other areas generally makes you more marketable.

LeBroke

I'm seeing this now for DevOps. Looking for a new job at the moment, and the amount of interview call-ins I'm getting for jobs I qualify for on only a basic level is pretty damn insane.

Highly contrasted to when I was looking for desktop support-level jobs, and saw companies pick and choose and then hire an MCSA with 3 years experience and a diploma for a helpdesk position at 40k.

joelsfood

I know when I went to Kuwait and came back 8 months later, my original position was still open, same as Iris. Things like this definitely happen a LOT. Jr level positions may be filled quickly, but senior or specialized roles often stay open a long time (at the expense of the people on staff currently who have to work harder to cover that missing person)

ratbuddy

We've been taking several months to fill any available positions, and we advertise the positions and pay fair market salaries. No, installing Ubuntu on your home computer 2 years ago and typing 'ls' a few times does not count as 3 years of professional Linux sysadmin experience, sorry.

techfiend

I can understand filling very high-level positions especially in an enterprise setting could take a long time. The demand greatly exceeds the supply in this area.

Those MCSA's with server experience taking help desk jobs is really hurting the industry but they can't find other positions at the moment. I've seen a specific large recruiting agency regularly ask for 5+ years of experience for Tier 1 positions. I wonder how they fill them but they must otherwise they wouldn't be able to ask for it.

I'm kind of surprised Linux admins are a tough role to fill. I think the supply has stayed relatively steady while the demand has gone down due to Windows Server 2008+ offering a lot more capability. Thing with Linux is it's mainly enterprise and it can be tough to get admin experience early on at enterprises due to silos.

paul78

Yeah - not really surprised to see it. I have a couple of positions that I've been having a tough time filling - mostly software engineers with specific domain expertise. And DevOps folks are also hard to find.

Dojiscalper

I'm seeing the same thing here. The same jobs keep reposting and I've even been involved in a few with recruiters and the companies are being very picky for things that most IT persons would consider trivial.

LeBroke

joelsfood wrote: »

I know when I went to Kuwait and came back 8 months later, my original position was still open, same as Iris. Things like this definitely happen a LOT. Jr level positions may be filled quickly, but senior or specialized roles often stay open a long time (at the expense of the people on staff currently who have to work harder to cover that missing person)

The irony is, if those positions are covered by staff, it might make sense to send the person for some extra training and promote them to the new role (unless the role is more junior to the staff on hand). Of course that's not how it works in real life in most companies, lol.

techfiend wrote: »

I'm kind of surprised Linux admins are a tough role to fill. I think the supply has stayed relatively steady while the demand has gone down due to Windows Server 2008+ offering a lot more capability. Thing with Linux is it's mainly enterprise and it can be tough to get admin experience early on at enterprises due to silos.

The supply has stayed constant, sure, but demand has greatly increased over the last 3-5 years, at least in my area. Puppet, AWS, VMware, paradigm shift (even in larger companies) of moving stuff off mainframes/colo into the cloud/VMware are really pushing for more Linux specialists. Plus, most places want to start doing the whole DevOps thing, but no-one still really knows how to define it. 90% of the time it just means a Linux admin with configuration management experience moving boxes to Amazon.

636-555-3226

We've had severe hiring issues at my work this year in terms of finding people for non-entry level help desk roles. Problem we're facing is more and more IT roles are becoming more and more specialized. The generic "computer guy" who does it all is turning into a legacy relegated to small and low-funded medium businesses. Any "real" IT role nowadays requires very specific knowledge that you don't gain by just being a random computer guy. virtual, networking, security, cloud, etc, you name it, and there just aren't that many people around because they're all "new" areas of IT that don't have a lot of people working in them yet have every business asking for them.

OctalDump

cshkuru wrote: »

Seven in 10 openings for key IT jobs going unfilled, study reveals | ZDNet

At least seven in 10 IT-related job openings went begging this year, a new study shows. Looking forward into the year ahead, it appears demand will be strongest for information security skills, along with administrative and development abilities.
Sorry I'm not buying it. I know too many people looking for work. If those positions are going unfilled it is a deliberate strategy on the part of the companies.

Well, taking a glance at the article, this is not a peer reviewed paper published in a journal of note. It looks like it's just a job website paying a third party to make a white paper for them, which might incidentally (total coincidence, I'm sure) encourage people to use their website.

The problem with this is that there isn't independent oversight that might reveal the deep flaws in their "study". It's entirely possible that what they are saying is totally wrong. At a guess, I'd say it is.

Did they control for multiple listings for the same job (eg multiple recruiters going after the same position)? Listings that stayed active after the position was filled? Listings where no real job existed? Are jobs shown in multiple categories? Are the same categories used for listings as for hires? How are hires actually determined (listing withdrawn, marked as hired, listing ended)? This is listings per month, so if a listing went from April 30 to March 6, it would show up in two months, despite being advertised for a week. There's so many potential issues with this, and no detail of if they were dealt with or not.

It's near worthless in the state they present it.

Mike7

For most business, I see a trend towards cloud services in order to fill the labor gap.

Unable to find a good engineer to manage that Exchange server? Use Office365.
Need a website or application that can scale to meet demand? Use Azure or AWS.
Website under DDoS attacks? No capable security personnel? Engage a MSP (Managed Security Provider).

This is a way generates demand for infosec professionals.
Need to compile with latest regulation and get ISO27001/PCI-DSS certified? Get infosec professionals and IT auditors.
The more cloud services you use, you more risk management you need to do.

techfiend wrote: »

Those MCSA's with server experience taking help desk jobs is really hurting the industry but they can't find other positions at the moment. I've seen a specific large recruiting agency regularly ask for 5+ years of experience for Tier 1 positions. I wonder how they fill them but they must otherwise they wouldn't be able to ask for it.

Once you outsourced server infra to cloud, you are left with MCSA going for helpdesk positions. And the sad fact is that **** for Microsoft certs are readily available and actively being used; I have interviewed enough Microsoft certified persons to know that.

techfiend wrote: »

I'm kind of surprised Linux admins are a tough role to fill. I think the supply has stayed relatively steady while the demand has gone down due to Windows Server 2008+ offering a lot more capability. Thing with Linux is it's mainly enterprise and it can be tough to get admin experience early on at enterprises due to silos.

Companies are moving to cloud services and unless the provider is Microsoft, it runs on Linux. Linux expertise is in demand but getting experienced personnel is not easy. You can download CentOS or spin a few VMs on AWS to learn Linux. The fact that RHCSA and RHCE exams are hands-on means that you cannot brain **** your way to a RedHat certification. You can point and click your way through Windows sys-admin but not for Linux. And most system engineers I encounter do not like command line.

networker050184

As long as I've been involved in screening or hiring candidates my experience is settle and fill it fast or wait a long time to find someone actually qualified. When you do find those qualified people they likely have their pick of jobs so you better bring a good offer.

impelse

Every point of view is right, I've been in both sides. People who present very interesting resume and in the interview they are completely lost.

In the other hand I lived the interview to different security analyst position asking to be hacker, intrusion detection expert, forensic, incident response and the job the security analyst was doing was account provision, lol.

So in other words nobody wants the middle part. The hiring people shoot for the candidate for 007 expecting to get the 50% of those requirements fulfill and the future employee wants to get the 100 % of the 007 and trying to get all the knowledge possible (certs) and do not care of experience and fail to delivery the job requirement when they go the position.

I really miss the system of the job development.

Also there are a mix of messages: I wan a specialist. Specialist in virtual environment, network, system and security all in one position. By the way generalist are not welcome!!!!. How to full fill that? who knows.

TechGromit

cshkuru wrote: »

Sorry I'm not buying it. I know too many people looking for work. If those positions are going unfilled it is a deliberate strategy on the part of the companies.

I think the reason they go unfulfilled is they want lots of certifications / experience, but do not want to pay a decent salary. A growing trend for a lot of businesses it they demand a PHD and 20 years experience and want to pay minimum wage. Obviously they can't find that perfect person, so they file with the government, they need to get someone on a H1B visa to fill the position. Work them 80 hours a week at a lousy salary, and deport them if they complain. It's the New America business way.

techfiend wrote: »

Imagined skills is an understandable issue in IT because of the reliance on certificates. CCNA is imagined for me, I can explain the general networking and subnet if asked out of the blue.

Some managers are too hangup on certifications. I knew a person who had a MCSA Server Certification was a complete moron. I knew people that had no certifications or degree but where more intelligent than most people working in my department.

Iristheangel

I don't really think the H1Bs are a threat at the moment, Tech. I feel like being scared on H1Bs taking your job or preventing you from getting a job is just overrated. There's a cap on how many can come over in a year in all the professional fields and if someone wants to hand their entire infrastructure or IT over to someone who may or may not be worth the salt, that's on them. I am not going to say that every person for certain regions of the world are cheaters or suck at what they do but cheating to gain certifications is a lot more accepted in certain parts of the world than here and it's a lot harder to find a legitimate certified person. One just needs to browse Linkedin forums and you'll see that the majority of people asking for **** are concentrated in those certain parts of the world for the most part. After I got my CCIE, I had a bunch of strangers PMing me on Linkedin and Facebook asking me what version of the test I got (how would I know?) and to give them details about the exam. Yeah... If that's my competition, fine with me. I'm happy to clean up in consulting hours after they get through.

Anyways, I agree with Impelse. It's probably a mix of both. There are some companies that lowball like crazy and ask for crazy requirements but I have not found this to be the norm by any means. Typically, a company's requirements are a wishlist of sorts. While they would like a candidate that possesses all those skills, realistically they probably won't find it all. I've applied for positions that required more experience than what I had and I got the job. I showed an eagerness to jump in and I they believed me when I said I had the ability to pick up new skills quickly. As far as the technical talent out there, there many people who I've interviewed in the last few years who's technical skills did not match their resume or certifications.

Iristheangel

I should also note that my wife originally came over here on a H1B and was paid well above market rate for her industry by approx $20K. She was making mid 6-figures and after she got her greencard, she actually took a paycut to get a work from home job for a better quality of life. Just because someone comes over with an H1B does not mean they're getting paid drastically less than you. They actually might be legitimately better at the job than you and therefore the money and red tape. Here's an interesting site with the Average salary for H1Bs per job title and number of them per that job:
Top H1B Visa Sponsor by Job Title : 2015 H1B Visa Reports | MyVisaJobs.com

Compare that to Payscale.com for certain industries and it looks like a pretty close match for a lot of what I've seem for US average.

techfiend

I forgot about AWS, which offers windows server now. Still I think most SMB's will opt for microsoft because it's often easier to procure employees and they don't demand as large of a salary.

I agree certifications carry too much weight but they kind of have to when nearly every IT position lists that some are required to get past HR. Most managers I've interviewed aren't big on certs, thus don't care too much about mine. I'm guessing there are quite a few MCSA's that don't know much but very few will know all the information that's in there. I'm MCSA but couldn't tell you how to setup AD RMS, now ask me about GPO's, WDS, DNS, DHCP, AD permissions and other things that are commonly used and we'll have a good discussion.

The IT industry seems to have a very big bottleneck that's likely in the mid tiers where professionals are unable to move up to the top tiers which prevents those advancing from lower tiers. I think it's driven more by employers than anything else.

cshkuru

I am not trying to claim that jobs don't go unfilled, especially as you move up the IT food chain, but there is no way in hell that you can tell me that 70% of IT jobs can't be filled because of lack of qualified people. Just look at the number of people in these forums looking for work or looking to move up. I've experienced it from both sides now and I can tell you that in many cases there is a huge gap between what HR says the company wants, and what the company actually wants or needs. Why else do you think you constantly see the advice that if you can get directly to the hiring manager you chances are greatly increased of getting in. And I have seen this first hand after a couple months of a position not being filled it either goes offshore or they bring in a foreign worker.

TechGromit

Iristheangel wrote: »

I should also note that my wife originally came over here on a H1B and was paid well above market rate for her industry by approx $20K.

May I ask what her hours were like? 80k might seem like a lot of money but if your typical work week is 80 hours, that brings your real salary to less than $20 a hour.

I take it the photo in your profile is not you.

Iristheangel

The photo is me

She was working approx 40 hours a week. She just didn't like the politics of an office environment and wanted to have the freedom to travel more. She's got the travel itch and was used to working remote jobs prior to this one. She was making MUCH more than $80K. More like almost mid-six figures for UX/UI design. In terms of salary, we were pretty evenly matched for awhile prior to her taking the new job.

Edit: Here's another good article on dispelling the myths of the H1B holders out there: http://townhall.com/columnists/helenraleigh/2015/09/05/the-truth-of-the-h1b-visa-n2048326/page/full
It's nicely linked to studies and backs the article up with some good information. I think your job is safe

techfiend

networker050184 wrote: »

As long as I've been involved in screening or hiring candidates my experience is settle and fill it fast or wait a long time to find someone actually qualified. When you do find those qualified people they likely have their pick of jobs so you better bring a good offer.

This brings up a question that I've been meaning to ask. Companies lately have been asking if there's any interviews currently because IT is in high demand. I'm always honest with them but I wonder why they are concerned about what other opportunities I'm pursuing. Do you think if there's other interviews they are more or less likely to offer a job?

UnixGuy

A recruiter contacted me for a job last week, and according to him the job was open for 3 months because they're 'selective' for 'cultural fit'. They asked for security experience couple with solaris and aix and red hat experience, and SAN storage. (a niche within a niche within a niche)...phone interview went fine until the recruiter asked me what I was making, then he said the range of money they were offering.....25K LESS than what I make now, and I'm not on the high end of market rate. I told him I'm not interested and ended there.

Looks like I'm not a good cultural fit

Dojiscalper

cshkuru wrote: »

I've experienced it from both sides now and I can tell you that in many cases there is a huge gap between what HR says the company wants, and what the company actually wants or needs. Why else do you think you constantly see the advice that if you can get directly to the hiring manager you chances are greatly increased of getting in.

I've experienced this several times in past years. I'll send my resume, wait a couple days and then look into who I can contact at the company. If I contact HR, they just hurry me off the phone. If I manage to pin down the dept manager I get an interview and HR gets talked to about why they didn't move my resume forward. I've been hired on the spot twice now under those conditions.

The trend I've been seeing during my most recent job hunt has been postings specifically saying "H1B will not be considered". Thought it was interesting.

joelsfood

The H1B boogie man is a common trope and rarely a player in real life. It seems to mostly show up in articles written by authors who aren't particularly skilled at their job, lose it (or don't get hired for a better job they delusionally think they are qualified for) and have to blame someone, because surely it isn't their own lack that is an issue. Don't be that guy (or girl ). While there are certainly jobs that go to H1b holders, including some great doctors around this city here, don't fall into the believe that H1b holders are some vast horde knocking down the gates to steal your job. Instead, if you're not finding a job, or not one you like, look at yourself and how you can improve your chances next time you're applying for a job.

Deathmage

636-555-3226 wrote: »

We've had severe hiring issues at my work this year in terms of finding people for non-entry level help desk roles. Problem we're facing is more and more IT roles are becoming more and more specialized. The generic "computer guy" who does it all is turning into a legacy relegated to small and low-funded medium businesses. Any "real" IT role nowadays requires very specific knowledge that you don't gain by just being a random computer guy. virtual, networking, security, cloud, etc, you name it, and there just aren't that many people around because they're all "new" areas of IT that don't have a lot of people working in them yet have every business asking for them.

I suppose those that like doing it all are a rare breed. I guess I like being an albino.

UnixGuy wrote: »

A recruiter contacted me for a job last week, and according to him the job was open for 3 months because they're 'selective' for 'cultural fit'. They asked for security experience couple with solaris and aix and red hat experience, and SAN storage. (a niche within a niche within a niche)...phone interview went fine until the recruiter asked me what I was making, then he said the range of money they were offering.....25K LESS than what I make now, and I'm not on the high end of market rate. I told him I'm not interested and ended there.

Looks like I'm not a good cultural fit

It's enlightening to hear this cause that position at Subway I went on, I heard they were looking for someone literally 'older' for the Senior position, but when I was on the interview a red flag to me when asked how long the position was open and they said over 2 years was kind of an eye opener to just how picky they were....

it's literally in the most IT rich part of CT and they were unable to find someone, there dreams of skillsets must be insane, they were offering 120k+ a year though.

Mike7

UnixGuy wrote: »

A recruiter contacted me for a job last week, and according to him the job was open for 3 months because they're 'selective' for 'cultural fit'. They asked for security experience couple with solaris and aix and red hat experience, and SAN storage. (a niche within a niche within a niche)...phone interview went fine until the recruiter asked me what I was making, then he said the range of money they were offering.....25K LESS than what I make now, and I'm not on the high end of market rate. I told him I'm not interested and ended there.

Maybe you should ask why the last person left.

The pay is probably what the previous person was drawing. He could have started his job just doing Solaris, but went on to pick up AIX, RedHat, SAN storage skills and eventually left for another job that pays much better.