IT contractors strike while money's hot

Lower immigration, fewer students enrolled in computer sciences, low unemployment, a stronger economy and lots of project work means recruitment firms have no trouble placing good IT candidates, if they can get them, for high salaries or contract fees.

"The market is still candidate-short," says Nathan Pattison, manager of recruitment firm Verrosity.

"Knowing the contract market is buoyant, a lot of permanents step out, so clients can't find permanent staff.

"I'm seeing contract developers getting 10 to 20 per cent more than they are worth. Intermediate contractors with only a few years' experience are getting $50 to $70 an hour," he says.

Campbell Hepburn, national practice manager for Hudson IT&T, agrees that workers are going out contracting earlier in their career - even just a couple of years in.

"It used to be that employers would expect their permanent people to have 75 per cent of the necessary skill set, and they would bring contractors in as experts to add value. Now the necessity is to fill seats, so the contractors don't need to have such a high-value skill set," Hepburn says.

"We expect to see a tempering of hourly rates for contractors, apart from those with high-level skills.

"If you look at the vendor sector in IT, the pressure is on globally to reduce costs, and they can't keep hiring contractors at high rates."

Hudson publishes regular overviews of the job market. It says 27.7 per cent of IT employers expect to increase contracting levels during this half-year, as do 24.5 per cent of telecommunications sector employers.

A whopping 69.7 per cent of IT employers want to increase permanent staffing levels, and only 5.3 per cent want to cut back.

"What's driving the sector is increased spending on IT to increase workforce productivity and efficiency," says Hepburn.

"We are seeing a lot happening across the government sector, and also changes in the telecommunications sector."

He says those changes will bring about a technology explosion.

The fact that more businesspeople now understand technology, even if they are not true technologists, means companies are willing to adopt more technology faster, driving demand for skilled staff.

"In the engineering space we are seeing a lot of demand around Cisco, especially in the security space," says Hepburn. Cisco makes networking equipment, and in recent years has been one of the leading drivers toward voice-over-internet-protocol phone systems, which are increasingly replacing PABXs.

Hepburn says there is also a lot of pressure to find design engineers, project managers, senior business analysts, systems analysts and testers.

"There is a lot of demand around the Microsoft skill set and .Net developers," he says.

A new skill set, ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library), is also coming to the fore.

ITIL is a best-practice approach to IT service management which is becoming the standard for storing and accessing information.

"We have also seen a resurgence in demand for SAP and Peoplesoft skills," says Hepburn. "That's not dissimilar to the eastern seaboard of Australia, which can be considered the same market.

"We have also seen the Australian federal government coming over to look for staff here."

Pattison says there is also a lot of demand for testers, especially those with skills in automated testing tools.

"As far as developers go, the demand is for people with C, Java, and Visual Basic/.Net, in that order," Pattison says.

"There are a lot of web-based applications being built, so there is a lot of demand for Java. There is also a need for people who can build a good content management system for sites."

"And there is a big market for applications for eftpos systems, point-of-sale hardware and software," he says. "New Zealand has always been a guinea pig for eftpos, and so there is a massive demand, and it's all built in Java."

ITEC manager Suzan McCall says her firm is also seeing the demand for .Net and Java programmers.

"There are not so many business analysis roles or project managers. You get runs, then gaps," she says.

She is seeing less implementation of package software and more client development.

"A lot of the work is in companies that already have core systems, and they want to implement more leading-edge applications, allowing them better access to data," McCall says.

"Rather than buying a package, they are getting specialist software houses to come in and develop.

"There is also steady demand for network administrators, systems administrators, desktop support," she says. "Companies want network administrators with good written and verbal communication skills, and personality."

McCaw says salaries seem stable, and she's not seeing a lot of job-hopping. "People in IT tend to stay put if the work is interesting."