Is Your IT Job Safe?

As the IT department has become increasingly responsible for supporting a remote workforce through BlackBerrys, Treos and other smart phones, the need for networking skills has become non-negotiable.

“Networking skills had been No. 2 in previous hiring index results and recently took over top position-

Even in a recession, companies need to grow and keep their customers happy, said Jim Lanzalotto, vice president of strategy and marketing for Yoh Services, a talent and outsourcing company. Project roles related to customers and company growth are “less susceptible to recession angst,” he said.

“We’re projecting even higher IT requirements in meeting business priorities. We’re seeing much more effort around IT/business projects and less around operations.”

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Companies cannot afford to put out faulty products.

“As we continue to develop more and more products, they have to be tested. There was no bigger scare than Y2K, [and that showed] problems that can come up when there is oversight.”

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Ensuring IT security is non-negotiable in enterprises. IT security is “not just a nice-to-have technology, but one that is mission critical,” said Yoh Services’ Lanzalotto.

“Companies-

On the one hand, consultants could be brought in to fill gaps if full-time employees are laid off. But Forrester vice president and principal analyst Andrew Bartels warns that CIOs are very reluctant to cut full-time staff-

A recession could be just what it takes to get enterprises to expedite plans to move past systems that cost too much for what they are delivering.

“It is fairly clear to us that those that are the most vulnerable are involved in upgrading or maintaining assets that are beyond their period of depreciation, such as legacy systems.”

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Virtualization may put many systems administrators out of work in the long run, but a recession could speed this process up.

“Virtualization and other software management technologies will help reduce the number of people who need to man the machine.”

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What will put any IT manager’s neck on the line is redundancies, as these are the first things companies cut when they have to scale back their spending.

“[Companies are] not going to have two or three individuals doing a job if they can avoid it. They’re going to want to reduce overlap and redundancy-

CIOs will look to positions that have historically been deemed offshore-able.

“[CIOs will] be asking, can we outsource? Can we get it for a lower cost? With so much help and support services being offshored, there is a lot of risk in these roles.”

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Don’t fall within any of the categories above? Multifaceted, skilled pros-