HAYS IRELAND BLOG

THOUGHTS ON THE WORLD OF WORK

Tuesday 7 September 2010

IT skills in demand in Ireland

The last 6 months has seen a large number of announcements from the IDA in relation to the creation of new jobs in the Information Technology sector. Some of these come from established companies including IBM, SAP, Google, telfonica o2, Citrix, Servicesource, AOL and Hewlett Packard whilst others come from newcomers to Ireland including Riot Games, MFG.com, Electronic Arts, Webroot and Lumension.

In 2010 we have seen a significant increase in demand for IT contractors, mainly from IT Consultancy based companies who are now getting the opportunity to bid for contracts in the Public Service and Financial Services sectors – a major shift from 12 months ago. Permanent recruitment has also started to pick up over the last 3 months with demand increasing in niche sectors.

As ever it is always hard to find good people and skills in demand include: Contractors with Java, C# and .net development. On the infrastructure side VMWare, Unix and SAN Specialists are all highly sought after. The permanent recruitment market has different dynamics and whilst Java is still in demand, so is C#. The permanent market sees industry experience just as important as skills and any one with Financial Services backgrounds, particularly in insurance and life and pensions, will find options in the market.

Salary levels and Contractor rates are still in line with 12 months ago, but if demand continues to increase, it is likely that we will see some pressure on these over the next 6 months.

In summary, the market looks optimistically healthy and the important investment from international organisations continues. But we should take this with a note of caution, there are warnings that if Ireland is not able to produce the calibre of candidates these type of organisations demand they could take their investment elsewhere.

If you are an established professional in the IT industry or a graduate looking for your first role you could do worse than becoming proficient in some of the above skills.

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3 Comments :

Anonymous Anonymous said:

What about salary? They have been down turned of 30-40% on the average...

27 October 2010 at 09:36  
Blogger James Milligan said:

This comment has been removed by the author.

4 November 2010 at 11:59  
Blogger James Milligan said:

Salaries in the IT sector have stood up pretty well compared to other sectors such as Accountancy.

In general, salaries are no lower than 12 months ago and if we continue to see the demand in skills I would expect some upward pressure on salaries in 2011.

There has been entry of some new companies in to the IT skills market over the last 6 months, which means that the laws of supply and demand are starting to impact.

4 November 2010 at 12:00  

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The articles on this blog represent the views of members of the Hays Ireland team and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Hays plc.