If the IT industry marketing machine would have you think that I’m writing my job/skills predictions sat on a sun kissed beach accessing and tapping my prophesies into a totally secure cloud which sits in a container, flexing up and down seamlessly due to the demands of myriad’s of other mystic meg jobs/skills pundits across the globe. Somewhere bots are automatically creating storage /admin space just for my prophesies and occasionally a human looks at a single pane of a glass, checks everything’s fine and dandy and then lets out a long self satisfied yawn.
[easy-tweet tweet=”How is #IT recruitment changing with the industry? asks @MillsHill_Neil” user=”comparethecloud”]
Of course this image isn’t real, but the reality is very very close. To be quite frank, big structural change is happening and there is power for you knowing and accepting this change, particularly in the corporate / enterprise market place.
My favourite saying at the moment is ‘cloud is munching everything in front of it’ and that’s true. The big corporate capitalist machine loves to save money – to be quite frank if expensive / complex enterprise grade infrastructure can sit in the cloud more cheaply, efficiently and reduce CAPEX, then the CEO and the board will be game on. Yet, of course, not everything can or should sit in the cloud – certain industries / sectors cannot have ‘stuff’ sat in a cloud. So think hybrid.
cloud is munching everything in front of it says @MILLSHILL_NEIL
We are seeing the effects of this change on job / roles in the IT industry.
We are seeing traditional IT services players morphing into Cloud / Managed Services providers. This sector is buoyant, they are busy transitioning new clients of all sizes onto their cloud / platform. So if you think it through the need for on premise IT teams is being reduced – yes the IT industry marketing machine will have you believe that cloud releases internal IT to focus and solve the bigger core issues of the business; but don’t believe the hype, the reality is that it leads to lower on premise staff numbers.
So after seeing and understanding this big picture what else are we seeing/predicting? Here’s my thoughts on the future of recruitment in IT.
Internal Infrastructure Support Engineers are moving to Cloud / Managed Services providers, And Cloud / Managed Service providers are needing staff to woo, win and technical prove why to move to the cloud; thus more sales / presales solutions architects are needed.
Cloud / Managed Service providers are realising that winning new business is the easier part of the equation; the bigger part being retaining business, thus they are requiring more engagement managers, client account managers, project managers and service delivery managers.
Big reduction in numbers of road warrior IT consultants plumbing in new technologies into on premise clients, e.g. why plumb in a new tech when you can buy it in from a cloud vendor? There is also a reduction in on premise legacy old school storage roles needed, but conversely old school storage contract rates may rise.
why plumb in a new tech when you can buy it in from a cloud vendor?
In house desktop support roles are being vastly reduced, although we are seeing a transition of that role into a VIP support role – someone’s got to be available 24/7/365 if the CEO can’t access the cloud from their iPad right?
Corporate IT staff numbers are being reduced. Those remaining are becoming highly skilled all rounders, e.g. infrastructure, storage, virtualisation, networking, accessibility, security, etc – they have to be able to cover all the bases.
There has been a big rise in Cloud Solution Architects, both in service providers and on the client side. Someone’s got to design this stuff right? Then we’ve had a surge of Cloud Platform Architects too – big platform providers in particular are the winners here; think AWS, Azure and possibly Google.
Cloud Security – there is a big demand here, so it’s a no brainer that there is a demand for cloud security professionals. Ditto with DevOps – there is a demand for the suite of infrastructure skills, and developer languages understanding, so that new and old stuff can just simply be built / work in the cloud.
[easy-tweet tweet=”There is high demand for #Security and #DevOps professionals says @millshill_neil” user=”comparethecloud”]
I’m expecting to see an increase in regards to Cloud Apps Architects – a role where old legacy applications are ‘stripped’/coded and just to made to work in the cloud. The same for Cloud API Architects – roles where applications/infrastructure is built so that 3rd parties can access and pay for a 3rd party ‘cloud machine’ to ‘crunch data’, paid per cycle/call/’crunch’. This is Big opportunity for those with the skills to execute.
Big Data / Analytics / Digital – this is going to be all about how the corporate uses its internal / social media data. Big opportunity. Companies need people to know how to build apps/infrastructure to message me on Twitter when I’ll get the drone delivery of that product I thought about 5 mins ago right?
we’re moving towards Networking / Wireless everything
And in conclusion, we’re moving towards Networking / Wireless everything – everything sitting on a network, always on, accessible from anywhere, and that will bring a whole realm of recruitment challenges in itself.
Neil Mills, Director, MillsHill Recruitment
Neil has been in IT recruitment since 1999 and run his own business for 11 years.