IT jobs 2018: Hiring priorities, growth areas, and strategies to fill open roles

As technology changes and companies adapt, IT hiring priorities will evolve as well. In September and October 2017, TechRepublic Premium conducted a survey to find out if developments in areas like artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud have changed the IT department, both in terms of current job roles and new hires.

The survey included the following questions:

  • What types of IT workers does your company currently employ?
  • What, if any, IT positions has your company filled in the past 12 months?
  • What, if any, IT positions does your company plan to hire for in the next 12 months?
  • In the next 12 months, will your company put more emphasis on hiring new employees or retraining current ones?
  • Has your company experienced difficulty in hiring for any IT roles?
  • Has your company faced challenges like finding skilled job candidates, finding money for hiring or retraining, etc.?
  • What, if any, strategies has your company used to fill talent gaps?
  • Imagine you’re giving advice to someone who’s just starting out in IT. What skills would you recommend they learn?
  • Thinking about the IT field as a whole, in what area do you think the most jobs will be created in the next 12 months?

Among respondents whose company had done IT hiring within the past year, the majority said the hires were in general IT support or development. Respondents coming from companies that plan to hire IT workers in the upcoming year also said these areas would take priority. Despite all the talk of growth in areas like automation and data science, this indicates that most companies are still looking for talent in more traditional IT jobs. When asked to predict where new job growth will come from, respondents overwhelmingly said network security, distantly followed by data analysis and artificial intelligence.

An open response question asking for advice to new IT professionals got some telling answers. At the top of the list of recommendations was expertise in security, which wasn’t a surprise. However, improving soft skills like customer service and teamwork was mentioned much more commonly than skills more traditionally associated with IT, like development and database administration.

To read more survey results and analysis, download the full report. And to learn more about the future of the IT job landscape, check out this ZDNet/TechRepublic special feature.

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Published:
November 26, 2017
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