Weekly Word on the Street: IT Hiring Looks Good in 2013

Takeaway of the week is really a fresh set of takes on some old, established takeaways, such as "certifications are valuable difference makers in the IT job market" or "healthcare IT continues to grow and evolve" and then there's the "IT job market remains strong into 2013." Oldies, but goodies.

Certifiable Difference Makers

Everything is taken into consideration in a competitive IT job market and some certifications more so than others, according to a well-known industry recruitment firm.

As an executive of Texas-based VAR Staffing said in the latest CRN article in a series on IT job growth and hiring trends, "If we have two candidates and one has the experience and one has the certification, generally the VARs will want to speak to the certified candidate first."

And, especially if the certification listed on that resume is among the following sampling from the top 10 discussed in the article:

• Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP) certification - considered a "standard" among solution providers.
• EMC Proven Professional certification and NetApp Certified Data Management Administrators certification - distinguishing markers in the growing field for storage architects and engineers.
• CompTIA A+ certification - considered, as the VAR Staffing executive noted, the "gold standard" and a requirement of service technicians by many big-name firms.
• CompTIA Security+ certification - considered an excellent entry-level certificate to get job seekers in the door in a sector rapidly heating up.
• Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) certification - the number one in-demand certificate, according to VAR Staffing.

Healthcare IT Here To Stay

IT job seekers studying up on the most viable sector in which to focus their energy and map a career path would be hard pressed to find a better industry these days than healthcare IT.

That's a general takeaway based on comments coming out of a recent healthcare forum, discussed in a recent article in InformationWeek, noting how technology is driving that industry.

Since attendees at the Boston-based event, titled Xconomy Forum: Healthcare in Transition, included entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who could have just as easily been in attendance at similar events during the original dot-com boom of the late 1990s, a common question is whether healthcare IT is headed for a similar crash.

The difference: These healthcare technology startups are actually solving serious business and technology problems in a massive industry as opposed to neat solutions to non-existent problems.

In his keynote address, Bryan Sivak, CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said "data is changing the healthcare industry right now. Healthcare is an opaque market and you need transparency around cost and quality."

The trick, Sivak said, is to find a way to sort, secure and supply data in an industry in which data remains separated in silos, subject to strict privacy concerns, and paper still rules.

Dice: Strong Tech Job Market to Continue in New Year

Nearly two-thirds of hiring managers and recruiters expect to add additional technology professionals in the first half of 2013, according to an industry staffing firm.

That figure highlights a recent end-of-year, cross-country survey done by Dice that has professionals in the field describing the state of technology recruiting as "tempered optimism."

Alice Hill, managing director at Dice, said of the coming year: "There will be good job opportunities and there will be hiring, but we're expecting steady, modest growth, not a snowball gaining speed into an avalanche."

Though numbers look solid to start the coming year, Dice officials note the forecasts are lower than just six months ago. For the second half of 2012, nearly three out of every four hiring managers were expecting to bring on new tech workers.