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It’s been a tough year for IT, and it’s been especially challenging for IT executives hoping to advance their careers. Now that the dust is settling, many IT executives, who have put in their time and worked miracles during the economic downturn, are looking for a promotion.

But it may not happen, and it’s a smart move to assess why, according to an article in Certification Magazine. Here are a few of the magazine’s reasons:

• Your boss doesn’t know you want a promotion because you were not direct about your demands.
• Nobody knows you. No matted how great you are, if your name is not widely know throughout the company that could hurt you.
• You don’t look at the big picture, or you haven’t demonstrated that you have a broader view of the company and your role.
• You are lacking a crucial skill for the position.
• Your boss doesn’t think you’re ready for the next step.

For more on handling the promotion itch:
- see this Certification Magazine article

It’s beginning to look a lot like spring in the IT job market. The latest employment numbers show that IT added 25,000 jobs to the market in January and February–a good sign as the economy emerges from the recession.

IT employment still remains some 200,000 jobs below its 2008 peak of 4 million jobs, but the signs are promising.

“I am seeing a lot more demand out there,” Scott Archibald, managing director of Bender Consulting, a Houston-based management consulting firm, told InfoWorld. “As a general trend, I would believe what the numbers are saying at this point.”

Recruiters are also noticing an increased demand, according to Ben Blanquera, vice president of information services at Progressive Medical Inc., a Westerville, Ohio firm. According to InfoWorld, he’s says there “seems to be a steady uptick” for hiring, but it’s “not dramatic.”

We’ve been telling you for several weeks already that the trend is looking positive. The latest numbers–25,000–are a sweet harbinger of things to come.

For more on IT job market:
- see this InfoWorld.com article

IT is a young person’s game. While the older, grayer IT workers are still a big part of the work force, they are being replaced by younger, newly minted workers.

An article in InfoWorld.com reports that the average IT operation is staffed by people whose answer to this question: “What were you doing when the Berlin Wall fell?” is going to be “teething.” But there are plenty of reasons for the age change in the profession.

• Older workers are more expensive than younger ones. The philosophy is to ax two or three high-paying positions and hire younger, cheaper workers to do the same job.
• Younger workers will work longer hours and produce more code.
• A decade of experience with an old programming language isn’t as good as fresh experience with a new one.
• Younger workers aren’t burnt out from previous experiences.

The InfoWorld article points out that there may be age discrimination in IT in the same way there’s age discrimination in professional sports and the arts.

“At some point in those career arcs, the assets that made workers such hot properties–youth, the ability to devote lots of time to their vocation, comparative inexperience–diminish. And the marginal utility of what’s left–experience–is not as strongly valued,” the article says.

For more on age in the IT world:
- see this InfoWorld.com article

We’ve all been there before: You sense your job is on the line. You’re not really sure but you have a feeling that things in your world may change.

InfoWorld.com has put together a slideshow of warning signs to pay attention to if your IT job shows signs of shifting.

Here are a few of them:

• They took away your hot new computer system and gave you an old one.
• Your performance review looks bad, really bad.
• You become an old mentor and the younger staffers in the office refer to you as that “dinosaur.”
• You are pulled off a strategic project and put on a “special” one.
• There’s a digital paper trail noting your every move and what you are doing.

If the signs start appearing, it may be time to survey the landscape and keep moving. It sure will be hard, but we know that you will be able to navigate your way out of a bad situation eventually.

For more on bad signs at work:
- See this InfoWorld.com article

Wanted: IT professionals skilled in running data centers. It’s an up and coming field with plenty of opportunity. The problem is that there isn’t enough IT talent to fill these jobs, according to Rick Ancona of PricewaterhouseCoopers, a professional services firm.

“The problem is, not that many people out there right now are versed in the data center of today,” he tells CIO magazine.

He says the people applying for these jobs don’t understand multiple disciplines as well as the facilities infrastructure. And that causes a real dearth of talent in the field. Virtualization experts are especially hard to come by, says Michael Bullock, founder and CEO of Transitional Data Services, a data center consulting firm.

“It’d be awfully nice to find people available who are skilled in multiple disciplines, but it’s hard enough finding anyone who knows how to work with virtual servers or storage alone,” he tells CIO magazine.

Andreas Antonopoulos, senior vice president with Nemertes Research, says his organization studied 120 IT organizations and found widespread shortages of the right kind of IT skills. In the study, 60 percent of organizations reported trouble finding IT personnel with the right skill sets; 45 percent of respondents said they ran into shortages of IT talent in application development and 30 percent couldn’t fill positions in storage and networking.

For any company thinking about building a data center, think long and hard, evaluate the workforce and figure out how to find IT talent to make it work. You may have to train the staff yourself or pay a premium to get the right people on the job.

For more on data center staffing:
- see this CIO magazine article

We’ve been asking for more than a year about what IT jobs will be hot when the recession ends. Now that time is just about here, and we have a general idea of what will be hot.

There is new demand for specialized skills, as well as some tried-and-true ones to keep the shop operating. Computerworld’s survey of the hottest IT skills for 2010 includes:

• Programming/Application Development – These skills are needed to meet the demand for new systems and projects.
• Help Desk/Technical Support - This skill set is at the bottom of the bottom rung, but every IT shop has a strong demand for people who make the help desk hum in 2010. It may be the fastest way to get your foot in the door.
• Networking - There aren’t enough networking professionals out there to handle the growing complexity of networks and the stresses placed on them by virtualization, cloud computing and security demands.
• Project Management - There’s a growing demand for professionals who understand technology and how it fits in the overall business strategy.
• Security - We’re not sure why this isn’t at the top of the list. We would place it as the biggest challenge for IT executives this year. The need for IT professionals to be well-schooled in cybersecurity skills should be at the top of anybody’s list.
• Business Intelligence - BI skills are growing in importance especially for small and midsize companies that don’t have the budget to do a year’s worth of R&D.

For more on IT skills in demand:
- check out this Computerworld.com article

There’s a revolution brewing in the education field as educators and technologists move to change the image of computing work and help computer science education come of age.

The New York Times reports that major technology firms such as Google, Intel and Microsoft are trying to do that as well.

Everyone wants to move introductory courses in computer science away from focusing strictly on how to use the software designed for their computers and give students an education that gets them thinking beyond a  spread sheet.

For most IT executives these days, this would be a big change. As they scramble to find qualified IT workers, they realize there is a shortage of the kind of competencies they need to run their businesses. As they look over the field for who is out there, they are not finding who they need.

For any IT manager, hiring these days can be very frustrating. There’s a certain type of IT worker available but maybe not one who can take on the job of the future.

“We need to gain an understanding in the population that education in computer science is both extraordinarily important and extraordinarily interesting,” said Alfred Spector, vice president for research and special initiatives at Google. “The fear is that if you pursue computer science, you will be stuck in a basement, writing code. That is absolutely not the reality.”

Computer science is evolving just as the industry is. Look for incremental changes along the way. Major changes to help manaers find a new talent pool will take longer to emerge.

For more on managing for the future:
- see this New York Times article

It’s been such a long, tough year for just about everyone, so it’s great that 2009 is finally coming to an end. And it definitely looks like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel as 2010 arrives.

The recession is just about ending–if you listen to the predictions of pundits and experts with their finger on the pulse of IT. And we expect plenty of changes on the bumpy road that IT has been on for the last year.

Here are a few of our predictions for the coming year:

IT jobs – Yes there will be more IT jobs in the coming year as companies rev up their depressed workforces. But it may not be as many as you would expect. Companies got used to doing more with less, and they may carry that lesson with them in 2010. In addition, it looks like there will be more contract work in 2010, not less. A company that got used to part-time help may extend that practice into the next year. So get used to the idea that there may be more part-time work and the scaled-back IT workforce may not be beefed up.

Cloud computing – It’s been on the upswing lately because it saves money. It’s no longer the temporary rage, but a smart move for IT shops to head in this direction. There is a cost attached to it and security concerns, so companies are cautiously looking into the cloud.

IT security – There is a never-ending war cry for help in this critical area. Wherever you look in this past year, industries were hacked by outsiders or from the inside from careless employee habits. The New Year is going to be a time to get smart about security. IT staff will need more training on how to prevent a leak. And companies will be spending a lot more money for the security that prevents a catastrophe. All of this will take profits away from the bottom line, but it’s far better to be overly cautious than careless in today’s world of security failures.

Social networking – Whether you tweet or friend, blog or wiki, there’s a new way of communicating at every level on a personal and business basis. And if you haven’t joined the movement, you are behind the times because email is so yesterday. It’s time for you to investigate this trend, consult with the best and figure out how to get on board. Your customers certainly are looking for social networks and you should be, too, if you want to stay on top of advertising your goods and services, not to mention defining your customers. It’s still a tough road for those of you who are used to email and not social media. It’s time to get with it; It’s essential.

Data centers – They are here to stay, but they will be smaller and likely available in your cloud computing environment. Take advantage of this expansion, and save money to boot.

Mobile workforce – Your workforce is not sitting still in the office. They like working from home or anywhere but the office. A mobile workforce will give you a chance to find better workers who want the flexibility of telework. And it will require you to be uber-secure in making sure your telework ranks are as secure as your office.

Better training – The new decade should signal better training for your workforce, and that means setting up a proactive strategy. Teach your workers not to use P2P sites or their own computers for their work. Train them to avoid opening strange emails with attachments. And make sure they change their password every three months, making them unique and hard to duplicate. There’s plenty of spam heading your way, so it’s essential that your workforce avoid it all. Keep the staff informed about hack attacks and on alert for any strange communication. It might be from their mother, but they should be asking whether it really is before opening an email.

We’re expecting lots of new developments in 2010, and will report them as soon as they happen. Incorporate the caution that you have learned in the past year, but be ready to pass ‘Go’ on Jan. 1, 2010 with renewed vigor.

If you want to make money in an IT job, become an information security manager according to Computerworld’s latest salary survey. Network engineer/wireless network engineer, business intelligence analyst, software developer and storage administrator/architect/engineer are specialties that are not far behind for the best paying jobs in the business, according to the survey of nearly 6,000 professionals.

The salary increases for these jobs were small this year–ranging from 1.4 percent to 2.3 percent, but career experts say the potential for salaries to grow in these fields is enormous.

Ralph Spencer Poore, chief cryptologist at Cryptographic Assurance Services LLC, a security consulting firm in Arlington, Texas, says he’s not surprised to see “information security manager” top the list of biggest compensation increases.

“It’s a blossoming field internationally and has undergone a great deal of maturing, so there has been tremendous growth as a career,” he tells Computer World. As a result, information security jobs have become elevated in organizations, putting upward pressure on pay.

“If you had the title of information security manager in the ’70s–it was a rare title–you were paid as a programmer. Now you’re at a director’s level, at the vice president level or higher in stature in a company, commanding that kind of salary,” Poore says. But there aren’t enough top security professionals to meet the growing demand, he says, and that pushes up pay, too.

There are plenty of top-paying jobs throughout the IT ranks, according to the survey. Here are just a few:

• Vice president of e-commerce: $124,125
• Internet technology architect: $129,348
• Data warehousing manager: $98,408
• Help desk manager: $70,000
• Communications specialist: $81,594
• Database administrator: $84,120
• E-commerce specialist: $69,05

The next question is how to find these jobs. Not as hard as you think, according to many experts.

“Jobs are simply packaging. You take competencies and cluster them and give them a name. So you want to focus on what needs these jobs take care of, and what are the competencies,” Caela Farren, president of MasteryWorks Inc., a career consulting firm in Falls Church, Va., tells Computer World.

Other skills expected to experience an increase in demand include those dealing with cloud computing and managed services, wireless and telecommunications network engineering, and energy engineering, according to Todd Thibodeaux, president of CompTIA.

While you may not have a crystal ball, it’s probably a good idea to scour the IT landscape to identify what’s hot and what’s not.

For more on the best IT salaries:
- see this Computerworld.com article

A new slideshow from Computerworld outlines the 100 best places for IT professionals to work, and why they’re the best.

General Mills, of Golden Valley, Minn. is Computerworld‘s No. 1 company. At work, employees use Office Communicator, a collaboration tool that features instant messaging, voice, chat and desktop-sharing technologies. Internal groups led by IT employees include IS Diversity Champions and Women in IS. The IT Manager’s Forum addresses topics such as working with global teams, project and portfolio management and understanding generational differences.

Some 37 percent of its IT employees are women, and 13 percent of its IT workforce are minorities. And there are plenty of other IT initiatives that make this food company No. 1 on the list.

Check out this list to find out where companies stand and how they are using IT to create a better workplace.

For more on the top 100 IT companies to work for:
- see this Computerworld.com article