Whats driving the shortage of qualified IT professionals today?
What’s driving the shortage of qualified IT professionals today?
International recruitment consultancy Robert Walters predicted last year that organizations across all industries would face a major shortage of IT professionals in 2011 and as a result, would be forced to offer higher salaries to secure top talent. 2011 has seen a shortage of skilled IT pros, creating a large demand and triggering a hiring war with higher salaries and retention problems.
The reason for the shortage is that a number of businesses in various industries are migrating from traditional methods to the sophisticated digital world for less complicated and much better control over data and processes. The implementation of EHR and the emerging trend called cloud computing are two reasons for the rising need of IT professionals in the U.S. In addition, the wireless and mobile technologies, 3G and 4G technologies, which permit users to move around while staying connected to one another, are on the rise and in need of more skilled IT pros.
Now that you have your first IT certification, what’s next?
Now you’ve got a certification – an A+, MCP, Red Hat – what’s next? Congratulations! You’ve reached a career milestone and you have the right to celebrate. After a while, you might start asking yourself, “What am I doing and where am I going?” You may have even changed your mind about career goals while obtaining your certification or you may have changed directions a bit.
What’s next?
High achievers especially experience this “What’s next?” urge. Think of the Olympic athletes. They work for years perfecting their sport and finally make the team. They travel to some foreign land to participate in the Olympics as a representative of the good, ‘ole U.S.A. After doing their best, and possibly even winning a medal, they often feel a sense of confusion, a loss of direction and purpose. They may have achieved a great goal, but have nothing to replace it with once the goal has been reached and is over with, especially where their sport has no professional future. Luckily for you, your certification does have a professional future, and a good one!
What is the Monetary Value of Obtaining IT Certification?
Value to the Consumer
Although increasing income isn’t the only reason for obtaining certification, it’s certainly a factor that IT professionals talk about quite often. In some cases, certifications can translate directly into increased rates. For example, a 2011 salary survey by TechRepublic and Global Knowledge reported that individuals who earned a project management certification during the previous five years earned an average of $2,720 more than their counterparts who did not, and 36% of respondents to Certification Magazine’s 2009 Salary Survey reported receiving a pay increase after recent certification.
But even if certification doesn’t result in a pay increase, it is still a great tool to accomplish the same thing. As your technical skills grow, you can ask for and get a higher paycheck. That’s a fundamental of the job market. And even if you don’t use your certification to get a raise in the short term, the knowledge you gain will certainly pay off in the long term.
What Does it Cost to Obtain IT Certification?
The Cost of Certification
The price of certification is difficult to pin down in advance. There are many variables, the first and largest being the choice of certifications that you will pursue. In many cases, the primary requirement for initial certification is that you pass one or more exams. For example, to earn the IBM Certified Application Developer – DB2 9, individuals must pass 2 exams, which cost $200 each, for a total of $400.
What’s Behind the Huge Increase in Demand for IT Professionals in Healthcare?
Healthcare is searching for IT Pros
Information technology (IT) professionals are in high demand today, especially in the healthcare field. Across the country, healthcare organizations are looking for talented people for temporary and permanent employment including experts in networking, website development, patient database and billing. As 2011 has come and nearly gone, healthcare has also found a need for IT professionals in social media, unifed communications (UC), webinars, mobile applications, telemedicine and electronic medical/health records (EMR/EHR).
A study by Dice.com, which focuses on technology and engineering professionals in all industries, discovered a 60% jump in the demand for IT professionals skilled in Java/Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE), a 74% increase in IT pros who know Javascript, and a 104% increase for those knowledgeable in HTML. However, because these individuals will be working in hospitals and healthcare facilities, they must also have a unique knowledge of office procedures, patient care services, billing and collection processes and marketing applications.
What’s Behind the Huge Demand for IT professionals in Security?
Cyber Attacks are Rampant
With technology changing every second and Internet accessibility through a wide range of new and mobile devices, there is a definite need for effective and skilled IT security personnel in the corporate sector. In light of attacks on major companies such as Amazon, MasterCard and the Sony Playstation Network, companies are now strengthening their network security infrastructure with an estimated 40-50% rise in security recruitment.
The cost of security breaches for business is astronomical. Estimates from just the Sony Playstation incident alone ranged from $20 million in lost revenues for a couple of weeks to $24 billion for the full costs of dealing with the consequences of losing control of customer data. A study by the Ponemon Institute, a think tank on security, estimated the cost per person for a data breach at $318, making the total loss for many companies experiencing security compromises in the billions of dollars. Security is an infrastructure issue impacting nearly every business. The threat to business infrastructure includes: Read More…
Appealing Advantages of 4 Major CompTIA Certifications
In the modern world of Information Technology, IT certifications are one of the few guaranteed ways to muscle out the competition. It’s a well-known fact that many companies today are looking for specific skill sets that can be validated with certifications. I worked with a guy once who told me he had applied for a job that asked for specific CompTIA certifications, among others. He had been invited for the interview because of his MBA and his background in IT. However, he didn’t have those certifications. The guy who actually got the job was CompTIA Security+ certified. Now, not everyone’s story is like this, but you should at least be aware that it is increasingly common in the IT field.
To get an the edge on the competition, you need specific skills, and you need multiple ways to validate those skills to potential employers. If you’re fairly new to the IT field or looking, then one of the best and fastest ways to build up your status is to start with vendor-neutral certifications, such as the ones that CompTIA offers. These certs are highly recognized and demanded globally, in both specific communities and the industry as a whole. CompTIA’s standards are unparalleled not only because they are vendor-neutral, but also because they concentrate on practical concepts that can be applied to different types of systems.
IT Boot Camps vs Self-Study Programs
Traditionalists will tell you that the only reason to go to an IT boot camp is to pass an exam. Someone who’s more realistic would say “The point of having IT boot camps is to give you sufficient, direct learning experience to pass a difficult, highly specialized exam.” Sure, you can go to a week-long boot camp, cram your brain with everything you need to know about a subject, and then pass the exam. For most boot camps, that is the main objective. Whether you leave with long-term sustainable skills, though, depends on how much of that compression information you retained and how much of it you apply to the real world after the boot camp. With the thousands of dollars that professionals spend on boot camps, it’s a consideration that shouldn’t be taken lightly.
If you don’t want to dish out the money for an IT boot camp and you don’t want to stop everything and go back to school, self-study is your best bet. This is basically where you learn at your own pace and comfort level. In the IT world, this typically includes textbooks, computer-based training, and simulators. The main reason this is so attractive is because it’s much cheaper than the cost of a boot camp or college course, and it can be done from just about any place and at any time. This means you can study and learn more efficiently. Of course, it does require much more discipline and focus to follow through and actually take the exam.
5 Methods for Studying Efficiently for your IT Exam
In the IT world, where technology is constantly changing, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve and stand above the competition. To do this, though, we need additional skills, training, and certifications. Sounds like a simple equation to move up in the world, right? Training + certification = new skills = new/better job and/or better salary.
Logically, it makes perfect sense. Realistically, though, it’s difficult to pull off. We have personal lives, significant others, children, hobbies, and other sectors of life pulling at us from a million different directions. How can we muster the time to study for certifications when there are so many other things struggling for our attention? And how do we stay focused once we start?
