| January 2007 |
 |
| Many service industries are on the hunt for qualified candidates |
|
| The New Year will get off to a strong start in San Diego. Area employers expect to hire at a brisk pace in the first quarter of 2007, according to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. From January to March, 43% of the companies interviewed plan to hire more employees, with special strength in education, services, public administration and government. Equally encouraging, IT staffing consultancy Robert Half Technology, whose first-quarter IT Hiring Index was just released, found that 17% of San Diego CIOs plan to make new hires this quarter. With a low employment rate of just 3.6%, San Diego is looking like a good place to be job hunting these days.
|
|
At Dice, San Diego job listings were down for the quarter, with seasonality playing a role in the dip. "2006 was a good, steady year for San Diego job hunters at Dice," said Scot Melland, CEO of Dice. "We expect 2007 to be equally steady, with plenty of interesting opportunities to come along." Salaries are trending in the right direction. In the 2006 Dice Salary Survey, IT salaries in San Diego were up an average of 10.05% over 2005 to $79,416, the biggest leap among all the cities Dice tracks.
Dan Cordero, regional manager for IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies, is very bullish on the region and on several industries: new media, telecom, financial services, local government, medical devices, and healthcare. Asked what IT job skills are most in demand, he listed: .NET developers, infrastructure experts, SQL server database developers and DBAs, QA, telecom engineers, project managers, systems administrators, business analysts, Unix administrators, SAP, Java developers, security experts, Oracle developers, and DBAs.
|
|
| "Local government is investing in long-term planning for technology and infrastructure that will meet the needs of the local population" |
| - Dan Cordero, regional manager of Sapphire Technologies |
|
"The defense space is seeing strong demand for technical employees," said Cordero. "Most of my clients are forecasting a need for increased staff in 2007 or at the minimum, filling the open positions they currently have. Some of my clients that have projects that are government or defense-funded don’t expect a downturn in 2007, but looking forward a few years, they are seeking diversification in their product lines to hedge against an inevitable downturn in government spending. Overall, the local economy has been able to absorb displaced employees that have the right skill sets.”
"I think our local government leaders are well-versed in digital government and how IT can improve efficiencies in their agencies," he added. "I have had a chance recently to meet with the top IT officer for a large government agency, and I can tell you first-hand, our local government is investing in long-term planning for technology and infrastructure that will meet the needs of the local population."
It's also interesting to note that the University of California San Diego is competing with Berkeley to be a major beneficiary of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's Governor's Research and Innovation Initiative, a $95 million project that hopes to bring at least one petascale computer to the university system and help a school win a huge alternative energy research grant from British Petroleum. The R&D atmosphere is pervasive statewide.
If there's any downside to a busy job market like this one, it may be the tumult caused by job hopping, according to Brian David Smith, a software engineer and Ph.D. candidate who has spent 20 years working in the San Diego IT arena and is an expert in its dynamics. "What's so terribly wrong with employees wanting to grow their careers by taking jobs with a better chance to improve their skill set? Nothing, except employers are hesitant to invest in human capital if the rewards pay off in other organizations. That's the problem. Software engineers will vacate a job for another position if there is a chance to increase skills. However, the employer knows this too. Therefore, employers don't want to train incoming employees. It is a catch-22, and it's turning into a mess."
If you would like to be interviewed for the next Dice market report, or if you have comments about this article, please contact us at feedback@dice.com.
|
|
|
|
|
| Dice job postings in San Diego are up 18% since Jan. |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
