From...

February 26, 1999
Web posted at: 10:52 a.m. EST (1552 GMT)

by Leslie Goff and Emily Leinfuss

Top 10 IT jobs:

Banking and Insurance Building and Construction Business Services Health Care State, Local and Federal Government Retail Transportation and Utilities Manufacturing Telecommunications Education  Interactive: Do you work in an IT-related field? Yes No View Results

(IDG) -- Demand for skilled IT professionals remains high across the board, but especially in these 10 job markets.

Banking and Insurance

Banking and insurance firms certainly have a lot of legacy systems to worry about. But the year 2000 problem isn't the only thing driving information technology hiring in those industries.

The banking industry continues its consolidation through mergers and acquisitions, and insurance firms are relying on data more than ever with the upheaval in health care policies. So both industries are moving to bring a breadth of technology skills on board, from System 390 mainframe skills to Internet and security talent to Windows NT expertise to database skills.

"We don't build homes or widgets; information about our customers, markets and products is our biggest asset," says Ron Kunz, assistant vice president of architecture and strategy at Allstate Insurance Co. in Northbrook, Ill. "We're like an information factory."

Though year 2000 has skewed the demand for some skills, after it's all over, "We'll just see a shift back to more of the marketing programs and business initiatives that we would rather be working on than Y2K," Kunz says.

Shifts in the way information is delivered to customers are shaping hiring demand in banking, says Chuck Hobbs, a senior vice president and group executive of information services at Wachovia Bank in Winston-Salem, N.C. Internet-based banking, mortgage loan automation and development of data warehouses are just some of the projects creating demand.

What hiring managers value are good business sense and an understanding of what users are trying to accomplish. "That's more critical than ever before because banking is changing so quickly that in IS, we have to be able to adapt. So people who understand retail banking delivery strategies and plans will be key," Hobbs says.

Building and Construction

The building and construction industry encompasses many niches, from residential construction to industrial plant design to roads and highways and more. And they share a consistent need: to facilitate collaboration among contractors, designers and other partners.

To that end, Web-based business practices and extranets are emerging as a mainstay, and automated project scheduling and management systems are rapidly proliferating. Together, they gradually are creating new opportunities for IT professionals, says James House, director of information systems at Morrison Knudsen Corp. in Boise, Idaho. House is based at the company's largest division, Engineers and Constructors in Cleveland.

"This is a low-margin industry, and while IT has always created a competitive advantage on the engineering side, on the building side, we are only recently seeing the benefits from large investments in IT," House says.

House says he's looking for people who are experienced in the construction business and understand the importance of project management to the business, as well as to IT. He says he likes to recruit engineers from the business side into the IT group.

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Business Services

Business-to-business services firms, such as human resources consultants, marketing companies, process specialists and others, have to be at the top of their game technologically to earn credibility with their clients.

Moreover, their IT solutions must be nimble - ready to adapt in a flash to changing business requirements and new client needs. Couple those demands with overall market expansion, and you have a booming sector for IT professionals. The industry needs professionals who can deal with a multitude of end users, customize off-the-shelf software for specific situations and manage rapid application development.

"We need to be very up-to-date to attract clients and inspire their confidence in us," says Gary Zimble, director of technical services at Headway Corp. and The Whitney Group in New York, which provides human resources consulting and staffing services.

Zimble says he looks for IT workers who can help build those internal efficiencies. He says he's more likely to hire a rookie with proven smarts than an experienced worker "who has a vague knowledge of a lot of different subjects."

Health Care

The overall trend toward managed care and the increasing integration of patient-care systems with pharmacy, billing and other automated medical systems is crashing head-on with critical year 2000 requirements.

"We're not competing only against health care providers, but against the whole IT industry. And the demand is clearly outpacing the supply," says Jim Hedeman, information services administrator at Johns Hopkins Medicine Center in Baltimore. Hedeman serves as a liaison between IT and human resources.

Health care, like all industries, is recognizing the need to give all decision-makers - doctors, nurses, pharmacists, finance and billing staff, and managed-care contractors - timely and high-quality information. IT needs solid professionals who can join various platforms and systems together into a seamless whole, Hedeman says.

Some positions demand industry experience. Those include folks who have worked with vendor Shared Medical Systems' software. Others require proven technical experience, such as linking a mainframe billing system with a midrange Unix-based pharmacy system, Hedeman says.

And though new projects continue in the face of year 2000, the millennium bug is provoking a careful evaluation of which systems to pursue now and which to put off until later.

Another project that will continue this year, representing a key trend in health care, is the development of a revenue recovery system "with regard to changes in managed care and changes in Medicare rules. We're trying to be more responsive to our payers," Hedeman says.

State, Local and Federal Government

While the federal government has downsized overall, it's looking to IT to enable it to carry on business with fewer people. And at both the federal and state levels, the Clinton/Gore administration's emphasis on using technology to bring government to the people is pushing agencies onto the Web.

So most federal agencies have contracted out much of their analysis, development and maintenance work. But they are in need of "experienced IT managers who can run a competition for services, manage a project, and make the business case for new efforts," says Sandra Gibson, CIO and director of the IT and communications division at NASA headquarters in Washington.

The federal government is relying more on the Web for communicating with the public. With recent cases of hackers taking over government sites, Net security specialists "can probably write their own tickets," Gibson says.

The Web also is driving IT hiring in state government, says Kym Patterson, CIO at the Arkansas Economic Development Commission in Little Rock. Although civil service has a lackluster reputation, "the culture is more lively than people think," she says. "Our state department of information systems has raised its rates and is able to pay better, so we are attracting people from the private sector."

Retail

The retail industry has awakened to technology in a big way and is more advanced than its reputation says it is. "Retailers finally realize that technology touches all business segments now, from operation to product planning, receiving, distribution, point-of-sale and electronic commerce," says Butch Jagoda, CEO of Helzberg Diamonds in Kansas City, Mo.

Because that translates to the need for a wide array of skills and technologies, Jagoda seeks IT professionals who possess business acumen and understand retailing. The major IT challenges in retail are electronic commerce and automating the whole supply chain, confirms Colleen Pero, director of human resources at The Limited Inc. in Columbus, Ohio.

Overall demand for retail technology professionals outstrips the supply, Jagoda says. "We are looking for people who can really augment technical skills with business knowledge, communication skills and who can understand the pieces and parts of the supply chain," Pero says.

Transportation and Utilities

Transportation companies fighting for competitive edge are racing to develop systems to power "intelligent freight" - where electronic tags can identify and track every shipment along its delivery cycle.

At Ryder Integrated Logistics in Miami, that means enterprise-based, Web-focused, next-generation applications. The company needs IT professionals who can handle C++ coding and Java application development, as well as database architects and engineers, and integration specialists who can handle Common Object Request Broker Architecture standards. But especially wanted are effective, efficient senior programmers, says David Shea, vice president of technology.

As technology accelerates, so do salaries in the transportation and utilities industry, Shea says. And as long as IT professionals are customer-focused, they will advance in this industry.

Utility companies face similar challenges as they move from older, more staid businesses to free-market competitors. At Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc., IT professionals need to be flexible and willing to learn, says systems manager Steve Marcotrigiano. "We look for people who are analytical and have a good understanding of technology," he says. Useful technology skills include experience in client/server, Internet and intranet development and mainframe development skills.

Manufacturing

IT professionals with experience in ERP and general client/server development can write their own ticket in manufacturing, says Miren Lolly general manager of IT at Ore-Ida Foods Inc., a subsidiary of H. J. Heinz Co. in Boise, Idaho.

"There is a high demand for technicians, not only in programming but in the network and database areas," Lolly says. That's because manufacturing companies are exploring the Web and electronic commerce to create new channels of business, says recruiter Jeff Leon, managing director at Russell Reynolds Associates in New York.

IT professionals most likely to succeed in manufacturing are those who have a vision and can develop systems that impact the entire supply chain and cost structure of a company, Leon says.

Telecommunications

The many faces of the telecommunications industry - all methods of communications, network and Internet convergence and access network equipment developers - are vying for the same IT talent.

Hiring demand grows monthly, as do the size of salaries, according to Kim Frazier, employment manager at Aztek Engineering Inc. in Boulder, Colo. In fact, Frazier considers telecommunications to be the fastest-growing industry in the world.

IT professionals are more apt to be exposed to cutting-edge technology sooner in this industry, says Jim Kenner, a vice president at recruitment firm Pencom Systems in Washington. Networking and Internet technologies, in conjunction with Java, are at the forefront, he says, along with a strong demand for C++ and Visual C++ developers, Unix and Windows NT administrators and database developers.

IT professionals who work in the telecommunications industry need to be able to handle a great deal of complexity and excel at integration as telecommunications converges with media and the Internet, Leon adds.

Education

Margaret Knox's dream IT hire for development and programming would be a musician with a hard science background who's a team player. "You would get creativity, and logic and procedures and user-orientation all in one," says Knox, associate director of academic computing and instructional technology services at the University of Texas at Austin.

The education arena touts its atmosphere of learning, inventiveness, experimentation and yes, even fun, as a foil for offering the lower end of the salary range. But those bottom-level salaries may be changing, thanks to the competitive job market, Knox says. "We are doing a better job of matching commercial salaries," she says.

In administrative systems, which are most like business systems, David Trevvett, director of administrative system at the University of Chicago, says classic IT skills, including Cobol and CICS, are still in demand in education, but the industry also needs people with database skills - both transactional and for data warehousing. "We have the complexity of huge corporations but not the size. A given person may wind up doing a wide mix of tasks," he says.