That’s why I wanted to post a link to an article by Lisa Vaas for the Dell-sponsored ITExpertVoice site that posted last week. It’s entitled “Tech Hiring Creeps Back to Health” and it actually manages to shed a small ray of sunshine on what has otherwise been a grey and dismal IT job market for the past year and more. It’s a small ray of sunshine because — as the story’s lead-in paragraph says — when it comes to IT job growth

…its recovery pace is akin to that of a snail going about its business after recovering from a coma.

In other words: painfully slow. But Vaas does point to several factors causing IT hiring and promotions to improve, if ever so slowly:

• giving into a pent-up need to implement projects shelved because of the recession and subsequent economic slowdown
• a better sense of financial comfort from companies now into the second halves of their fiscal years, with better information about their situations, and a higher sense of confidence about spending the hiring budgets at their disposal
• some modest increases in demand for new technologies and deployments such as Windows 7 and/or Windows Server 2008 (original or R2)
• a modest boost in IT functions for the healthcare, transportation, education, and some aspects of the construction sectors, with continued strong demand for IT people from Wall Street

There! You’ve had your ray of IT jobs sunshine. I hope it doesn’t cause any unpleasant side effects. All I can say is “Please sir, may we have some more?” Preferably, lots more, and sooner rather than later. Sigh.

Shameless self-promotion note: Please check out my latest story for Dell’s ITExpertVoice site, which posted publicly last Friday. It’s entitled: “Why Buy Real KVMs, When Virtual KVMs Will Do?” (and lest you think I advocate wholesale abandonment of physical KVMs, this story not only explains how remote access technologies can supplement and to a certain extent supplant KVMs, but also when real, physical KVMs are still necessary to obtain access to key servers and other devices).

• Data Management, including business intelligence, data mining, and data warehousing
• Security, driven by an upsurge in online business and a concomitant need to protect against vulnerabilities and exposures
• IT sourcing and vendor relationship management, which I see as a natural business extension to the growing migration to cloud computing and virtualization technologies
• Networking and wireless, as wireless networks continue to proliferate in public spaces and private organizations
• Web development, also a side-effect of the upsurge in online business, but also a result of increasing efforts to support and interact with prospects, customers, and partners online first and foremost
• Quality management, fueled by increasing adoption of standards based quality and organizational management regimes (ITIL, CMM, Lean, Six Sigma, and so forth)
• Education, because as employment goes down “back to school” always goes up (and the current cohort of college age is also bigger than in the 90s and early part of this decade)
• Healthcare, as one of the continuing sources of growth and expansion even in this down economy; for IT this touches especially on help desk and electronic medical records creation and management
• Energy, with ongoing investments in both traditional and alternative energy sources and programs; these days managing energy is all about acquiring and managing data — LOTS of data
• The Feds (Federal Government) are still hiring like mad what with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus federal stimulus dollars for programs all over the technical and IT landscapes

Those looking for IT work who are considering venturing out of their comfort zones in the interest of finding gainful employment, might be able to glean a target or two from this list. And then, very probably, some of you will head back to school to bone up on the subject matter, adding further impetus to the item on Education!