job skills development

Texas: Another IT employment opportunity?

In looking over the labor numbers for my recent Washington DC blog, “Government Stimulus Comes Home to Roost?” I also observed that employment numbers were up in Houston and Dallas as of the end of 2008, as per UBLS statistics. Does this mean a viable market for IT workers in those cities right now? I’ll also report on the putative and anecdotal state of things for IT professionals in my own metro area — namely, the Austin - San Marcos, TX, MSA, currently ranked at number 16 nationwide, and a mildly notorious hotbed for high-tech activity.

On the face of it, Texas is suffering somewhat less than the rest of the nation from the downturn, both in terms of unemployment (6.4% for Texas versus 8.1% nationwide as of March, 2009) and in terms of job opportunities for IT professionals (modest growth under 2% for 2008, flat to -1% so far for 2009). Houston (national rank: fourth) and Dallas (national rank: eighth) are numbers 1 and 3 in Texas by size, with San Antonio (national rank: seventh) smack dab in the middle. A quick perusal of IT classifieds for either Houston or “the Big D” show plenty of IT job openings, and reasonably brisk traffic in same (average listing turnover is under 5 weeks).

But the word on the street, my own recent personal experience, and anecdotal evidence from my professional network shows that most of the IT workforce is running scared. Those with jobs in IT are working harder than ever to keep them, and those looking for work are spreading lots of resumes around and interviewing like mad, without really making much tangible progress. Based on my observations, there’s a strong negative correlation between years of experience/job level/pay history and the expectation of finding a suitable position and/or a reasonable job offer. In other words, those of us who’ve been in the biz for 10 years or more, and who are used to making comfortable salaries, must either face drastic pay cuts, or continued under- or unemployment.

Before you pull up stakes and come to my lovely home state, I’d urge you to land a position beforehand. If you’re coming here just to look, you’ll have to get in line with all the locals already looking for IT work. Sometimes the statistics don’t do complete justice to the situation on the ground, and this is one case where I’ll beg to differ with the obvious conclusions that the numbers appear to present.

That said, I can suggest one area where opportunities do seem to be perking up: outsourcing services. As a freelancer, I go where the work is, and that’s meant that much of my current income stream has been shrinking as companies cut back on budgets. At the same time, my volume of work from outsourcing companies that manage customer relationships, provide Internet content for large corporations, or build what I like to call “edusales” content (educational and informative, but with an ultimate aim of selling readers on the sponsor’s products or services) has been booming. All of these companies report that business is up considerably lately, as even the biggest corporations trim back on in-house staff and activies, and turn increasingly to professional outsourcing outfits to meet their need to keep their customers engaged. If you’re looking for fertile ground, it’s the best equivalent for IT job search I’ve come across so far. In fact, I can unequivocally say that “If you know Eloqua well, drop me a line and I’ll hook you up with a company that’s in desperate need of more Eloqua expertise than they can find themselves.” May this bring a ray of sunshine to somebody’s otherwise dull, drab day!

It’s COLD Out Here/There…

In a classic exercise known as “eat your own dogfood” — by which I mean practicing what I’m preaching about hunting for contract and full-time employment by signing up at resume and job-hunting sites — I’ve been taking a pretty serious shellacking at the hands of recruiters and hiring managers lately. “It’s OK,” I console myself by saying, “I really don’t want those jobs anyway,” but man it really hurts to see one’s market value decline along with the rest of the economy. Let me explain…

I’ve signed up directly at various job shopping/resume sites, and also through my memberships at Facebook and LinkedIn, to see what the job market is like on a personal basis these days. So far, I’ve found perhaps a dozen positions for which my qualifications match sufficiently for employers to be at least theoretically interested in talking to me, if not actually interested in doing so. Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve experienced so far from these twelve positions:

• So far, no reponse at all for 8 of the online applications has occurred, for intervals between one and three weeks since my indication of e-interest. I’ve been careful to provide cover letters and current resumes in all cases, and have also received electronic tokens of receipt for these applications, so it’s clear they’re not simply floating in the ether never having been received.
• I’ve gotten calls from two recruiters, both of whom have offered half (or slightly less) of the minimum hourly or salary rate that I carefully included in each of my applications. It’s very much a first for me to be approached when such a profound mismatch exists between my stated hourly or salary needs and the rates the hiring or contracting company is willing to pay.
• I’ve gotten electronic messages from two employers, both indicating that my application is under review, and they’ll get back to me if and when they decide my qualifications and their requirements warrant further discussion or conversation. Other than that, nada!

I’m guessing this is typical for the current market. Conventional wisdom holds that it takes one month for every $10,000 in annual salary that a person wishes to earn to conclude a successful job search. At my preferred level of compensation that means it should take me at least a year to find a job. So far, all indications are that the time horizon is further stretched than that, if anything.

The most telling evidence of the state of the market is that recruiters are calling when they know they’re low-balling contract or salary demands. The one contract job I was offered came with an hourly rate that I exceeded (based on converting salary to hourly by dividing yearly earnings by 2,000, a not atypical conversion approach, though 1,000 makes more sense with what benefits cost when you cover them yourself these days) in 1984! Needless to say, I simply informed the recruiter that I wasn’t interested in the work at that rate of pay, and left it at that. The salaried position I was offered got me into the early 1990s given the 2,000 conversion value, but was still about 1/3 lower than I would be willing to start commuting for, were I  to accept such a position.

That’s the way it goes in the 2009 economy. Please share your war stories, too, and I’ll chime in again from time to time with status on this situation. It’s interesting, depressing, and potentially terrifying, depending on what other income streams you have at your disposal. In my case, I’m still staying busy enough as a full-time freelancer to keep the wolf from the door, but for others…well, you tell me: how’s it going out there?

A Reduction in Pay Beats a Reduction in Force

Back when I worked for the Feds in the 1970s, the acronym for layoffs was RIF (reduction in force). These days, the downward spiral in the economy often involves belt-tightening of all kinds. If you’re lucky enough to avoid layoffs, downsizing, right-sizing, or any of the other euphemisms for being let go, you may still have to deal with a pay cut. Hence the title for today’s blog: where less pay beats no pay hands down.

When it comes to dealing with pay cuts, you have to understand what is being cut and for how long. Paul Barada, a salary and negotiation expert for Monster.com makes the following recommendations in his recent article on this painful but sometimes unavoidable subject:

1. Find out how long pay will be reduced, if you can. Given the uncertain state of the economy, the answer may be “indefinitely” or “until further notice.” It’s best to find this out up-front, rather than wondering if each subsequent pay-check will be the same size or not.

2. Find out if other reductions or changes are involved. Primarily this means benefits, especially health insurance (behind wages and salaries, this is the second largest cost in personnel-heavy organizations). In some cases coverage may be reduced; in other cases, deductibles and co-pays may go up.

3. Timing is everything: it’s essential to understand when pay and/or benefits reductions will go into effect, so you can plan and manage your expenses to follow suit.

4. If you must swallow a reduction in pay, talk to your boss about a reduction in working hours if you feel comfortable doing so. Warning: not everybody may be so bold, however, so be prepared to deal with consequences of this discussion when things get back to normal. Managers remember who kept plugging away for 40 hours or more during the downturn, and who reduced workload to match reduced pay.

In case you don’t think this kind of thing is going around, think again. Then, check out this Google Search where you’ll find thousands of stories about planned, pending, or actual ongoing pay cuts in force in government, industry, education, and elsewhere.

The New Year Is Here, So Be It Resolved That…

A list of New Year’s resolutions for those who work in IT, and are seeking to improve upon or build their careers might include the following:

• Identify at least two new tools or technologies relevant to your job, and start to learn more about them. If you can obtain trial versions or choose Open Source or other free stuff, so much the better–learning works best hands-on.
• Find at least one online or local forum or user’s group where you can interact with other IT professionals who share a common platform, tool, or other interest. Please consider this a “hard (technical) skills” element, so that joining ToastMasters to practice public speaking skills doesn’t count (see the soft skills item that follows). Examples include the Windows User Groups Network, the Cisco Press User Groups Program, Adobe User Groups, and so forth (your favorite search engine will help you find those that match your platform and tools interests, pronto).
• Inventory your soft skills: people skills, project management skills, writing and speaking skills, and so forth. Identify one or two areas where you’d like to improve, and plan to spend some time, reading, studying, and practicing to make some headway in meeting those improvement goals. This is where joining ToastMasters comes into play.
• Think about your certification interests and status. Is it time to refresh an existing credential? Time to go after something new? Here again, take an inventory, check renewal or continuing education requirements, and plan to bring yourself up-to-date before the year gets too far along. Haul out a calendar (or use an electronic calendar) to schedule related tasks and milestones for yourself. Often, maintaining certification status requires meeting continuing education requirements at a minimum, so you’ll want to dig into those requirements, to figure out what  you must do, and then how best to get things done.
• Repeat the preceding item for your continuing academic education. Perhaps you might benefit from finishing an as-yet unfinished degree program, or you may be ready to pursue a graduate degree program of some kind. Examine your possibilities and decide if you want to add some time in academia to your activities for this year. If so, use the same calendar and milestone approach to help keep yourself on track that I recommended in the previous bullet item.

The important thing here is to set some goals for yourself, and then to put those goals–or better yet, incremental steps toward those goals–on a timetable. Then, you can monitor your progress over time and stay on track to meet those goals. I find that regular reminders in my Outlook calendar work to help me stay on top of such things–heck, I even use them to remind me when it’s time to get my hair cut or beard trimmed–without letting too much time slip away. Hopefully, the same (or a similar) approach will work for you. If you not only resolve to improve yourself in 2009, but also take definite and positive steps to realize your goals, it can’t help but be a better year, no matter what happens.

–Ed–