Top IT Skills for 2013

As the year 2013 gets much closer, businesses are awaiting the next year for planning staff levels and IT projects. This work will need IT professionals with diverse specialties, and will vary from company to company.

I read the outcomes of a recent survey on Computerworld (a website I frequently visit), which asked IT executives what sort of IT professionals they plan to hire in the next 12 months. The outcomes that came in were:

1 - Programming and Application Development - 60%
2 - Project Management - 40%
3 - Help Desk/Technical Support - 35%
4 - Security - 27%
5 - Business Intelligence/Analytics - 26%
6 - Cloud/SaaS - 25%
7 - Virtualization - 24%
8 - Networking - 19%
9 - Mobile Applications and Device Management - 19%
10 - Data Center - 16%

The percentages represent the percentage of respondents which were planning on hiring that type of IT professional in the next 12 months. I discovered a few interesting things in these survey results.

Application Development Is A Clear Standout

Out of the survey results, it appears that programming and application development is the clear #1 skill that'll be in demand in the next 12 months. This means that organizations are planing to start projects that require software development, either in a support role or development stage. I come from a development background, so may be a bit biased, but I think this is a great thing - software projects do wonderful things for organizations.

Skills Are Not Technology-Dependent

The skills pointed out in the survey results are not technology-dependent. This means that programming is not categorised into languages or platforms, and networking is not split up into technologies or areas.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe the respondents to this survey didn’t know or didn’t care about the technology. IT executives were those who responded to the survey, so they might only know that they desire developers and don’t care about the language.

Sourcing Of Staff Is Not Discussed

A hot topic in the IT market at the present time is the notion of outsourcing IT work to other locations, or even sourcing staff from other countries using work visas. The survey doesn’t really refer to this, but the idea is that some roles in the IT industry are generally outsourced to other countries which commonly charge at lower rates.

Skills like help desk, support, and software development can be outsourced as they don’t need the face-to-face contact that other roles such as project management calls for.

To conclude, this survey is a helpful survey in acquiring an understanding of the employment market, but is’t detailed enough to assist me make any decisions. Personally, I’m aiming to move my career into project management, which is on this list, but it doesn’t really affect my choice.