Technology recruitment outlook strong despite pause

Appeared in: The Australian
Date: 6th of July 2010

ECONOMIC jitters, the mining industry tax, a change of political leaders and a looming federal election unsettled the jobs market last month.
Despite these factors, the start of a new financial year has boosted IT employment prospects, according to recruitment experts.

Peoplebank chief executive Peter Acheson said the overall outlook was positive for IT hiring this financial year.

“This is because of the number of IT projects such as the banking core systems upgrades, insurance company upgrades, the smart grid projects in the utilities sector and strong activity in the telecom sector with the VHA (Vodafone-Hutchison merger) and National Broadband Network.”

He said the employment sector was off by about 2 per cent last month against May, which was usually the strongest month in the year.

“The feeling we are getting is that there may be a slight pause in the robust hiring we experienced in March, April and May,” he said. “However, the overall outlook for the year is strong.”
Key roles were project directors, project managers, business analysts, testers, developers (across the board), as well as web-based technologies.