CIOs become pessimistic according to Janco
Pressure from executive management forces CIOs to curtail hiring plans according to Janco
Park City, UT - Pressure from CFOs to control costs are impacting IT hiring according to Janco. The CEO of Janco Associates, Inc., Victor Janulaitis says, "CIOs say they expect to continue hiring, although they plan to increase their IT head counts by meager amounts."
In a recent set of roundtable discussions Janco found that CIOs say they have not completely halted existing hiring plans amid the market volatility of the past three months. Rather they have delayed hiring, citing economic uncertainty, insufficient demand for new or enhanced applications, and pressure from executive management to keep costs down.
Comments from these IT executives about their companies' staffing situations reveal some of the factors depressing employment. Some companies are making preliminary layoffs plans despite their strong performance as they continue to outsource and cut back on applications that no longer are cost effective.
However, attracting and retaining qualified employees still ranks as one many CIOs' top concerns. One CIO said that he has 4 open positions that he has been trying to fill for eight months. The CIO says the company is "doing fairly well" and hiring, but he can't find enough of the digital and social-media experts he needs. "We have to mint these people," he says. "We want to bring new people in but the good ones do not want to move." He adds, "We're kind of moving sideways."
Prior to August there had been an up-trend in the number of individuals employed in the IT job sector. In August there was a loss in telecommunications jobs (48,200 - partly due to the Verizon strike) and data processing hosting and related services jobs (400) that could not be offset by the increase in other information services (1,000) and computer systems design and related services (7,100).
The CEO of Janco said, "The overall implication with the loss of these jobs is the IT job market may be starting a double dip in employment. Janco estimates that positive job growth in these sectors will not be seen until late in 2012."
