www.cnn.com/2000/CAREER/trends/12/26/itking -> www.cnn.com/2000/CAREER/trends/12/26/itking/
CNN NETWORKS: 103 Networks image 104 CNN anchors 105 transcripts 106 Turner distribution SITE INFO: 107 help 108 contents 109 search 110 ad info 111 jobs WEB SERVICES: Crowning careers graphic icon 112 The royal mantle of IT careers is woven of many threads. OK, enough with the poetics: There are a whole lot of IT jobs you can get into and if you're young it can mean a very fast career start. QUICK VOTE graphic If you're not in an IT field now, how tempted are you to train for it and move in that direction? I'm seeing monitors and keyboards in my dreams -- as soon as I have the money for a training program, I'm there. I'm trying to decide whether it's going to be interesting enough, so I'm unsure what to do. As much as I'd like the money and the assurance of work, it looks tedious and awfully detail-oriented. Surely as we move into the new year, bad days lie ahead for information technology workers, right? CareerEngine divides the IT universe into categories in an effort to conquer the job-search and recruiting market. There are about 400,000 IT jobs that went unfilled in 2000, and most analysts expect little change in supply or demand in 2001, Ferrara says. Now you're getting a lot of the brick-and-mortar companies coming to the Internet. They want to protect their revenues, protect their margins. A survey released in April by the Information Technology Association of America concluded there would be an estimated shortfall of 843,328 skilled workers in the IT industry during the 12 months to follow. The jobs most in demand: technical support representatives, database developers and administrators and programmers, according to the association. And with their talents in such high demand, workers with tech skills will continue to command good salaries. An application developer fresh out of college -- even with no college -- might start at a base pay of $35,000 and be making $60,000 within a year if he or she turns in good work, Ferrara says. But, he cautions, don't expect to continue seeing excesses in pay and perks. Especially in the Internet world, they're starting to focus on becoming profitable, and those" -- high IT salaries -- "are some of the first things they're shaving. They're not all looking for wonder kids who've never been near a campus. A related degree from an accredited four-year program is preferred. The candidate must have project experience with Java, Java Server Pages (JSP), Java Script, HTML/DHTML, SQL Server or Oracle, and Visual Source Safe. Must have experience as either project lead and/or technical architect. You're not going to get as many raises, as many bonuses. If workers are at home, they miss out on the team-building, the quick grab-you-for-a-second meeting. And some IT companies including Microsoft, offer this training in-house. So too does Ferrara's firm, with the caveat that an employee must refund the cost of that training if he or she leaves within a year. SO MANY CHOICES graphic As soon as you've said "IT," you've said a mouthful. Information technology is a vast field of sub-categories and specializations. Recruiters and job applicants run through long lists of skill sets, trying to get good matches of applicants and employers. Three-fourths of these students were working outside the IT industry, according to the survey. The New Horizons survey of its students also found that most were men, between the ages of 30 and 49. And the survey found that women were more likely to be taking computer training to get a better job with their current employer, while men were more apt to do so to obtain a better position with a new company. We've seen some very successful people who have made mid-career changes into the IT realm," Ferrara says.
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