I appreciate these kinds of research articles, since they indicate trends and details in the job market.

I've noticed two things from this article and its underlying research.

First, several of the titles identified are not well-established or generally not used in the industry yet. The article specifically notes that many positions are hybrids - a merging of previously unique positions. I also noticed that a number of these titles seem to be renames for existing roles. For example, "enterprise-application strategists" might otherwise be known as the "enterprise architect"; "IT planner" might currently be known as a "IT financial liaison"'; and their "IT enterprise account manager" sounds very much like an "enterprise internal consulting manager". Finally, as always, as new technologies become more widely established, specialists in those technologies become the next "hot" position, such as "Mobile operations and devices experts" and "Desktop virtualization experts".

Second, I noticed a hiring trend in IT from this and prior research articles. Late 2007 and early 2008 we saw a number of articles describing how hiring managers and CIOs were looking for more "hands on" managers, and technologists with "deep expertise" - translating to "we want less generalists and more specialists". Now, this and other articles are talking about individuals with "cross-discipline specialization". The trend went from generalist able to add value in multiple roles, to specialists with significant experience in just a few technologies. And now, IT hiring leaders are swinging back just a bit and looking for that cross-discipline experience that the business users keep asking for as part of the IT-Business alignment strategy. Its not swung back to generalists - its still noting the need for specialization - but this article points out that multiple specializations are a bigger benefit than extreme depth in just a single technology.

Of course, while this article says nothing about the overall state of the IT hiring market, it does give us new information and options for how job seekers can direct their search, and how hiring managers might find better candidates.

Mark Cummuta
CIO Job Search: A Real Life Chronicle