Ambition Tech Market Trends Q4 2009

Market Trends Report Q4 2009 Technology Recruitment Australia

Introduction Welcome to the fourth quarter edition of the Ambition Australian Technology Market Trends Report. To use a baseball analogy, this edition looks at whether we’ve really shaken off the worst of the GFC and if those businesses coming off the bench have “come out swinging”. The November 2009 Commonwealth Bank – ACCI Business Expectations Survey “shows that while business expectations for the December quarter are showing signs of improvement, trading conditions remained challenging over the September quarter as most indexes remained in negative territory, albeit with signs of recovery”. The Survey measures a number of key indicators including that of Expected Economic Performance and this report shows the strongest recording since back in March 2002 and indeed the first positive reading in over two years. Businesses confidence continues to grow and across the Technology Industry the projects, the workforce and hopefully the capital to fund both are gearing up to launch in to 2010 with full force…or is that just a little too optimistic, read on to find out more. This report is a general market overview of IT recruitment and we are happy to discuss any specific situations and queries you may have about your market sector and geographic location.

Summary The key market trends are:  

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Continued rise in business confidence is backed by positive economic signs and a stabilising economic forecast. Projects held over for most of the year are being dusted off and reviewed in light of the returning business confidence. Strong risk and compliance frameworks are employed to ensure cost and viability from the outset. With hiring intentions improving the focus quickly returns (if it ever vanished) to the search for the ideal candidate. Despite some degree of people resource capacity in the market, we continue to operate largely in a skill-short environment with regards many specific skills and experience. Employers continue to look for the perfect match to their requirement based at present on their desire to minimise risk and maximise return on investment. The wait may be over for that percentage of employees who have sat tight through the past twelve months, waiting for a more positive job environment to return. If things continue as present then expect the New Year job refresh to kick in to swing quickly and with a force that most employers would rather avoid.

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Contents Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 2 Summary ................................................................................................................................ 2 Contents ................................................................................................................................. 3 Recruitment Industry News – What’s happening now? .......................................... 3 Stabilising economic conditions a positive story ................................................ 3 Projects to commence but with extra scrutiny .................................................... 3 Back to the old way of resourcing people or time for change? ..................... 4 Tick…tick…boom. Where has my staff gone?........................................................ 4 Technology Industry News ................................................................................................ 5 Podcast with an expert series .................................................................................... 5 iProfile – The dynamic career profile ...................................................................... 5 Industry Sectors ................................................................................................................... 6 Applications ..................................................................................................................... 6 Business Information .................................................................................................... 7 Infrastructure .................................................................................................................. 7 More Information ................................................................................................................ 8 About Ambition.................................................................................................................... 8

Recruitment Industry News – What’s happening now? Stabilising economic conditions a positive story The increases in confidence and improving conditions have largely been driven by the manufacturing and construction sectors, while retail and wholesale had a fall in trading conditions as the Government's stimulus has worn off. Business investment remains limited and sporadic so for the IT Industry as a whole the most hiring activity has been across the big end of town. The first to retrench staff and the first to re-hire. As anticipated the initial spike in demand for resources is coming through contract or fixed term employment arrangements which allows business to accurately control and curtail if necessary, expenditure based on external market conditions.

Projects to commence but with extra scrutiny Projects held over for most of the year are at last being dusted off and reviewed in light of the returning business confidence. The first to be hit 12 months ago were the banks and financial institutions and as the recovery begins they are the first to pick up where they left off with project plans being reviewed and resourcing plans drawn up. It’s fair to say that pain felt throughout this year has not dissipated enough that anyone is launching in to capital expenditure without very careful evaluations of short, medium and long term risk and reward. Of course this Ambition Technology Market Trends –Q4 2009 | 3

is prudent business sense, but if this year has taught people anything it’s the very real significance of effective project planning, risk management and return on investment modelling. Old school business professional who’ve experienced an economic cycle or two in their careers smile at the mention of any long lasting lessons being learnt. Only time will tell.

Back to the old way of resourcing people or time for change? As those projects we’ve talked about start to commence, the inevitable resource planning questions arise again. First preference is of course to use your internal resources but that is not always possible and particularly with businesses operating on minimum spare capacity over the last year, the need to recruit new blood returns. Perhaps unique to the challenges which the Technology Industry faces, we constantly strive to find candidates with very niche skills and specific experience in a mishmash of technology tools that serve our particular environment and stack. It has often been said that you should recruit for potential not for experience but whilst nervousness remains around delivering return on investment, many are not prepared to invest in the time and cost of training someone up for the tasks required. As long as we continue to upgrade software packages and mix legacy with cutting edge systems, we will continue to require an ever more complex mix of skills that is unlikely to be available in any significant volume.

Tick…tick…boom. Where has my staff gone? Review any previous recession and recovery and you will see a picture of repeated mistakes and corrections. It is maybe surprising just how few employers making redundancy decisions over the past year were cognizant of protecting those IT workers who could be instrumental in helping them get back on their feet when the market returned. In any post-recession environment the company culture and the business operational drivers will change and this is where the problems can begin if you don’t have the right team in place. Naturalist Charles Darwin discovered that the strongest or most intelligent species don't necessarily come out on top in the survival sweepstakes, but instead, those that are most responsive to change. Employers need to understand that when the employment market picks up there will be a temptation for some staff to look for greener pastures, and whether proactive or reactive to headhunt calls the end result is instability and flux. Ensure that you engage in regular and open communication about the opportunities the future may bring in your business and how people can avail themselves of these. The alternative is as much stress and anxiety as you had during the recession itself so be prepared.

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Technology Industry News Podcast with an expert series This month Ambition Technology is pleased to introduce Sadiq Iqbal. Sadiq is a Systems Architect for Ensyst and was the only person in Australia to be invited to the first Windows 7 course run by the product developers in Singapore. In the last few months he has been working with Microsoft on their Early Technology Adoption Programme deploying Windows 7 to production desktop SOE’s for a number of handpicked organisations nationwide. Prior to this Sadiq has worked with a multitude of established IT Integrators and also ran his own IT consultancy in London. During this time he has designed and implemented a multitude of sizable infrastructure solutions for organisations around the globe and also has provided thought leadership and strategic direction to corporate enterprises. We asked Sadiq five questions and his answers can be heard by following this link: http://www.ambition.com.au/techblog/ 1. What are some of the new features involved in Windows 7?2. Are there any flaws or concerns with in Windows 7? 3. How does Windows 7 compare with Vista and XP? 4. What has been the general feedback from clients who have already gone live with Windows 7? 5. Are you going to install Windows 7 at home, and why?

iProfile – The dynamic career profile iProfile, formally known as SkillsMarket was founded in the UK in 2001 and launched shortly afterwards to the job seeking public. Within the first four months it was used by 100,000 jobseekers and today close to four million people own an iProfile. Winner of the 2005 ATSCO Innovation of the Year award, Ambition recently signed a two year exclusive deal along with four other technology recruitment businesses to bring this product to the Australian market.

So what is it all about and why should I have one? In essence the iProfile is a candidate owned, web hosted electronic resume. You own your data, you decide who can see it and you have the ability to customise it with all of your skills and experience in a user friendly format that most importantly, works for you with those recruiters searching to fill job vacancies. You can either create an iProfile from scratch or simply send your resume to their database and iProfile will parse the content and create an iProfile for you to start tailoring. The iProfile helps jobseekers present their details in a structured format, compatible with recruitment agencies' database systems and enabling recruiters to quickly pinpoint the right candidates with the appropriate skills. These updates allow recruiters to always be on top of candidates availability Ambition Technology Market Trends –Q4 2009 | 5

dates, job seeking status and alerts from incoming CVs where new skills or experience has been added.

Benefits for hiring managers:  

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Increased speed in sourcing candidates and the ability to screen large numbers very quickly through an easy to use interface. Hot list functionality allows recruiters to build effective talent pools against your particular company needs. When a candidate enters a recruiter’s domain they will automatically be tagged in to the appropriate hot list if they match the rules attached to that list. Highly customisable search strings allow identification of niche hard to find candidate skills and experience. No cost to the client for market leading search technology.

Benefits for candidates:    

You own your data and you can locate it quickly and easily for editing or posting to specific jobs advertisements. A structured format allows you promote all of your relevant skills and experience making you more marketable to the employment community and more likely to secure a job. Intelligent search algorithms mean that candidates using iProfiles and compatible recruitment agencies are more likely to be identified against job searches again maximising your chances of job hunting success. A secure location and constantly backed up data means you never have to worry about who has your resume or in fact where it is stored.

For more information about what iProfile can do for your job hunting success, contact ambition [email protected] or log on to the iProfile web site http://www.iprofile.org/

Industry Sectors Applications The Application Development space has maintained something of a ‘wait and see’ approach this quarter with continued development work taking place but the high demand for exciting, cutting edge development work still yet to return. That said, Australian companies have been quite active in the merger and acquisitions space this quarter with ANZ bank recently announcing it’s A$1.6b acquisition to ING for its stake in wealth management and insurance operations in Australia and New Zealand. In October, Macquarie also announced its intention to buy Fox-Pitt Kelton Cochran Caronia Waller, a US-based boutique bank for $130m cash and assume $16.7m in long-term debt. With this activity come opportunities in integration development and application support. Also emerging in some of the larger corporate clients is a move to separate the Application Support team away from the more traditional development function of the Technology team. Something or nothing, time will tell. Demand for third party vendor products has improved this quarter requiring additional developers in the architectural and integration spaces. Salaries and contractor rates have remained stable with a slight trend upwards for those more niche skill sets. The outlook is looking more positive than it has been for some time. Ambition Technology Market Trends –Q4 2009 | 6

Business Information Perhaps the biggest pick up in recruitment activity in Q4 has appeared to take place within the ranks of Business Analysts and Project Managers. Led by the financial services sector there is demand not only for experienced resources but also for more junior staff who can be moulded in to company culture. This is perhaps surprising in light on earlier comments on staff selection but highlights that the smarter hiring managers recognise what’s around the corner. If they can attract and engage talent now then a market improving over the coming months will present them with a great opportunity to compete and hopefully take market share. Interestingly CIO Magazine this month comment on the findings of IDC’s latest Forecast for Management Survey 2009. Particular concern was levelled around the fact that in the top ten priorities for CIO’s notable drop off’s included both Security and Business Intelligence. Concerning that security is seen as less than a top tier priority but perhaps companies are relying on the forthcoming efforts of CERT (see below). Also a concern is that many feel a root cause of the economic mess we found ourselves in recently flows from a lack of effective business intelligence. It is recognised that it’s difficult to get right, but surely it has to be a focus of any company to provide meaningful financial and business data to the people who have to make strategy and purchasing decisions. Despite what the survey finds, at the grass roots level we have seen a strong resurgence in demand for skilled professionals in this space, take advantage and if it isn’t on your radar, perhaps you should be looking at the areas of Project Governance or Business Intelligence.

Infrastructure Government spending and continued commitment to spend across the IT Infrastructure space has helped boost confidence levels of those working in this sector. Reported in the Australian 24th November 2009, ‘Businesses on the cyber frontline will get more direct help as the federal government bolsters national defences against increasing online espionage and attacks on critical infrastructure. "Many online threats are surreptitious and insidious, and the perpetrators are more inventive in their tricks," Attorney-General Robert McClelland said last night, unveiling a cyber-security strategy that positions e-security as a top priority. Mr McClelland said the plan was to help businesses maintain resilient computer systems to protect both their operating capacity and customers' information, and to boost the security of government agency systems, which held citizens' data. The new government-owned Computer Emergency Response Team -- CERT Australia -- will become the single contact point on cyber security issues, locally and for international agencies. Other good news in the sector relates to the successful launch and numerous installations (both private and corporate) of Windows 7. A successful TV and marketing campaign albeit with perhaps less fanfare than that which surrounded Vista’s arrival, heralded what appears to be a genuine step forward for Microsoft’s latest Operating System. Demand for roll out and deployment staff should continue to grow in the coming weeks and months.

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And finally the NSW Government tops the current popularity charts with parents as its new ‘Building the Education Revolution’ program kicks off. Promising investment of more than $4.9 billion in NSW schools, it is expected to support more than 9,000 jobs across the state in the coming years.

More Information For answers to your questions on market trends, salaries, retrenchments or grading please feel free to contact Ambition with the contact information listed on the back page or visit www.ambition.com.au

About Ambition Through a network of national offices we are able to recruit IT professionals from junior support staff through to senior executives. Our consultants are experienced recruiters who have strong technology industry exposure and who focus on both the contract and permanent recruitment markets. This report was written by: Andy Cross [email protected] Managing Director Ambition Technology www.ambition.com.au

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