Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Most desired IT skills

If you are an up and coming graduate in an IT field (particularly CS), you should read this document. A few professors got together and analyzed the most sought after IT skills by analyzing job listings on Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com over the past few years. It appears that Web programming has "jumped into a commanding lead" in the total number of jobs requiring programming skills, being mentioned in 42.6% of all job ads. In addition, Unix, C++, Java, SQL Programming and Oracle database are the other top five skills in the current job market, with each of these mentioned in close to 20% of advertised IT jobs. Java is now demanded in more than 20% of all job openings, making it a "mainstream programming language." The percentage of jobs requiring .NET has grown more than 250% over the three-year period represented by the study. Regardless, you should keep in mind that skills in demand change over time. Keep abreast of the latest skills being sought after. (The professors point this out as well.)

Read this article, and take it into consideration when maximizing your potential for landing a job come graduation time.