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    IT Career News: Cybersecurity Hiring, Working Without Data, Relieving Stress

    Tech career news this week included taking a fresh look at roles in cybersecurity, imagining what a day without data would be like, new hiring problems in Silicon Valley and more.

    Cybersecurity Hiring Hot – and Cool

    Hiring in security-related IT positions has been strong for awhile now, and Ben Johnson, chief security strategist with Bit9 + Carbon Black, says demand will continue to be high for several reasons, not the least of which is that mainstream culture is making the job look cool. In “Latest Cybersecurity Crisis: Where’s the Talent?” Johnson shares advice for those who want to break into the area, and those responsible for doing the hiring, including how to leverage existing skill sets and how to redefine roles and team needs.

    Working Without Data

    Do you ever finish a task and think, “how did we ever do that before smartphones/Internet/IM/etc”? NetApp’s Jason Danielson, solutions marketing manager for Media and Entertainment, took a look at what a day without data might look like. Email users wouldn’t be able to send 182 billion messages. Networkers wouldn’t be able to share over 500 million tweets. Click through the slideshow to see what else would disappear from life as we now know it.

    Women in IT Stressed Out

    IT Business Edge’s Don Tennant spoke to Dr. Megan Jones, chief science officer at Lantern, a provider of professional coaching and emotional wellbeing programs in San Francisco, about why women in IT are so stressed and anxious. Turns out, those women might be just stressed and anxious no matter the work environment:

    “The brain system involved in the stress or fight-or-flight response is activated more readily in women, and stays activated longer than in men.”

    The piece offers three actions to take to relieve stress.

    Dream It. Code It. Win It. 2015

    The winners of the 2015 Dream It. Code It. Win It. competition impressed a judging panel that examined both the problem the student entrants were trying to solve and their solution. $40,000 in prizes were awarded, and as was the case in 2014, most entrants were female. Check out projects in virtual reality, bio-tech and more from college and high school students.

    Another Hiring Imbalance in Silicon Valley

    When Ascend, which focuses on Asian business issues, examined 2013 employment data from tech powerhouses Google, Yahoo, Intel, HP and LinkedIn, it found that those firms are more likely to hire Asians as engineers and programmers than as managers and executives, according to SFGate. Asian women fared worst in the analysis, with one Asian female executive for every 287 Asian women professionals. The ratio for white men: 1 in 87.

    Treating Employees Like Customers

    Analytics and other advances in HR have changed the department’s relationship with the rest of the business and improved the bottom line over the last several years. Kraig Eaton, managing director in Accenture Strategy, Talent & Organization, writes at Talent Management that HR is now ready to treat employees as the company would treat customers. Doing so may result in “stronger employee engagement and loyalty, improved resource forecasting and planning and reduced cycle times.”

    Eaton says “consumerized employee services” have the goal of delivering a smooth and consistent experience. When Accenture’s management consulting group moved toward this type of HR approach, it reduced the necessary touch points for moving an employee from one position to another from 140 to 75, and eliminated over 500,000 communications per year. Satisfaction levels were higher, and the savings rose into the millions of dollars.

    Kachina Shaw is managing editor for IT Business Edge and has been writing and editing about IT and the business for 15 years. She writes about IT careers, management, technology trends and managing risk. Follow Kachina on Twitter @Kachina and on Google+

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