Many Industries Now Compete with Google for Top Tech Talent

Top 15 Companies Currently Hiring for IT Jobs

With automakers such as Ford boosting hiring of electronics and digital specialists, they’re competing with Silicon Valley for tech talent. But Michigan’s frigid winters and Detroit’s bankruptcy can’t make those hiring packages an easy draw.

Yet other industries are wooing tech talent just as ardently. Health care IT leaders pointed to staffing woes as the most significant barrier to IT implementation in a survey by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). And the quality of IT hires is seen as determining the future of investment banking, according to Midsize Insider. It says banks might have to really loosen up culturally to attract the kind of tech talent they need to embrace new technology.

It quoted David Boehmer of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, as saying:

“In the 1980s there was an influx of technology people into financial services. There was a real wave of people and a New Age way of thinking came in. That injection of new talent and thinking hasn’t really been coming in for a while.”

IT investments by banking and securities organizations are expected to exceed $471 billion by the end of 2013, a 14 percent increase since 2010. These investments are expected to grow another 20 percent in the next five years, according to Gartner.

And while the insurance industry has been investing heavily in technology, collecting a lot of data won’t be enough anymore. According to a report from Deloitte, five forces—analytics, mobile, social, cloud, and cyber—are hard at work disrupting that industry. The report explained:

“Users now expect that the power of the enterprise should be available at the point where decisions are made and where business is transacted—no matter where that is.”

The CIO will be the one leading organizations in effective use of their data, explains Insurance & Technology. It said that “savvy management” can help the industry overcome difficulties in attracting top tech talent. As Andrew Goldberg, Deloitte consulting director, said:

“The draw you see at Google and others is that they’re much more hip—can insurers change the way that they approach work? The stuff we’re doing is cool—there’s a direct line of sight to the customer and the benefit we provide. As this transformation starts to happen with post digital, the idea that it’s a stuffy insurance company will begin to fade.”