Think Outside of the Box to Compete in a Global Market

It’s been said for a while now that there is an IT skills shortage in the U.S., with some positions sitting empty because employers can’t find the right people with the right skills. However, that position has been hotly debated, by IT executives and especially by those workers who are still trying to find work.

But let’s face it: The job market has changed dramatically in recent years. Employees are no longer competing with those in their location; rather, they are competing on a global scale thanks to work that has been pushed to the cloud. Workers can now work from any place and at any time. So competition, as they say, is fierce.

A new addition to our IT Downloads library, an excerpt from “The New World of Work: From the Cube to the Cloud,” examines this “brave new world” of global competition. In it, authors Tim Houlne and Terri Maxwell break down different professions and explain how the roles have changed over the years.

For example, this is what they had to say about engineers and programmers:

As technology has become more streamlined, so have the ways in which its programmed, designed and engineered. Companies have moved this work into the cloud through such brands such as Amazon, Google, Genesys, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and a host of others, including EMC, Cisco and Red Hat. That translates to a range of cloud-related development jobs—often from remote locations— for engineers and programmers.

For those of you who are underemployed or unemployed, this is not news to you; you’ve probably felt the effects of this cloud displacement for some time now. But the authors see these changes as a way for those who embrace it and think outside of the box to create new jobs for themselves. For, as they say in the book, “The work still exists, but the jobs we once held, do not.”

In addition to the excerpt, use these job descriptions to make sure you’re keeping up with in-demand skills, whether you’re looking for work or are charged with hiring for your organization. You can never be too prepared in this roller coaster of an economy.

Job Description: Senior System Administrator: The Senior System Administrator is responsible for implementing and administrating Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 (SCCM 2007), troubleshooting SCCM clients and the SCCM environment.

Job Description: Senior ETL Developer: The Senior ETL Developer candidate is responsible for designing and developing ETL solutions using Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) for interfacing between the source application and the Enterprise Data Warehouse.