Five IT Career Skills on the Upswing

On Dice, job postings get top billing. Tech professionals hit the search engine and job postings are their beacon to a new career move. But behind the scenes, another central role is played by HR professionals and recruiters — mining the Dice resume database to find qualified professionals who are a fit for their organizations.

In fact, the emergence of new trends often occurs first in Dice’s resume database, simply because 80 percent of employers search resumes before posting their job. Based on their insights, it's time to take notice of this group of five skills that are on the upswing.

Click through for five skill sets garnering attention from recruiters, as identified by Dice.com.

A high fidelity "test drive." That's what the iRise platform offers business software application developers. iRise creates a working preview of an app, allowing for tweaks before expensive coding begins.

Think of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (or COTS) software as a "boxed" solution versus an online version. COTS software can be consumer-focused, like the retail versions of TurboTax or Outlook, or incredibly complex, like the sonar software Lockheed Martin produces for U.S. Navy subs.

As mobile gaming devices proliferate, so do gaming social networks. The Crystal software development kit allows iPhone and Android game developers to integrate Chillingo's Crystal social platform. Crystal users can create profiles, challenge and follow friends, and integrate Facebook and Twitter.

Businesses use Oracle's PeopleSoft applications to manage complex systems, from finances to human capital, supply chains to CRM databases. PeopleSoft Security uses a hierarchical approach to limit data and application access to qualified users.

Cloud and Virtualization are big. More data, more storage, more flexibility is driving demand for tech professionals who can utilize NetApp's solutions and platform.