Summer 2002 Job
Survey: Summary of Results
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| The purpose of this New York City Area IT Survey is to identify New York
area employment trends in the software/IT industry. The survey measures
New York's hiring climate as well as its most popular technologies and
platforms. It was initiated in part through an alliance with the New York
Work Alliance (NYWA) and the City University of New York (CUNY). |
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| NYC Area Employees |
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| A total of 53 member companies, about 10% of our membership, participated
in this survey, which was given between August and October 2002. Almost
half of our sample indicated they have 1-10 employees. Just over 28% indicated
employing 11-25 people. The 17% have 26 or more employees, with most of
these grouped in the 100+ employee category. |
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| (Note: The values for the following survey result categories
are based on an average of importance, where the importance values
are between
zero and two, two being ranked most important. See survey results for
the actual Index computations.) |
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| Important Business Applications and Training Requirements |
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| Member companies offer a variety of services. The top three types of
businesses that participants are involved in remained the same from the
Winter 2002 survey: the production of application software products, custom
programming, and Web site development. The following applications / programming
tools are of key importance to their businesses: |
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- MS Windows NT/2000
- JavaScript
- XML
- MS SQL Server
- Java
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| MS ASP & MS.Net were also highly ranked. These technologies have
been consistently chosen over both of our surveys. The importance of developing
and mastering these applications and tools are highlighted further by the types
of training companies’ desire. Areas of interest for training
include project management, quality assurance/testing, managing programmers,
expanding staff knowledge of any programming language, and of systems analysis
/ requirements analysis. Quality assurance/testing and managing programmers
did not appear as high in the previous surveys. |
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| Company Funding Sources |
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| Approximately 89% of our companies are not venture funded, down from
95% in the Winter 2002 survey. |
Hiring |
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| Hiring Status |
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(Note: The Hiring Status Index results are calculated with -1 responses
indicating companies are laying off, +1 responses indicating hiring,
and 0 indicating no change in staffing. The survey responses were averaged
to produce the Hiring Status Index results.)
Although these
statistics increased or remained the same compared to the previous
survey. Overall hiring of technical personnel went from 0.12 to 0.22.
Hiring of network administrators went from 0.07 to 0.08. The hiring
status for programmers increased slightly from 0.13 in the winter
survey, to 0.19. The need for interns stayed the same at 0.31. In
general, an increase in hiring is reflected across the board. Hiring
in general seems to be higher in the summer/fall than in the winter/spring. |
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| Skills Importance |
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| The most valued and desirable skills of candidates entering the industry
are "soft" skills. Communication skills have consistently ranked
#1. Of importance in addition to communication skills, are a candidate
with a college degree (any), excellent interviewing skills, internships
or some sort of industry experience, and also of importance is a candidate
with a computer science degree. According to the survey, industry certifications
are not as high a priority. Even so, participants sited the Microsoft Certified
System Engineer (MCSE) and the Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD)
as the most valuable certifications. The Sun Java certification also scored
fair. The least valued certifications included the Novell Certified Network
Engineer (CNE) and the ColdFusion certification. |
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| Employment Sources |
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| The survey results indicate that the leading sources for hiring candidates
to fill IT positions are personal and professional networks. The next types
of sources companies indicate they use include Web sites and the selecting
of candidates who have completed internships within the company. College
job fairs and commercial job fairs are used, but less frequently. |
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