Diminishing Demand Or Passing Phase?

Many countries of the World have been experiencing an economic downturn. The United States had the biggest share in this downturn and the tech gloom in recent months. The negative impact manifested itself in the scene of recruiting foreign nationals in the US. Applications for H1-B visas that allow highly qualified foreigners to work in the US have gone down to 16,000 from 32,000 a year ago according to the INS sources.

"Despite the freeze or slowdown in hiring frenzy, there is still need in few specific areas and for senior level IT professionals. Most companies in today's market are seeking permanent employees not consultants/contractors. The needs for standard skills are few. The need is in specialized areas and niche markets, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), business and strategy analysis, embedded technologies, data modelling and configuration management." says Venkatesh Babu of Boss-Solutions, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia based information technology solutions service provider and consulting company. "Senior level, experienced professionals will find opportunities, but, the remuneration may not be as good as before" he adds.

The areas where the hiring frenzy seems to have calmed down are e-commerce and Internet. Common skills amongst IT professionals such as Java, Perl, XML do not seem to help get jobs on the fly these days.

Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals also seem to have demand for specialized skills in recent months thanks to the millions of dollars poured into research and development for biowarfare. When we asked about the "next big thing", "This is very difficult to say. Software companies are heading towards bundled, easy to use software model. Wireless and palm computing are areas that are likely to have good growth. You have to wait and see what happens with the "dot.net" technology. I would see more opportunities in customization/design/business analysis areas as these technologies unfold. System integrators will probably do well. Emphasis will continue on Customer Relationship Management/Computer Telephony Interface, as the economy bounces back. Network, security, video, audio streaming technologies will grow as the thirst for information grows more and more across the World." says Mr. Babu to Edulix Team .