Recruiters’ salary surveys highlight opportunities in the IT sector from clients focusing budgets on cost-saving technologies.

Stuart Packham, director of ?Michael Page Technology, told Recruiter: “If you look at any technology vendor there is a huge amount of talk about cost efficiency - people want to get more for less.” 

Packham explained technologies such as Virtualisation, which reduce the amount of hardware used by a network, were becoming increasingly popular. In response Michael Page Technology has been placing increasing numbers of infrastructure engineers, systems engineers and project managers into these areas.

Other cost saving initiatives which are generating placements include IP telephony and convergence, as companies attempt to cut down on travel and utilise video conferencing. 

With headcounts a constant issue, companies are targeting candidates who have a range of skills. “If we recruit a system engineer, for a medium sized firm, they will have to have a pretty broad spectrum of technology skills combined with internal customer facing ability. Not just the technical piece - you have to have strong communication skills and understand the business,” says Packham.  

Commenting on the Maximus’ recently released salary survey Satnam Brar, managing director of the IT recruiter, told Recruiter it had seen similar stable demand in enterprise resource planning. Overall we’re finding the market to be relatively consistent as there’s still many corporates looking to invest in systems and key projects - we have seen no visible slowdown in the markets we’re targeting.”  

However, Brar noted permanent consultants with Oracle database skills are now expecting to earn between 10 and 12% less, adding possible causes included an increase in supply and harder negotiating by clients.

Packham said an increasing candidate population necessarily means it’s is easier to find candidates with skill sets which were still in demand.

“Large scale redundancies increases the candidate population, but it also increases the level of nervousness of people who are working to put their head out their and see what jobs are available.”