Seven Skills | Seven Cities

Seven Web technology skills offer the greatest potential to advance your career. Seven cities offer the best prospects for employing these skills.

Seven Skills

Here are the specific IT skills that staffing executives say are most in demand—and that are commanding the highest pay rates:

• Java
• C#
• PHP
• Ruby on Rails
• .NET
• SQL
• Oracle DBAs

For details access an article at CIO magazine entitled IT Pay Creeps Up After Two-Year Downward Spiral.

Seven Cities

Here are the seven cities with the best job prospects for technology workers:

1. Houston
2. Washington, DC
3. Columbus, OH
4. Detroit
5. Philadelphia
6. Edison, NJ
7. Boston

For details access an article at Forbes magazine entitled The Top 7 U.S. Cities To Find An IT Job Right Now.

One Action Plan

While it may not be realistic to uproot your family and move to another city, you can develop new skills that the marketplace wants and will compensate you for at above average wages.

Identify one of the top seven Web technology skills and develop a plan to get better at this skill. For example, 192 web-developers-in-training have committed to a 17-week self-study group to learn PHP. You can organize a self-study group and make a difference in your community.

There is no need for your career to be a crap shoot. Set a goal, develop a plan, get others involved.

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Boston Market | May 2011

Two surveys provide insights into how workers find jobs and what employers are looking for in candidates.

Who You Know

How did you secure your most recent position?

1. "word-of-mouth" referrals | 28 percent
2. online job postings | 19 percent
3. recruitment/staffing firms | 16 percent
   
4. direct approaches from employers | 16 percent

More than 18,000 U.S. workers were included in these findings which were presented in the Kelly Global Workforce Index. This report is rich with information about the emerging effects of social media on job search and is worth a deeper look. [ Press Release | Complete Report ]

What You Know

What skills sets are employers looking for in new grads?

1. communications skills (written + verbal) | 69 percent
   
2. technical skills | 57 percent
   
3. project management skills | 44 percent

These findings included more than 2,800 hiring managers and human resource professionals and are reported in CareerBuilder’s Annual College Job Forecast.

Seven-Day Action Plan

Based on these findings, here are three questions to ask yourself about your goals for this week:

~ What networking event will I attend?
~ What article will I write or presentation will I make to my industry peers?
~ What project will I manage from start to finish?

Boston Market

Now for the technical skills. The list of Top 20 Web Technologies in Boston has been updated for May and is presented in the right-hand column. Many of the technical skills posted increases over the past 30 days. Twelve of the 20 skills were mentioned more frequently in job descriptions posted at Boston.com than this time last month.

The double-digit movers on the plus side were as follows:

#08 "Web Services" | 267 job postings 10%

#12 JSP | 181 job postings 20%

#13 UI | 176 job postings 31%

#18 Photoshop | 148 job postings 16%

Bottom line: Interpersonal skills + technical skills = increased opportunity

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