Introduction

Just as the warm summer weather fades from memory, so too does the first
business quarter of 2010. The results for the most part have been
encouraging and the sentiment of many is that the good times are once
again just around the corner.
Over optimistic? Well maybe just a little but as the economy self-propels
itself to visions of success who are we to dampen the spirit of those who
believe the worst is well and truly over.
Well ask Edward Chancellor, of US investment management firm GMO and
he’ll quickly curb your excitement. In a recent interview with the Australian
he stated that, “Australia is in the midst of an unsustainable housing bubble
that could burst at any time”.
Coming from the man who predicted the Global Financial Crisis back in 2005
with his published work ‘Crunch Time for Credit’ he has the credentials to
make you listen. Mr Chancellor estimates that Australian house prices are
more than 50 per cent above their fair value, a once in 40-year event and if
they were to revert to their historic long-term average then they would fall
considerably.
As interest rates continue to rise, “the ratio of mortgage repayments to
individual’s income will rise to very high levels” he said, which has the very
real potential to generate a market collapse.
On this occasion let’s hope the prediction is wrong.
This report is a general market overview of IT recruitment trends, topics and
opinions. We are happy to discuss any specific situations and queries you
may have about your market sector and geographic location.

Summary
The key recruitment market topics are:

• A quicker than expected return to the skill shortage problem that

has plagued the Australian Technology market for the past decade.
• The drive to recapture market share for many organisations puts
pressure on resources internally and creates strong demand for
extra headcount.
• It’s not the quantity of resources you employ but the quality and
with the imbalance between demand and supply it’s a challenge to
find the people who will truly deliver value to your business.
• Perhaps driven by project requirements or maybe by precedent the
search for specialist resources pushes up the salaries and rates for
technology professionals.

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 2

Contents
Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 2
Summary ................................................................................................................................ 2
Contents ................................................................................................................................. 3
Recruitment Industry News – What’s happening now? .......................................... 3
The great Australian IT skills shortage – not again! ........................................... 3
Like a hangover after a poker game ....................................................................... 4
“It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent
ones” .................................................................................................................................. 4
How much is that Information Management Director in the window…the
one with the Portals & Enterprise Content Management experience? ........ 5
Technology Industry News ................................................................................................ 5
Technology Blog Grows ............................................................................................... 5
Market Rates On The Rise............................................................................................ 6
Industry Sectors ................................................................................................................... 7
Applications ..................................................................................................................... 7
Business Information .................................................................................................... 7
Infrastructure .................................................................................................................. 8
More Information ................................................................................................................ 9
About Ambition.................................................................................................................... 9

Recruitment Industry News – What’s happening now?

The great Australian IT skills shortage – not again!

Australia's unemployment rate held steady in March 2010 at 5.3 per cent,
according to the country's Bureau of Statistics, while the number of people
in work rose by 19,600 over the month.

It feels like only yesterday that the catch cry of every blue-chip corporate
related to their individual battle plan against the war for talent. Now it
appears the white flag is down and we are quickly heading back to those
days of strategising and fighting to ensuring we can attract and retain the
best resources in the technology market.

An ageing population coupled with limited growth in the Technology

undergraduate market will exacerbate the problem as more and more
specialist skilled resources are needed. Already this year the Technology
Industry has seen a 180 degree turnaround on its 2009 position and
seasonally adjusted demand has risen positively month on month. The smart
players are already looking to overseas markets again but with the Northern
Hemisphere entering its summer months it may take a little more persuasion
to get ink on that employment contract.

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 3

Like a hangover after a poker game – how much money did I
really lose?

2009 created a dent in many hip pockets from the man on the street to the
corporate balance sheet and with the smell of a recovery comes a desire to
regain any losses that were suffered over the past 12 months.

It can be a danger in an improving market to feel like you are performing

well simply because your results are up, however these are the times when
new lines of power will be drawn in business markets. For the more astute
this is the time to really push yourself and overachieve rather than just
achieve!

As demand has increased for products and services, the skeleton teams of
many businesses have been stretched to working capacity and the only way
to improve revenue and profits is to increase output through headcount
growth. Coupled with the other factors we are outlining in this report, this
is no easy feat and becomes something of a chicken and egg scenario with
output limited by resources and resources limited by supply.

A possible alternative – grow your own perhaps?

“It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many

indifferent ones”

The above heading is a quote from George Washington in 1798 and could
not ring more true over 200 years later. Sure there are still people
unemployed, but rightly or wrongly in the highly specialised world of
Information Technology, it’s not just anyone who can do the job who’ll be
hired.

Through design or default our world continues to become more

technologically complex and roles and their responsibilities as a result,
become more specific and demanding in nature. What this means for those
well meaning individuals who would love to give it a go in the IT world, is
that unfortunately their resumes are unlikely to get across the desk of an IT
hiring Manager.

Arguably the competencies required to do any job are often not dissimilar to
those of other positions in vastly different fields or industry sectors.
Unfortunately in a drive for prior experience only, we the Technology
Industry are compounding the difficulties we already face in a tightly
constrained skill short market. This is never more visible than in the
contracting market where individuals are employed to be specialist problem
solvers, who are expected to come in, solve a problem and move on.

As technology changes at such a breathtaking pace we cannot realistically

expect to keep generating enough specialist, skilled and experienced
individuals to be hired for our technology roles. We suggest that sometime
soon, there has to be a new way of approaching this problem.

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 4

How much is that Information Management Director in the
window…the one with the Portals & Enterprise Content
Management experience?

Now I’m a bit of an evangelist on this topic but to me it ties in quite

logically with the previous trends identified here so let me lay out the facts.

The Technology market has a skills shortage; the Technology market

continues to evolve at an alarming rate; the Technology market continues to
seek to recruit highly specialised people resources. Now we all know that a
specialist (doctor, dentist or car mechanic) will charge a lot more money for
their services/products than a generalist and therefore it’s no great leap of
logic to assume that the more specialised the technology Industry becomes,
the more expensive people resources will continue to become.

Now many will disagree and say this is the true course of supply and
demand, but when you factor in the anticipated growth of the Industry
within the larger economy we surely have to look for ways to manage the
problems which we appear to be creating. If we invest in promotion of the
industry to individuals at an earlier age we should increase general supply
levels. Similarly, focus on the competencies required to complete a role
rather than solely previous experience will hopefully grow those resources
we can draw upon, but it requires a cultural mind-set shift.

The alternative is that supply remains outstripped by demand, specialisation

continues unabashed and salary costs will undoubtedly increase unchecked.

Technology Industry News

Technology Blog Grows
After recently launching our dedicated Technology Blog site we continue to
post what we hope is creative and informative content. Our mission is to
build a community around the content we provide which should add value
and interest to your role, your organisation and you personally!

This month we’ve posted a number of topics including a video post of an

interview with Tim Olorenshaw, the IT Infrastructure Project Manager for
Leighton Contractors in Sydney. In this capacity he is responsible for
managing major IT infrastructure projects; managing key relationships with
data centre managed services providers, is involved in IT strategic planning
cycles and manages the cross functional team members including mentoring
and staff development.

Jump on the site, have a look at what’s there and then click on the link to
provide feedback so that we can continue to make this site a one-stop
location for Technology and Careers information.
Visit Ambition TechBlog: http://www.ambition.com.au/techblog

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 5

 Market Rates On The Rise
As candidates struggle to claw back lost ground from 2009, many are
realising that increased business confidence and improved hiring conditions
means they have some power to negotiate on salaries and contractor rates.

Taking a rolling view of the last two quarters we have seen a general whole
of Technology increase in pay levels of approximately 3%. A modest
increase perhaps but as with anything there are clear spikes in those areas
where demand is severely out of sync with supply.

Yrs Industry Hourly

Job Title Experience Sector Package $ Rate $
Service Desk 0-1 Finance $55,000 20-25
1-3 Finance $55,000-60,000 25-30
3-5 Finance $60,000-70,000 30-35
0-1 Non-Financial $50,000 20-25
1-3 Non-Financial $50,000-60,000 25-30
3-5 Non-Financial $60,000-70,000 30-35
Business
Analyst 1-3 Finance $50,000-65,000 45-55
3-5 Finance $60,000-80,000 50-80
5+ Finance $80,000-120,000 70-90
1-3 Non-Financial $50,000-65,000 45-55
3-5 Non-Financial $60,000-80,000 50-80
5+ Non-Financial $80,000-100,000 70-85
OO Developer 1-3 Finance $55,000-70,000 55-65
3-5 Finance $70,000-95,000 65-85
5+ Finance $100,000+ 90+
1-3 Non-Financial $55,000-65,000 55-65
3-5 Non-Financial $70,000-90,000 65-85
5+ Non-Financial $100,000+ 90+

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 6

Industry Sectors
Applications
There has been a lot happening in the Applications Development space this
Quarter and a large amount of activity has involved the mobile computing
space. The Android mobile OS was developed by Google after it acquired
Android Inc. in 2005. Google then released the OS into open source and it is
now maintained as a free platform by a consortium of chipmakers, handset
makers, mobile operators and software companies. As neither Microsoft nor
Apple, builders of competing mobile OS’s are members of the alliance there
is a growing tension surrounding the future of application development
work on the respective platforms.

Also at the big end of town and within the mobile computing space, came
the news Hewlett-Packard Co.was to acquire Palm Inc., (credited with
creating the very first smart-phone), for $1.2 billion. HP was clear in stating
that its acquisition of Palm was for its webOS platform, drawing focus to its
own support for application multi-tasking, tight device integration with
support for gesture-based touch, mobile cloud-based services and its
development platform, all of which are suited to Web developers.

Back to the grass roots and the slightly less sexy world of your day to day
developer; activity has certainly taken a shot in the arm this Quarter with
noticeable increases and positive interest in new development work across
various sectors. Lead by the financial services sector in both Sydney and
Melbourne there are a number of new projects being rolled out which until
this year had been low priority or simply put on the back burner pending
improved financial conditions.

Skills in demand remain centered around the Java and .Net platforms with,
the final version of the .NET Framework 4 released on April 12, 2010.

Business Information
As projects continue to launch across the corporate landscape there is an
energy and optimism that’s been missing for some time, but it is not without
caution from the lessons learnt in 2009.

ComputerWeekly.com recently posted an interesting article on a growing

trend of businesses to focus on projects incorporating outsource or managed
services agreements which are termed “business outcome focused”. The
concept is perhaps so obvious as to appear confusing: aren’t all contracts
based on an agreement that objectives will be satisfied?

Analyst firm Gartner says, “Worldwide spending on IT services declined 5.3%

to $763bn in 2009 compared to $805bn the previous year. In the wake of
economic turmoil, suppliers and end-customers are increasingly drafting
outsourcing agreements with a defined business outcome and according to
the Gartner research; suppliers that focused on the business outcome did
better than average last year”.

To give a simple example, many businesses operating in the digital media

market now only pay for services consumed or alternatively look to pay per
transaction or per click. But tying payment with outcomes can be risky if it
is done without careful consideration, and as we all know risk is still very
much a hot topic.

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 7

Throughout the banking and finance space a significant project focus
remains on risk (credit, market and operational). Project governance and
general risk management principles highlight a need to clean and enrich
business data and allow effective and timely visibility of corporate
exposures. Business analysts and project managers are being sought with
skills in a wide variety of Business Intelligence tools including Oracle BI
Toolset, Hyperion, Cognos and Terradata. The benefits of which allow
businesses to streamline financial reporting, gain confidence in business
forecasting and budgeting, allow ad hoc queries and improve insight in to
financial and data modelling.

Infrastructure
The IT Infrastructure areas of many companies have gone back in to hiring
mode with a strong demand for service and help desk resources. This area of
a business often provides a home for more junior or entry level candidates
and as a result of cost cutting last year many teams were downsized to meet
reduced product/service needs. The increasing confidence and growing
demand has sent vacancies on the rise and very quickly we are finding it
more difficult to source candidates of a suitable quality to meet client’s
expectations.

As demand continues to grow for everything from systems administrators to

consultants with Unified Comms experience, not everyone is taking the steps
to rebuild understaffed Infrastructure teams.

Toyota Australia is taking a bold step and placing all its bets on the cloud
computing model with a mission to rid itself of any enterprise IT
infrastructure within five years states www.CRN.com.au

Recently at the ceBIT datacenter conference, Michael Jenkins manager of

enterprise architecture and strategy at Toyota Australia announced that
Toyota is looking forward to a future in which all applications are delivered
via the cloud from data centres that are completely "transparent" and
"invisible".

The article goes on to examine Michael’s views on why Toyota Australia

"doesn't see IT assets as being core competitive advantage," and further why
he feels that a move towards the ‘conceptual’ realm will result in technology
becoming transparent and invisible.

Perhaps a view that others don’t stand so boldly behind is that, "Current
workloads will evaporate – we (Toyota) will stop thinking about how it’s
hosted, what its hosted on, and look at the conceptual view. It will be
consumed, metered, and priced on utilisation."

Time will tell but for Infrastructure specialists out there, rest assured we
currently have more demand for skilled professionals than we have
individuals to meet that demand!

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 8

More Information
For answers to your questions on market trends, salaries, retrenchments or
grading please feel free to contact Ambition with the contact information
listed on the back page or visit http://www.ambition.com.au/

About Ambition
Through a network of national offices we are able to recruit IT professionals
from junior support staff through to senior executives. Our consultants are
experienced recruiters who have strong technology industry exposure and
who focus on both the contract and permanent recruitment markets.

This report was written by:

Andy Cross
andrew.cross@ambition.com.au
Managing Director
Ambition Technology
www.ambition.com.au

Ambition Technology Market Trends – Q1 2010 | 9

Careers Recruitment and Contracting
Accounting, Finance and Technology

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