Employers in the information technology sector are seeking and paying premiums for skills that help their companies adapt quickly to fast-changing business needs, according to a study from Foote Partners, published in InformationWeek. Foote Partners, an IT compensation and workforce management research firm, says that with many of the in-demand skill sets centring on combinations of specific tech expertise, business knowledge, and industry experience, employers need to rethink their job descriptions and pay policies.

"Job titles don’t always match up with what people do on the job," says Mr Foote, adding that rather than boxing-in IT professionals’ pay based on narrow job titles, employers are increasingly rewarding IT pros on the specificity of their skills and how those skills fit into the company’s business needs.

While customer-facing skills are in heavy demand overall by many companies, premiums are being stuffed into the pay of those professionals with some very specific skills, Foote Partners says. Applications developers with customer-facing skills are hot in general right now, but especially hot are rapid application developers and extreme programmers who are among those getting the highest premiums-about an extra 16 per cent added to base pay.

The demand for rapid development skills also reflects many companies’ intense focus on speed and agility, IW says. "You won’t lose your job because you’re over budget, but you will if you go over time," it quotes Mr Foote as saying. Other hot skills include SAP application development, wireless expertise, storage area networking, and RFID. There’s also increased demand for "hybrid talent" such as people who have operations experience as well as technology skills. According to IW, Companies surveyed by Foote are spending about 8.2 per cent more this year on training and leadership development of their IT staff than they did last year. Developing and training existing staff is often easier and less costly than finding and hiring new talent.

Foote’s findings were based on analysis of pay, skills, and spending data from 1,800 US and Canadian employers. Skills that will be in declining demand over the next two to five years include programming and routine coding, systems testing, application maintenance, technical support, data continuity, and recovery. Those skills are among jobs that are increasingly being offshored.

"Outsourcing and offshoring for many companies has been more of a blessing than a curse," Mr Foote says. That’s because as companies have reduced their IT workforces in some areas such as routine coding, new jobs are being created. "They’re bringing in workers who have more impact," he says

HAS waiting in long queues for buying a train ticket, or lack of credit or debit cards for online reservations left you frustrated? Relax. Come 2007 and you can get online reservations by paying cash. And how?

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has tied up with Sify Ltd. to introduce a service wherein you can pay cash at Sify-Iway cyber cafes and get train tickets. IRCTC has also signed an MoU with State Bank of India under which the bank will set up internet facilities at its ATMs and branches where its customers can get printouts of train tickets while they pay with their SBI cards.

Primarily, a customer will have to pay Rs 45 over and above the ticket cost for IInd class and Rs 65 for Ist class and all ACs. Sanjay Agarwal, General Manager IRCTC, said, ‘‘The basic aim is to bring the reservation centres in your vicinity. Earlier, only card holders could avail such services to avoid long queues. Now, even non-card holders can avail them. Also, we have asked Sify Ltd. to raise its number of cyber cafes from the existing 3,000 in over 200 cities.’’

Currently, Sify is running these services on trial basis at 10 cyber cafes in Delhi. ‘‘After 3-4 weeks of observation, we will expand the services to other cyber cafes in the country. It will probably take us 3-4 months to touch all cyber cafes,’’said Vivek Kumar, Head, Product and New Initiatives, Sify Ltd. Commenting on the cost factor, Kumar said that although extra amount is being charged on ‘‘per ticket basis’’, it is definitely ‘value-for-money’ since people would not have to go to reservation counters everytime. Instead, they’d just have to look for an Iway outlet nearby, he added.

Similarly, SBI has decided to install hardware and software at its ATMs around the country from where its customers can get printouts of train tickets by using their SBI cards. ‘‘We have initiated Phase-I wherein computers are being installed at ATMs. These computers will showcase specific websites like irctc.co.in from which our customers can avail services of reservations, etc. They can get printouts of the tickets through customised printers installed in the ATMs while the payments can be made through their cards,’’ said Sreekumar Thampi, Assistant General Manager, State Bank of India.

Source: Expressindia.com