IT Solution Provider

Recruitment within the IT Solution Provider industry has seen an upturn over the last 3 months, with an increase in both permanent and contract vacancies. Many clients are now reporting that previous “on hold” business is now moving ahead, so are hiring new staff for 2010. We are currently holding over 130 live vacancies, covering sales, consultancy, project & programme management, development and support. Sales vacancies have increased particularly for high end new business professionals, with a particular focus across areas such as SAP, CRM and  Business Intelligence. In light of this positive shift in the market, Matchtech has added to their successful Consultancy team by hiring a senior recruitment consultant to focus on the Business Intelligence market.

End User Clients

The IT End User permanent team which focuses on providing world class recruitment services to Matchtech’s corporate and private company client base is benefiting from a surge in vacancy orders. This increase started at the end of summer holidays and is still gathering pace – overall vacancies in are up 40% since August! Our clients have a strong appetite to get their vacancies filled before the Xmas break and are planning for a busier and more vibrant 2010.

As ever the main skills sets in demand cover Software Development, Project Management, Business Analysis and IT Support. We have witnessed a significant drop off in candidate applications over the last couple of weeks  – so if you are thinking of starting your job search in the New Year our advice would be to not delay and get in contact prior to Christmas as there is less competition in the current market.

The contract market is also notably picking up but there has been a 3 month lag behind the recent upturn in the permanent market. Many of our clients are recruiting Project Management/PMO resources in large volumes and we also have a number of high-profile rollout and office relocation projects at a few clients, predominantly in the transportation and public sectors. This has resulted in a recent influx of IT Support and Infrastructure positions. Our general observation at the moment is that the contractor marketplace is generally candidate rich, however many niche skills such as SAP, Sharepoint and Oracle remain sought after.

NHS

In 2006 Matchtech IT was selected by the NHS Purchasing & Supply Agency (PASA) to supply IM&T (Information Management & Technology) contract, temporary and interim staff to the NHS. The NHS team has recently won the tender for PASA to extend our inclusion on the framework for another 3 years.  Currently, Matchtech ICT is the third largest supplier to the NHS for IT and Information staff under the PASA agreement; however we are currently the number one supplier to several regions throughout the UK including South West, South Central, Yorkshire & the Humber and Wales.

Matchtech has seen a noticeable rise in Consultancy and Project Staff over the last 6 months and would always be interested in speaking to candidates with NHS experience within 3 broad categories:

1. Project Management and Consultant positions
2. Information, Data Analysis and Informatics
3. Traditional IT – such as software development, training, support, helpdesk & roll-out

9. Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence (BI), the top technology priority in Gartner’s 2008 CIO survey, can have a direct positive impact on a company’s business performance, dramatically improving its ability to accomplish its mission by making smarter decisions at every level of the business from corporate strategy to operational processes. BI is particularly strategic because it is directed toward business managers and knowledge workers who make up the pool of thinkers and decision makers that are tasked with running, growing and transforming the business. Tools that let these users make faster, better and more-informed decisions are particularly valuable in a difficult business environment.

6. Specialized Systems. Appliances have been used to accomplish IT purposes, but only with a few classes of function have appliances prevailed. Heterogeneous systems are an emerging trend in high-performance computing to address the requirements of the most demanding workloads, and this approach will eventually reach the general-purpose computing market. Heterogeneous systems are also specialized systems with the same single-purpose imitations of appliances, but the heterogeneous system is a server system into which the owner installs software to accomplish its function.

7. Social Software and Social Networking. Social software includes a broad range of technologies, such as social networking, social collaboration, social media and social validation. Organizations should consider adding a social dimension to a conventional Web site or application and should adopt a social platform sooner, rather than later, because the greatest risk lies in failure to engage and thereby, being left mute in a dialogue where your voice must be heard.

4. Web-Oriented Architectures. The Internet is arguably the best example of an agile, interoperable and scalable service-oriented environment in existence. This level of flexibility is achieved because of key design principles inherent in the Internet/Web approach, as well as the emergence of Web-centric technologies and standards that promote these principles. The use of Web-centric models to build global-class solutions cannot address the full breadth of enterprise computing needs. However, Gartner expects that continued evolution of the Web-centric approach will enable its use in an ever-broadening set of enterprise solutions during the next five years.

2. Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. They key characteristics of cloud computing are 1) delivery of capabilities “as a service,” 2) delivery of services in a highly scalable and elastic fashion, 3) using Internet technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and 4) designing for delivery to external customers. Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the builtin elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.