Hiring Exchange - A HotGigs blog

What IT skills are in most demand?

If you're in need of SAP contractors, you're in good company. According to our new HotGigs 2007 IT Contract Workforce Report, SAP skills are more frequently searched for on the HotGigs.com exchange than just about anything else.

The report's based on nearly two million searches done over a three month period on the HotGigs.com exchange. We cover 30 different skills demand areas and of those, ERP was the most-requested. As I said, within ERP, SAP searches were more than double those of Oracle or Peoplesoft.

If you're a HotGigs member or subscriber you already know this; you should have received a private link to your own copy of this report in your inbox earlier this week. For the rest of you, that demand translates into relatively high bill rates. If you check out our billing rate comparison tool, you'll find that these guys make about $100 hour on average. As demand has grown I've seen bill rates go much higher, to as much as $300/hour for topnotch pros.

Web development searches came in second, and I'm guessing that's due to all the backlogged Web projects that were put on hold so companies could cut costs and get infrastructure updates in place. Now they're all back in the system, and as a result, there's strong growth in demand for AJAX developers, PHP skills, ASP.Net and Javascript, especially.

Not surprisingly, project management is also doing well--it came in third.

There's lots more in the report about IT consultant skills demand. It's free for the download, and it can be a really useful tool when you're trying to figure out a contingent workforce strategy for your information technology needs.

The 2007 IT Contract Workforce Report is available at no cost to HotGigs members. To download your own copy, just sign in at HotGigs.com. If you're not a member of HotGigs, what are you waiting for? Join HotGigs at the Basic level (free) and download your copy. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think!

Cheers--

Doug

Use HotGigs to cut development costs

Out of the blue today I got a call from a staffing manager at...well, at a prominent west-coast retailer, thanking HotGigs for saving them a quarter of a million dollars.

They'd needed some difficult development work done in Oracle, and went to Oracle for help. The price was high--higher than they'd expected--but they figured they were stuck.

Then they thought of HotGigs. They didn't expect to find anyone with such a high level of expertise but they gave us a shot. It worked. They easily found a highly skilled Oracle consultant who's giving them exactly what they need.

But here's the best part: By using HotGigs.com they found a consultant at a local consulting firm and will pay about $250,000 less on the annual contract.

That's a significant savings, and I think it demonstrates the power of a staffing exchange such as HotGigs.com. HotGigs has more than 50,000 contractors at every skill level, and they're pre-ranked and pre-referenced. They're a deep, rich talent pool that lets you dial in the level of expertise you need at a fair price.

Later--

--Doug

Makeover!

Here at HotGigs headquarters in Minnesota we’ve got our first real snow on the ground and our first real 2007 milestone: We’ve totally redesigned our HotGigs.com exchange.

It’s only the first of many exciting changes you’ll be seeing this year. We’ve made the site easier to use, and have built an architecture that will allow us to quickly add new products and services.

So…take us for a test drive! There’s a lot to see and do on the new HotGigs.com. Some of the most notable features:

Easier navigation. The HotGigs.com exchange serves three audiences (consultants, staffing firms and hiring companies) and each has its own set of requirements, so we've given each a custom portal. For example, you’ll be able to quickly find and manage the tasks that HR employees and hiring managers tell us they perform most often, directly from the hiring company portal.

More help in maximizing staffing effectiveness. We’ve gathered the best experts in the industry to post to HiringExchange, our new blog for hiring companies. They’ll discuss how to streamline your staffing operations, use the Web to improve your hiring, find and manage your own pool of contract talent and ensure you’re working effectively with staffing firms. We'll also use it to announce new features and promotions.

You can reach the blog in our new hiring company portal…and receive notice of new postings by mail or through our RSS feed. By the way, the debut of HiringExchange also means we’ll be discontinuing the HotGigs newsletter. If you're a newsletter subscriber, we'll switch your subscription to mail notifications whenever we update HiringExchange.

New Rate Exchange. We’ve opened our new Rate Exchange, which lets you find and monitor the going rates for key skills. You can report the rates you’re paying and see what other companies pay for the same skills, a great way to make sure you’re competitive in your marketplace.

In addition, stay tuned for HotGigs’ 2007 IT Rate Guide—we’re releasing it later this month. This is a big deal for the staffing industry, which uses it to set competitive rates for contract work. You can purchase yours online today for just $25, or contact your HotGigs representative to see if you qualify for a free copy.

We'll be adding great new features--and even more granular billing data--throughout 2007.

More help filling full-time positions. Our agency referral program helps you fill full-time positions. Send out one request, and 12,000 staffing firms will set to work filling your job…at the rates you set.

More contractors. We’re launching a major marketing effort this month to bring in new contractors. We estimate we’ll add at least 100,000 new contractors to our membership by the end of the year, so this is a great time to update your HotGigs account and get in gear for 2007.

While you’re there, let us know what you like (and don’t like) about our new direction. HotGigs.com is definitely a work in progress, and we welcome your feedback to help us make it even better.

What a great start to a new year!

--Doug

Just watch!

Recognition isn’t always necessary, but it sure is nice. That’s why I was thrilled to find HotGigs had been named one of “20 Companies to Watch in 2007” by Twin Cities Business, a local business magazine.

It really warmed up a cold, windy Minnetonka day for me. Minnesota is chock full of influential movers and shakers—Target, General Mills, Hormel, Cargill, United Healthcare, to name a few—so getting on a local watchlist is a real achievement.

I think their recognition is due (at least in part) to the increasingly important role that HotGigs contractors are playing in your business. You—and many other companies--need contract workers who can hit the ground running, go in and solve hard problems and rapidly evolve the business to meet new opportunities…then move on.

Increasingly, I’m seeing the top experts in their fields shift from working for others to doing contract projects for businesses like yours. It’s a win-win for both sides—they gain the freedom of self-employment while you get top talent on a pay-as-needed basis.

And in some areas, such as information technology, many companies are planning to shift their employee:contractor ratio from perhaps 80:20 to 60:40 or more. At least one multinational we’ve talked with says that by 2009 they’ll have completely reversed that ratio and contractors will make up a full 80 percent of their IT workforce!

That kind of shift requires a huge rethinking of your staffing strategies, and it’s something most Web job boards aren’t prepared to handle.

We can, and I think that’s why a lot of industry analysts are keeping an eye on us. We’re already a leading center for bridging the gap between contractors, staffing firms and companies--our members are performing more than 3 million searches every quarter. We’ve developed great tools like Jobs2Web, which helps you use the Web to build your own contract talent pools, and ContractCentral, which helps you automate and streamline your relationships with staffing firms.

We're adding features and products as fast as we can, but we need to hear from you. Where do you need help in evolving your staffing processes? What features would you most like to see on HotGigs.com? Your answers can help us make HotGigs.com a more valuable tool in your business arsenal. And if you haven't logged in to your HotGigs.com account recently, stop by...then tell me if you like what you see.

So drop me a line...and watch us grow!

2 (free) ways to grow your candidate pool

If your candidate sourcing strategies don’t include search engines, you’re missing a significant chunk of the talent pool. Web search engines increasingly are the tool of choice for talented professionals.

Just four terms—jobs, job search, career, and part-time job—are used in more than 8 million searches on Google and Yahoo each month. Where do your company’s job listings come out on those search results? If you're like most companies, probably not very high.

Persuading your IT department (or your Web guy, if you don't have an IT department) to do search engine optimization (SEO) on your career site ads isn’t always easy. (Shameless plug: HotGigs' Jobs2Web solution can automate your SEO strategy quickly and easily.) In the meantime, here are a couple of techniques you can quickly implement to increase the chances that a great candidate will find your job in a Web search.

Both involve editing the job ad for better search engine placement. If you make your job listings more relevant to big search engines you'll automagically increase your online reach.

Use common terms instead of company jargon. Do your ads say “Mech. D/D Engr. II” instead of “Senior Mechanical Engineer, Design and Development?” You may understand that, but chances are good that search engines (or anybody else) won’t. Make sure you use plain English throughout the ad.

Incorporate multiple titles into your job ad. My “salesman” may be your “account representative” and his “business development manager.” Check other company career sites and job boards for related titles and pick the two or three most common.

Now add those titles somewhere in your job description, preferably near the top. It can be as simple as a line that says “this position is similar to work done by an “account representative” or “business development manager” in other companies. That way someone searching for BDMs has a better chance of spotting your ad.

It’s a little extra work and it takes awhile to get the hang of it, but I guarantee it’s worth it. (And best of all, it’s free.)

--Doug