IT salary increases are at the highest rate in three years and
the rate of redundancies is lower than in other sectors, according
to research from salary survey firm Celre.
Analysts say this is driven by the fact that in contrast to
other sectors,
companies are finding it difficult to recruit and retain IT
staff with the skills they need.
The biggest needs are for people with project management skills
and a combination of business and IT skills, and this is reflected
in the Celre Computer Staff Salary Survey.
BCS Chartered IT Professionals (CITP) are the top earners with
an average salary of £54,080, indicating that companies are paying
top price for business and IT experience.
Adam Thilthorp, BCS professionalism in IT programme manager,
said CITP represents people who are skilled in technology and also
understand the business application of that technology.
Michael Bennett, director at ReThink Recruitment, said CITP
candidates are typically people with wide experience and who are in
senior positions that command high salaries, but it was not
typically a pre-requite set by employers.
The highest demand, said Bennett, was for
Prince2 project management certification, which came in as the
second most highly paid skill set with an average salary of
£48,000.
"Project management is the biggest demand area because of the
perceived failure of IT to deliver projects," he said.
According to Bennett, the premium for Prince2 was higher that
that for
IT infrastructure library certification because of lower
supply.
Alex Lawson of IT recruitment firm CV Screen said that Prince2
could also be applied to a wider variety of projects throughout
organisations, not just help desks and other IT services.
ITIL came in only fourth on the earnings ladder with an average
salary for practitioners of £40,000, behind the Microsoft Certified
Systems Engineers (MCSE) qualification at £41,259.
Bennett said companies were still willing to pay higher salaries
for more technical qualifications such as MCSE, which remained in
demand because of the continued dominance by Microsoft of
applications in the business world.
The Celrey survey found the top earners were IT directors with
an average salary of £114,412 followed by IT managers (£92,717) and
IT function heads (£78,040).
All of these are above lower level IT salaries, which ranged
from £28,000 to £36,000.
This gap was identified in a survey by the Association of
Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo) and on CV service iProfile,
which was published in May.
That survey found that salaries for entry-level IT jobs have
declined in the past five years, while salaries for IT
professionals in management roles have continued to beat
inflation.
ATSCo said the gap was a result of companies
outsourcing technical support to countries with lower staff
costs. This had widened because of the increased demand for skilled
UK professionals to manage the increasing number of IT projects
offshore.
With the IT industry facing a
looming skills crisis and demand increasing for a combination
of IT and business skills, leading academics have called for
government to restore funding for computing studies, particularly
at a postgraduate level.