Top & Evergreen IT Skills

Since about a decade, IT sector has attracted the attention of state's policy makers, financiers, investors and career conscious due to its phenomenal growth. This, mainly a service industry, is independent of an academic degree, where a person with educational background in any discipline can grow an prosper, provided he / she knows and understands the exact requirement of this service industry. The main problem being faced by this industry is actually it is reeling under manpower crunch amid burgeoning unemployment figures. I am particularly referring to the unemployment of those youth who have undergone either academic degree or vocational training or certifications relevant to the industry but still not able to make their way into it. The reasons are many but probably one of it is there is no proper awareness as to what exact skills they need that are particularly in demand. That has provided me with the purpose to submit this post. The list of the following skills has been drawn on the basis of a survey by "computer world" by polling about 350+ IT executives and CEOs. The survey was carried out towards the fag end of 2011. The following IT skills were listed as top & evergreen (likely to prevail for next 8-10 years and strengthen) -

Programming & Application Development - This covers the gamut from website development to upgrading internal systems and potentially huge exposure to the needs of the mobile users.

Project Management - The traditional requirement of project managers as only to oversee or monitor the project is waning, while it not being replaced but joined with additional skills of project evaluation, project architect, requirement analysis & evaluation, and translating it to staff, are emerging due to involvement of more complex technologies and rapid technological development.

Networking - Due to rampant use of virtualization & emergence of cloud computing, the base of which in networking, the sector is hot, is no wonder. Citrix , VMware and there may be many more to come.

Data Center - For the same reasons as the Networking (virtualization & cloud) and also each passing day the increasing volume of the data and the importance of it in the business to draw the business intelligence, this sector is going to provide probably the maximum opportunities. Will require not only the knowledge about the database programming but also the database administration, data warehousing, system integration, data storage etc. A vast field full of sub-sectors with potential of specialization.

Web 2.0 - Tech skills centered around social media, .NET, Ajax, and open source (LAMP), CMSs.

Security - Security is one of the most prime concerns in the implementation of web based technologies and data communications. With increasing cyber crimes, the forensic expertise in the sector of data transmission, storage and handling is gaining great importance.

Telecommunication - Skills in IP telephony, Cisco IPCC call center systems.

Hope this will provide some guidance to the readers to opt for a sector suitable to their temperament and abilities. One thing is sure, with the proper type of skills there is huge void to be filled in the IT sector.