Reprinted with permission © 2008 TreeTop Technologies

There is no doubt that things have tightened up on the job market. But opportunities remain for those with the right skills. Because the most-needed skills haven't changed; in fact, a greater focus is being put on those key skills precisely because things are tighter now, notes David Vellante, founder of the Wikibon Project, a worldwide community of practitioners, technologists and consultants dedicated to improving the adoption of technology and business systems through an open source sharing of free advisory knowledge.

"My rule of thumb is that whether it's a good economy or a bad one, a company gets its best results from customers with whom they already have the strongest relationships," Vallante says. "The same holds true for getting the best results from the strongest skills, which in run help companies better mine their strongest customer relationships."

Web 2.0-style programming skills remain in high demand from what Vellante has seen, "from PHP to Ruby on Rails and whatever else is hot. Companies want those skills because they need the ability to build systems or communities that will allow them to interact with customers and give them ways to get to market that give them good return on investments."

Specific IT domain expertise is also important, he says, and project management expertise is also still in high demand.

"There is simply a more focused intensity on key skills because companies need to take fewer chances and they want people who can give them immediate return on investment," Vellante says.

For IT professionals seeking jobs in a tight economy, Vellante urges them to focus on what they want their "personal brand" to be. "When you think about a company's brand name, it's sort of a promise to deliver a service or product that is needed. So find out what your personal brand is in terms of skills and cultivate that and find ways to market that to others. That means more than having a good resume; it also means doing speaking engagements, maintaining a blog, writing articles, doing radio shows and the like. All things being equal, the job candidate who is best known will be the one who seems less risky and most valuable to a company."

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Footnotes: From "View from the TreeTop" Volume 2 Issue 11 November 2008