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CIO survey: 11% to add staff in Q4

September 04, 2013

Eleven percent of chief information officers plan to add staff to their IT departments in the fourth quarter, according to the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Forecast and Local Trend Report released today. That compares to 12 percent who said they planned to add IT staff in a third-quarter survey.

Sixty-five percent of CIOs plan to hire only for open IT roles, up from 56 percent with similar plans for the first quarter.

“IT hiring managers remain selective when hiring, but know they need to move fast to acquire top talent in hot specialty areas such as networking and help desk support,” said John Reed, senior executive director of Robert Half Technology. “Nearly seven in 10 CIOs surveyed cited current recruiting difficulties. Many firms are increasing their focus on retention because candidates in these areas of IT can be hard to find.”

The Q4 IT hiring forecast found:

  • CIOs adding more staff to IT departments: 11 percent
  • CIOs planning to hire only for open IT roles: 65 percent
  • CIOs planning to put IT hiring plans on hold: 19 percent
  • CIOs planning to reduce their IT staff: 5 percent

In the same survey, 86 percent of CIOs said they are somewhat or very confident about their companies’ prospects for growth in the fourth quarter, and 64 percent said they are somewhat or very confident that their firms will invest in IT projects in the fourth quarter.

Among the technology executives surveyed, 68 percent said it's somewhat or very challenging to find skilled IT professionals today. Nineteen percent said it is most difficult to find skilled talent in the functional area of networking. Data/database management and help desk/technical support followed with 13 percent and 12 percent respectively.

The survey is based on more than 2,300 telephone interviews with CIOs from a random sample of U.S. companies in 23 major metro areas with 100 or more employees.